Storytelling Post: Indian Fairy Tales Units

Once there was a boy living out free in the woods with his sister.  The brother and sister were free to roam around the wilderness as it pleased them.  Being so free and unattached the brother and sister had many splendid adventures together.  They went all around the country side and had collected a great number of tokens to commemorate their adventures. 

One of the boy’s most treasured tokens was his fur coat that his sister made for him from the pelts of the white rabbits.  The boy would wear the coat to remember how they had traveled far and long to reach the land of the white rabbits.  He recalled how the bounded through the snow and darted so quickly through the fresh powder that you could hardly keep track of them.  He would reflect fondly on how his sister taught him to set a snare to catch the rabbits. They had been able to make him a full coat to keep him warm against the sharp winter winds as they traveled back home.

The boy so loved to wear his coat that he wanted to pocket the sun.  If he could pocket the sun surely it wouldn’t be so warm, and then he could wear his coat all the time.  Then he would always think of the white rabbits, the snow and the snares, and he would always remember his good times with his sister.  So the young boy set out to capture and pocket the sun like they had once caught the rabbits.  He would catch the sun in a snare and pull it down to be pocketed. 

So finally the day came and the boy had made a rope long enough to reach the sun.  He threw it up with all his might, the winds carried it up to great heights and he had done it. The boy had snared the sun.  He pulled it down and set it in the pocket of his coat.  As the day went on however, he felt his coat get warmer and warmer, the sun was burning his coat and he had to act quickly.  The boy stripped off his coat and threw the sun back into the sky, however the sun caught on his coat and his coat went up as high as the sun was.  The heat from the sun burnt the threads connecting the furs together and they floated off separately to decorate the sky.  This is how the sky came to have clouds as white as rabbits. 

Authors Note:  This week I really struggled with a storytelling post idea.  Finally I just hammered this out on the premise that it was based on my favorite story from the unit.  The original story was about a boy and his sister.  The sister makes the boy a coat out of birds that he had killed all on his own, the boy wanted to snare the sun to keep his coat from shrinking.  However, in the original story the boy never got the sun because the animals thwarted his plans.  The original post told how the mouse came to be so small.  Initially the mouse was the largest of all animals which is why he could cut the rope.  As he was cutting the rope he lowly burned away until he was the smallest of all animals.  

Image from Santa Banta

The Boy who Snared the Sun 

Book American Indian Fairy Tales 

Author W.T. Larned

Year 1921