Week 11 Storytelling: Banishment

Banishment

Red walked back to her tent, letting her mind wander. She was having the worst possible day and was sure that no one was going to understand. "I can't believe he has just ended things with me. I thought everything was going so wonderfully." She was, of course, talking about the town's best hunter that she had been with for nearly the past year. They had been in a very serious relationship and she thought that she had found her "one," her soul mate. He, however, apparently did not feel the same way. She had met him that morning around a campfire from the previous night where their tribe dwelt and he had broken the new to her. She left, heartbroken, to wonder what she would become now. For such a planner, this was not something she could have ever prepared for.

At first, Red felt unbearable sadness, However, it later turned to pure anger. She wanted revenge on the man that she had thought that she had been in love with for breaking her heart. Now the big question of the day was how she was going to get it. She continued on to her home, letting her mind wander yet again. This was a promise she made to herself that she was going to keep. He was going to feel at some point the pain that she felt in this moment.

A few years later, Red heard the news running through the village. The man whom she had thought was the love of her life at one point had just married and they were expecting children very soon. She remembered the promise she had made to herself the day he broke her heart and knew immediately what she had to do. She set out to the tent that she knew the two of them had been sharing from tribal gossip.

Upon arrival, Red was shocked to see that the woman was there by herself with her unborn children inside of her. Without hesitating and before she could change her mind, Red attacked. She slit the woman's throat and killed her in one fell swoop. For a moment, she was overcome with grief and wanted to at least help the children she knew were inside. She threw one behind a curtain so she knew he'd be warm and the other she put into a spring so that he at least wouldn't go thirsty. Figuring she had done her good deed for the day, she propped the now dead woman up so it would look as if she still was alive when her husband came home and fled, wanting to never be seen here again but to know that she had gotten the revenge she had been after for the past years.

The type of curtain that the Red covered one of the unborn 

children in for warmth. Source: Pixabay

Author's Note

I based this story off of the tale entitled Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away from the second half of the Native American Hero Tales unit. While the piece in it's original version was interesting to read and did a good job of relaying the story, I couldn't help but feel as if there was something that was missing. I wanted to know why the Red-Woman was so hateful toward the man and his wife that he would kill the woman and then throw the newborn children around in such a violent way. For that reason, I decided to give this story a little bit more a background so that the Red-Woman and her horrible hatred could be better understood. I also thought it would be fitting to write the story from the woman's perspective to make it seem more genuine and authentic as opposed to someone simply trying to make her out to be the bad guy in the situation. 

Bibliography

Stith Thompson's Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away