Reading Notes: Eskimo Folk Tales Reading B: The Wife Who Lied

Picture from the story: The Wife Who Lied

Story: Navara, was a woman that came from a tribe of man-eater, but when she grew of age, she was taken by of the tribes that did not eat men to be married. One time, Navara was going to visit her own people. She decided that she would put her mittens of her feet to make her look as though she was not properly cared for by her husband's people. Navara's people felt greatly for her and they agreed to make war against her husband's tribe. They set out to Navara's husbands village and when they arrived, all the men were out hunting, with only the women home. They slaughtered all of the women except three, who escaped through hiding from them.  When all the men came home from hunting, they found all the women dead and stuck on pole with points in them, except for the three that survived. They knew immediately who had done it, since Navara had left previously. The immediately fell into war and went to the other tribe's land. The three woman who had survived worked so furiously to help prepare for war, that their finger bones were exposed. When they finally set out to the enemy tribe, they hid themselves among the rocks, knowing the other tribe would be expecting the. Eventually, because of an old woman's dream, the enemy tribe knew that that Navara's husbands tribe was near, and they all met in a single house to counsel with the spirits. The tribe them surrounded them and took Navara and killed her.
My Ideas: This story is very gory and gave a lot of details about the deaths. Why did Navara lie? Why did she decided to cause war between the two tribes? Did she not want to marry her husband? Was she unhappy? Did she just like her tribes ways better? I feel like there is very little detail about the background information of this story. To retell this, I would fill in the blanks, such as the questions I asked about. Also, I think instead of putting this in all knowing form, it would be good to hear for either one of the survivors of the attack or Navara herself. This would make the story more personal and give us some details about the characters.

Bibliography: Rasmussen, Knud. Eskimo Folk-Tales. Eskimo Folktale Unit. The Wife Who Lied. 1921.