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One day, something ate all the food Grandmother Spider had left out to dry. She knew it was a child because there were small handprints and footprints, but she didn't know if it was a boy or girl. Before she left the next morning, she put out some more food. She also put out a ball for a girl baby and a bow and arrow for a boy baby.When the boy baby came back, he took the wonderful bow and arrow with him. When Grandmother Spider saw that the bow and arrow were gone, she knew it was a boy baby. The next day she held and comforted the boy baby when he came to her lodge. "Call me Grandmother," she told him, "for I am the Spider Woman, the mother and comforter of all living things. And I will call you Tah'lee, which means little boy." From "How the Half-Boys Came to Be" in Spider Spins a Story, ed. by Jill Max, 1997 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * "In summer, my little sister and I often went to the river for wet clay which we modeled into figures....We liked best to make human figures, man, woman, or little child.We dried them in the shade, else the sun cracked them.... When we made a mud man, we had to give him three legs to make him stand up." "In winter I had my deer-skin doll with the beads for eyes. My grandmother had made me a little bed for my dolls.The frame was of willows, and it was covered with gopher skins, tanned and sewed together. In this little bed, my sister and I used to put our dollies to sleep." Waheenee (Hidatsa), 1927 |