Reading Notes Week 10: Blackfoot Indian Stories, Part A, "The Wolf Man"

• "The Wolf Man"
• Blackfoot werewolf story
• a man with 2 wives
• wives are "wicked"
• do not cook, always away from home, unappreciative of the husband when he brings home meat
• husband decides to move away from the village in hopes that the wives will cook and do their duties if they have no one to socialize with
• the women are upset that they aren't near the village - decide to kill the man
• on a butte where the man usually sits atop a buffalo skull surveying the land the women dig a pit and cover it to camouflage the hole and place the buffalo skull over the pit
• the man goes to the butte to sit on the skull like he does every night
• falls into pit
• stuck in pit and thinks he will starve to death
• women leave and return to the village pretending to mourn
• wolves discover man in pit
• wolves, coyotes, foxes and other night predators decide to dig him out
• once the man is rescued the wolves invite him to be theri brother
• an old blind wolf heals the man's injuries and turns his hands into wolf paws and his head into that of a wolf - the rest remains human
• the man lives with the night predators as a brother
• he helps the wolves and others steal meat from the village by disabling the traps placed around the buffalo pen that are designed to snare and kill the wolves that attempt to eat the buffalo
• the humans are confused about what has happened to their traps
• set out bad meat the next night 
• the wolf-man half howls, half yells about the bad meat revealing to the humans what he is
• they set out good meat to trap the wolf-man
• once the wolf-man is trapped they take him to a lodge and recognize that he is the missing man
• he tells them his story
• they suggest that he punish his wicked wives
• he says to give them to "the punishing society" because they know what to do with them
• story ends with the two wives never being seen again
• Storytelling ideas: I really liked this story because of the werewolf aspect. I like that many cultures have a variation of the same type of creature. I want to play with the idea of the werewolf in more depth. I am also thinking about gender flipping the story or somehow dispelling the "wicked women who don't do their homely duties must be punished" trope. Its outdated and needs to be redone. I also may combine this story with others from the Blackfoot tradition such as "The Camp of the Ghosts."
• Bibliography: Blackfeet Indian Stories by George Bird Grinnell (1915)

(I do not have any information about the tribe from which this image comes and I am no way inferring that he is Blackfoot or that all Native Americans are the same. The image was found on Pinterest on a Native Mythology board)