A hunter leaves his wife at home to tend marten traps despite her warnings. While he’s away, a mysterious man visits, gifts the wife a beautiful bead necklace, and vanishes. The husband returns, smashes the beads in anger, and the wife weeps outside. In moonlight, the stranger restores the necklace whole and takes her away. Distraught, the husband burns his possessions and turns into a wolverine.
Source:
Athapascan Traditions
from the Lower Yukon
by J.W. Chapman
The American Folklore Society
Journal of American Folklore
Vol.16, No.62, pp. 180-185
July-September, 1903
► Themes of the story
Origin of Things: The story explains the origin of the wolverine through the husband’s transformation.
Transformation: The husband is physically transformed into a wolverine after his wife is taken.
Love and Betrayal: The wife’s divided loyalty between her mortal husband and the mysterious visitor highlights betrayal.
► From the same Region or People
Learn more about the Athabaskan people
There was once a couple who lived by themselves. They had a house and a cache and the man occupied himself in hunting. He hunted martens both with traps and with the arrow.
One day he said, “I believe I will go to my marten traps;” but the woman did not want to let him go. “No,” said she, “please don’t. Stay here today; there may be strangers coming.” But the man answered, “Who is there to come? There’s nobody at all. There are no tracks but mine;” and he put on his gear and left the house. Meanwhile the woman wept as she sat sewing at home.
At noon, yonder, outside the door, she heard some one knocking the snow from his boots, and a man came in, but it was not her husband.
► Continue reading…
The woman drew her hair down over her face so as to cover it, then put food into a bowl, meat and fat, and handed it to him. “Have something to eat,” she said. “I am not hungry,” said he; “it is for you that I came here; go with me.” And when she refused he gave her a beautiful necklace of seed beads, and hung them about her neck and went out.
Meanwhile she had made a fire and cooked food, expecting her husband; for she thought, “When he comes he will be hungry.” At length he returned, and after they had eaten he fixed the curtain over the smoke-hole and they went to bed. When she undressed, her husband saw the great necklace of beads. He broke out in anger, “Who gave them to you, if no one has been here?” And taking a great maul, he broke them to pieces, and putting them upon a shovel he threw them out at the smoke-hole, and lay down again.
Thereupon the woman began to cry. “Come,” said her husband, “go outside and cry; there is no sleep to be had here;” and she went out crying. The moon was shining, but she stood where no light fell upon her, and where the moon shone she looked for (him). See! There in the moonlight is that man. He laughs as he stands looking at her in the moonlight. Then he went to her and came close to her. “What say you?” said he. “Why,” she said, “he pounded up the beads and threw them out at the smoke-hole.”
So up to the top of the house went the man, and took up the beautiful beads whole, as they were before, and put them upon the woman’s neck, and took her and went out into the moonlight.
Meanwhile, her husband roused himself up, and went out to find that his wife was gone. All around the place he went, but found only his own tracks, for the stranger had left none. He kindled a fire, and burned his parka and his own hair and his back, and went away as a wolverine.
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Dreamtime Whispers 