The Man, The Eagles, The Panther, The Hornets

Hornet

There was a man that lived in New Mexico. He was an Apache, but was alone without his tribe. The man was taken in by the Pueblo Indians. They took care of the man as if he was one of their own. This man however was poor, and was unable to repay the Pueblo for anything that they did for him, so he did his best to help out with duties around the camp. The Pueblos didn’t mind that the man was poor and could not pay. They were content to take care of the man for no other reason than they were just good people.

One day the man was on a hunt with the Pueblos and they came across an eagle’s nest. In the nest was two baby eagles. The man wanted a closer look at the eagles so the Pueblos lowered him down into the nest with a rope. When the man got down to the eagles he realized that they were unprotected and decided to stay with them so he took off the rope. The Pueblos lowered the rope each day and each day the man would not leave the eagles.

When an eagle returned it saw that the man had been watching the baby eagles and saw that this was a good man. The eagle could see that the man was without food or water so the eagle gave the man a small piece of ice. The man was so thirsty that he did not believe that the ice would satisfy him, still he drank it and found that he was satisfied. The eagle then removed a stone and invited the man into it’s house. The eagle could see that the man was hungry so it gave him a piece of fish. The man saw the fish and thought that it was too small and that he would never be satisfied. After eating the fish the man was satisfied. The eagle then gave the man a pair of wings to wear so that he could fly with the eagles.

When the man flew around the cave with the eagles he became tired and began to fall. The other eagle pushed him up to a hole in the ceiling of the cave. A panther that lived there lowered his tale and the man grabbed it and pulled himself up. The panther told him that they were at war with the hornets. There were black hornets that lived in black houses and there were yellow hornets that lived in yellow houses. The man could see the hornets killing the eagles and became angry.

The man fought the hornets for the eagles and killed them. When he killed them he would place their bodies on a stick. One of the eagles that had now come to look at the man as one of their family said “look at my grandson, he has killed so many of the hornets to protect us, he has two sticks full of hornets.”


Author Notes
This is from the Apache Tales Unit. It is the story of “The man who helped the Eagles.” This is a pretty close retelling of the story. I chose not to change much in the story because it was somewhat confusing. Most of the Apache Tales Unit was like this for me. So instead of updating it or putting my own spin on it I felt it was best to just take the straight forward approach to retelling this story.

Bibliography

"The Man Who Helped the Eagles" from Jicarilla Apache of New Mexico, collected and translated by P. E. Goddard

Picture Attribution

By Richard Bartz, Munich aka Makro Freak (Own work) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons