The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought: Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-DayChamberlain, Alexander Francis
Science
The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought: Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-Day
Chamberlain, Alexander Francis
Child rearing; Children -- Folklore; Folklore and children
From the Indians of the Pueblo of Isleta, New Mexico, Dr. A. S. Gatschet
has obtained the story of the "Antelope-Boy," who, as the champion of
the White Pueblo, defeated the Plawk, the champion of the Yellow Pueblo,
in a race around the horizon. The "Antelope-Boy" was a babe who had been
left on the prairie by its uncle, and brought up by a female antelope
who discovered it. After some trouble, the people succeeded in catching
him and restoring him to his mother. Another version of the same tale
has it that "the boy-child, left by his uncle and mother upon the
prairie, was carried to the antelopes by a coyote, after which a
mother-antelope, who had lost her fawn, adopted the tiny stranger as her
own. By an ingenious act of the mother-antelope the boy was surrendered
again to his real human mother; for when the circle of the hunters grew
smaller around the herd, the antelope took the boy to the northeast,
where his mother stood in a white robe. At last these two were the only
ones left within the circle, and when the antelope broke through the
line on the northeast, the boy followed her and fell at the feet of his
own human mother, who sprang forward and clasped him in her arms." The
Yellow Pueblo people were wizards, and so confident were they of success
that they proposed that the losing party, their villages, property,
etc., should be burnt. The White Pueblo people agreed, and, having won
the victory, proceeded to exterminate the conquered. One of the wizards,
however, managed to hide away and escape being burned, and this is why
there are wizards living at this very day (239. 213, 217).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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