Reading Notes: Eskimo Folk Tales, Part A

Eskimo Folk Tales Unit from the UN-Textbook
(http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/03/myth-folklore-unit-eskimo-folk-tales.html)

Depiction of men during the great flood

The story begins by explaining that the forefathers had told tales of how the world came to be back before the invention of writing even and that the tales their elders have told them since they were children were to be heeded. The creation story began with the Earth falling from the sky including the mountains and hills. It was only then that man came from the Earth being birthed from it as infants who had relied on the Earth's sustenance. No one knwos how man and woman came to be or how they aged, but they created clothing for these children and because of this grew in number rapidly. Now established the humans desired companionship and more specifically dogs. They went out with leashes and called to the dogs who all came hurrying to them, but after this the humans began to have children of their own and this is when they began to grow exponentially in population. These men and women knew not about death and all lived to be extremely old to the point of blindness and immobility. All the while, these men and women lived in the darkness as they had not ever seen the sun, for the only light they had was the water that they burned in their lamps inside their homes (water apparently burned and glowed in this ancient time). Although these humans did not die they were eventually killed by a great flood that washed all the way up to the tips of mountains in some places thus wiping out many of the humans. During all of this calamity to older women argued until one of them wished for both light and death as the humans had not experienced either yet and so it came to be like a wish almost. Now with both light and death the humans felt complete and could go out and experience this world in which they had come from.