The Scent of the Skunk
- 1. The Scent of the Skunk A Native American Folk Tale Retold by Bernice Insley
- 2. The skunk was once a larger animal than he is now- he was as large as a hill. But he became smaller and smaller and this caused him to worry.
- 3. “ If I grow smaller and smaller,” he said, “I will lose my strength. Then how can I hunt, and kill my game, and make my living?”
- 4. And so he thought and thought.
- 5. “ I know,” he said. “I will make a strong hunting medicine which will give me skill even when I am not so large as now.”
- 6. He hunted and hunted to find all the plants as he could grasp in his hand, he took them home. He ground them up very, very fine, like a powder.
- 7. Then, when this medicine was all prepared, he placed it in a little pouch that he carried with him wherever he went.
- 8. Then he said, “I will test my medicine against the biggest, strongest thing I can find.”
- 9. He looked around, and there he saw a large oak tree; nothing could be bigger or stronger than this oak tree, and decided to test his medicine against it.
- 10. He took some powder out of his pouch - only a pinch of the powder was needed - and put it in some water, and drank it. Then, to make still more powerful medicine, he sang, “Who is going out hunting, for I go out to hunt?”
- 11. Then the skunk shot at the oak tree - not with an arrow, but with this medicine, a foul-smelling liquid - and the tree shrank away and died, and looked as if it were burned. Nothing was left but a pile of ashes.
- 12. The hunting medicine made by that skunk was the same as that the skunk carries today.
- 13. Bibliography Folk Tale about Skunks << http://www.elvis.neep.wisc.edu/~firmiss/mephitis-didelphis/tales/skunk-scent-s.html >> Pictures << http://www.photostogo.com >> Music < http://www.eaze.com/nativeheart/ >