Hunting Sednas

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Notes from DaVic Gallery: ‘Hunting Sednas’  – A girl would not take a husband, and at last her father in anger said that she would take a dog. One night a dog came in and took her as a wife. When the girl became pregnant, the father isolated her on a small island, but the dog swam over to join her. It would swim in from time to time with the pack saddle to get meat from the father. The girl bore a litter – some dog children, some children in human form. One day, feeling sorry for her, the father loaded the dog with stones, concealed with meat on top. When the dog swam out, he sank and drowned. Then the father used to take the meat over to the island.

Next the angry daughter told her dog children to attack their grandfather’s kayak, but he managed to escape back to the mainland. He dared not go to the island anymore. Now in need, the girl put her dog children in a boot setting three straws for masts, and they drifted out to sea to become the ancestors of the white man. She put her human form children in the additional outer sole of a boot and sent them drifting to the land to give rise to the Chipewyan Indians. Then she returned home to live with her parents once more.