Week 9, Reading Diary A: Eskimo

I decided to read the Eskimo Folk Tales unit for this week. I found it really hard to read these stories since half of them seem to have no point nor a logical progression from one sentence to the other. It's just been really weird. Anyway, on to my diary.

The Coming of Men, A Long, Long While Ago
This story is about creation. It says that the earth fell from the sky and children were born from willow bushes. And then man wanted a dog, so they made a leash and went stomping on the ground and dogs appeared. Then, men did not die, but just grew old so they could not see, or walk, or lie down and the earth was overran with men, so there was a flood. They also lived in the dark so they made a compromise to die and have light. When they died they covered the bodies in rocks. 

Nukunguasik, who Escaped from the Tupilak
This story is about a man with no wife (which they all seem to be about) who went kayaking and ended up on a beautiful island. He found a man there talking to something in a hollow telling it to bite Nukungasik to death. Nukungasik snuck up on the guy and scared him and he fell in the hole. The man had been talking to a Tupilak, which seems to be like a Jewish golum. After the other men went to look for him, the Tupilak had already ate him.

(Mask used by Eskimo shaman in causation of illness. Source: Wikimedia Commons.)

The rest of the stories are just really strange.