Re: Mythical mutations

Pete, here's the story:

        Once a great hunter named Camesh wandered far
into the forest and across many rivers in search of
the wild boor that his tribe would feast upon. As he
came to a great river that marked the boundary between
his land and the next tribe’s land, he heard the
noises of a war party on the move. He hid himself in
the tall grass on the river’s bank and looked across
the river to a clearing on the other side.
	He grew concerned as a large group of men, all
dressed in the skins of mountain lions and holding
large clubs and many glittering spears, with grim
faces striped with gray and black paint appeared. They
were of the Mountain Lion clan and were rumored to be
ferocious in battle. Camesh knew they were heading in
the direction of his village and began to plan a way
to divert their journey. He knew that a clan would not
hunt its totem animal, unless it was for the spirit
quest at the beginning of a warrior’s adult hood. To
hunt the totem animal at any other time was to bring
death and sickness upon the clan. He smiled at this
thought and began to growl like a mountain lion
protecting her cubs from danger.
       Hearing the growling, the war troop stopped and
listened and were afraid. One warrior said, “What
shall we do? We do not want to anger the Mountain
Lion, for doing so will bring great troubles to our
clan.”
	Another said, “The Mountain Lion knows us as her
friends, she is our totem animal and will not hurt
us.” Yet another said “We have not said the proper
blessing and received the proper protections to cross
a Mountain Lion and we do not want her to feed us to
her cubs.”
       "The Mountain Lion seems hungry and angry and
indeed may want to feed us to her cubs," the chief
said. "We will have to go another way." The war party
then turned back and went another way.
       Camesh ran back across the hills and the rivers
and returned to our village and there he told all the
elders about the Mountain Lion clan’s war party and
how he hid in the reeds by the river and growled like
a Mountain Lion to scare them off.  And it is because
of his ingenuity and cleverness that we give the adult
name of Camesh to especially smart children in our
clan when they come of age and are ready to go through
the rituals of their spirit quest.




--- Peter Bleackley <Peter.Bleackley@...>
wrote:

> I'd like to try an experiment to see how oral
> history / folklore /
> mythology mutates in the retelling. If you'd like to
> take part, reply to
> this message. The first person to do so will recieve
> a short story I've
> composed in the style of a piece of tribal oral
> history. When you get it,
> write your own version, feeling free to elaborate on
> the details. Then,
> send your version back to me, and post a message on
> the list saying that
> your version's ready. Send it on to the next
> volunteer to reply. When we've
> run out of volunteers, I'll post up all the versions
> in sequence.
>
> Pete
>

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