Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Reading Diary Week 10: Myths and Legends of Alaska Continued

This is the second half of the Myths and Legends of Alaska.

The story "The First Woman" was my favorite in this unit. Earth originally just had all men, who lived in the north, and there was only one woman who lived to the south of the men. One of the men decided that he was going to travel south and marry the last living woman. There was a headsman whose son didn't have a wife and the man who married the last living woman acknowledged it. This headsman's son traveled south to the woman's house and formulated a plan to take her. He waited until everyone was asleep and began to drag the woman out of the house by her shoulders. The husband woke up as the headsman's son was taking the woman and started pulling his wife's feet. The headsman and the husband kept pulling until the woman was eventually pulled into two. The headsman's son took the upper half of the body to the north, while the husband kept the lower half in the north. They each set out to carve a complete woman out of wood. The woman in the south had wooden hands, while the woman in the north had wooden feet. The woman in the south was able to dance very well, but didn't have use of her hands, while the woman in the north was very skilled with her hands, but couldn't dance. This is why southern women are good dancers and women in the north are very skilled with their hands.

I liked that this story related to mythology about why Eskimo people are the way they are today and was really interesting to read from start to finish.



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