The Smart Woman Chief
For me, I think the most interesting aspect of this story was the idea of the two tribes meeting for the first time. I imagine there would be all sorts of tension and misapprehensions and room for conflict, and that's probably what I'd use in my story, with a more modern interpretation of the tribes and the setting.
Bobcat and Birch Tree
When Old Man had the prairie dogs teach him how to lie in the fire without getting burned, my first thought was of some kind of fire-eater, or a character with pyrokinesis. Realistically, that's still probably the route I'll take. But when the Old Man got himself into trouble for the millionth and clumsily picked himself back up again, I started thinking about how he's this guy with the power to animate objects and control the wind and make things happen just by declaring them, but he's also so inept in a lot of ways. That could be fun, too: some kind of story about a minor god or a gifted magician or something like that, who has all this power at his disposal but can't seem to get his stuff together long enough to do anything with it. Or a super villain who outclasses the heroes by a long shot, but always seems to defeat himself in the end.
The Red-Eyed Duck
In this story, Old Man agreed to play some music for a group of ducks—with the stipulation that they couldn't open their eyes while he played, or those eyes would turn red. So the ducks danced blindly around, and any time one of them got close enough to Old Man, he'd bash them on the head with a stick and toss them aside so he could eat them later. When a duckling realized what was going on, he opened his eyes and told the others to run, that the man was killing them. I like the idea of a group being picked off person by person, whether they're killed literally or metaphorically, and that there's going to be some terrible, permanent consequence for the character that eventually figures it out and saves them all. That's probably the element I would carry over as the seed of my own story, then.
Kut-O-Yis, The Blood Boy
Obviously, the blood boy's origin story itself is the coolest thing about this story: a starving old man gathers up a clot of blood from a dying buffalo, and is stunned when he finds a baby boy suddenly appear inside of it. It's a bloodier version of Wonder Woman's origin story (born from fashioned clay), and I love it. I also love the idea of him growing up to be a bloodier, darker form of hero, more antihero than anything else: some kind of dark avenger or something.
In this story, the blood boy aged from a baby to an adult in a matter of days, and it reminded me of the way clones in superhero stories are always force-grown to age up quickly, so they can take on their original. But I like the idea of using that same concept and using it as a way to look at how that must actually be for the clone emotionally: sure, he's grown up on the outside, but he's only actually been around for a short amount of time. He's essentially a little kid in an adult's body. That's probably what I'd do with this story, from the point of view of a character assigned to be close to him or keep an eye on him—a trainer or a handler or something.
The way the blood boy beat up the bear chief's son, then took on the chief himself after the son went crying, sort of makes me think of someone beating up a lower-level member of the mob to get the crime boss's attention. That's probably the direction I would go with this: some thought-dead or long-gone old partner or enemy back from the dead or just a long absence (or maybe both: seemingly back from the presumed dead), coming back for the blood the crime boss owes him.
The thing that struck me most about this story is the way that the blood boy's basically just wandering the country looking for fights—drifting from town to town and curb-stomping the bullies before moving on again. That much was clear with his confrontation of the snake chief, which went like this:
Kut-o-yis' picked up the dish and ate the berries and threw the dish away. Then he went up to the big snake, who was lying there asleep, and pricked him with his knife, saying, "Here, get up; I have come to visit you. Let us smoke together."And the takedown that followed was pretty great, too. But I think it's even more obvious when he asks the old lady he saved where he can find another community, and she tells him about one in the mountains—but then warns that he can't go there, because this terrible villain lives there, and "He will kill you." Blood boy's reaction? "Kut-o-yis' was glad to know that there was such a person, and he went to the mountains." It all makes for one of the most interesting characters I've read about so far this semester, and I'd definitely be interested in doing something with that.
Kut-O-Yis, The Blood Boy (Part V)
I love how he really has become this avenger, going around like some kind of rogue superhero—saving people, hunting things. And I also love that, before he even approached the last Big Bad, he knew he was going to have to die in the process; he called a little girl over and told her to give his bones to the dogs and cry out a warning, and when she did, he was reanimated from the bones. If I were going to use this story as inspiration, I think I'd like to use that concept of a character going to take on the antagonist, and knowing that she's going to die in the process—but also knowing that that's not going to be the end. My guess is that she has some kind of special ability, but she can only unlock/use/trigger it by dying. I think it could work well with this format, and I'd be curious to see how that plays out for her.
Bibliography: Blackfeet Indian Stories by George Bird Grinnell. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.
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