This story starts out with Tyhee Sahale getting angry. He then ordered a medicine man to take his bow and arrow and shoot into the cloud that hung low over Takhoma. At first, I did not understand why Sahale didn't shoot the could himself. After doing some research I realize that it's because the medicine men are thought of as having magical healing powers. This makes sense as you later read that the arrow stuck in the cloud. He kept shooting arrows until he made a chain of arrows that went all the way down to the earth.
Then, the medicine man told his klootchman and children to climb up the arrow trail. I looked up what klootchman means and it's his wife. He also had the good animals to climb up and then he climbed up.
After they were all up the chain of arrows, the medicine man broke the chain of arrows so no bad animals could come up. Once the chain broke, it began to rain until the land flooded. Once all of the bad animals were drowned, it stopped raining.
Once the waters drained, they medicine man and his family went out of the cloud and back to the earth. Now there are no snakes or bad animals on Takhoma.
I am a little confused as to why they got rid of all of the bad animal just because someone was mad as the people. I am sure I am missing a piece of something that relates to the culture, but I could not find anything online.
I think this would be a good thing to do my story over because I really like the flow of the story.
(Photo from WikiMedia.)
Native American Unit: Pacific Northwest. Why There Are No Snakes on Takhoma by Cowlitz.
No comments:
Post a Comment