Episode Details

Ten tales from the Siberian Eskimo villages of Bogoras's The Eskimo of Siberia — the whole buildable corpus of the book in a single sitting. A boy carries his seaweed home through the eye of a needle; the One without Arms, born of a finger-long Fish-Woman, spins through the air above two villages and sends his enemies into the sea as guillemots; a girl keeps the night-watch with a lasso and catches the Fox who has been carrying off the boys; Raven and his wife make the world out of an eider-duck's nose, a belt-knife and a scabbard button; an old woman smokes the wild beasts out of her house; a young man calls down the storm in a starving village and the sea-game come ashore of themselves; Raven swallows the shore blubber and brings it home by the sledge-load; the Creator presses St. Lawrence Island out of a handful of sea-sand, and its orphan, healed in the house of the Upper God's women, wins the whales from the Sun-Man; a small plover breaks a giant's hips with a single stone; and the shaman Abla chases a tornarak the length of the island to win back a lost boy — and comes home with a new name.

Chapters: 00:04 — The Carrier of Seaweed 00:56 — The One without Arms 06:56 — The Girl who watched in the Night-Time 11:31 — Creation of the World 11:58 — The Old Woman and the Wild Beasts 13:59 — The Man who used Magic against the Storm 15:50 — Raven swallows Blubber 16:38 — Creation of St. Lawrence Island 22:08 — The Contest between the Giant and the Plover 22:44 — The Shaman Abla

From The Eskimo of Siberia (1913) by Waldemar Bogoras — Part III of The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, Vol. VIII (Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History). Public domain. The Carrier of Seaweed, The One without Arms, The Girl who watched in the Night-Time and Creation of the World were told by Nipewgi, an Asiatic Eskimo man, in the village of Unisak, at Indian Point, 1901; The Old Woman and the Wild Beasts and The Man who used Magic against the Storm were told by Talimak, an Asiatic Eskimo man, in the same village, 1901; Raven swallows Blubber was told by Milutarak, an Asiatic Eskimo man, on St. Lawrence Island, 1901; Creation of St. Lawrence Island and The Contest between the Giant and the Plover were told by Aleqat, an Asiatic Eskimo man, on St. Lawrence Island, 1901; and The Shaman Abla was told by Acunarak, an Asiatic Eskimo man, on St. Lawrence Island, 1901. Fresh English rendering by KacheliTV. The One without Arms stands as Bogoras printed it — the press of the crowd at his exhibition and the two self-sought duels are the book's own brief telling. The Girl who watched in the Night-Time is heard without the book's mentions of the girl's nakedness; the lasso-watch, the Fox's bargain and the secret enemy's shame stand whole. The Shaman Abla is heard with its opening contest softened, per the shelf's screening ledger — Abla's arrow strikes the rich man down and the rivalry ends there; the rescue of the lost boy and the exchange of names stand as printed. Northern Tales gathers the Chukchi, Siberian Eskimo, Koryak, Yukaghir and Even tales from Bogoras's Jesup North Pacific Expedition volumes, in the books' own order.

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