Storytelling: The Rise and Fall of Unnatural Uncle

In a village there lived a man known by his neighbors as the “Unnatural Uncle.” Unnatural Uncle was the chief of the village, though he was not the rightful heir. He was in fact the brother of the true heir, who had died in battle against the white man. This left Unnatural Uncle as the chief. Over the years he had grown very fond of his chief position and the people of the village seemed to be fine with him being in charge. Unnatural Uncle was a very precautious chief though, he worried that one day one of the woman in the village would give birth to a son that would overthrow him. Because he was so worried, Unnatural Uncle would secretly poison every newborn child that made it to age five. If they were a girl however, he would let them be for he saw no harm in letting a girl live.

So far Unnatural Uncle had killed four boys. No one knew for sure that Unnatural Uncle was the one doing the killing, but the people of the village were starting to have suspicions. Especially Unnatural Uncle’s wife who was the village doctor. The wife then went to the woman in the village that was next to have a child and told her that if she had a son to disguise him as a girl. So the child was born and like always Unnatural Uncle had his wife go and check the gender of the child, but this time the wife lied and told Unnatural Uncle that the child was a girl not a boy. So Unnatural Uncle let the supposed girl live. The mother and Unnatural Uncle’s wife told the newborn boy that he must act and dress as a girl when he grew up in fear of the Unnatural Uncles wrath.

Unnatural Uncle observed the “girl” as she was growing up, often wondering about his boyish looks, but never having concrete evidence to suggest that he was a boy. One day however, the boy was out in the fields not knowing that Unnatural Uncle was watching and lifted up his dress to use the facilities revealing his boyish body. "Ah," said Unnatural Uncle to his wife, on reaching home, "this is the way you have fooled me. But I know everything now. “Go and tell that boy to come see me.” The wife replied “You had better not hurt that boy, you have already killed so many others. If you harm him harm will come to you.” Unnatural Uncle foolishly ignored his wife’s warnings and proceeded to meet the boy outside.

The boy was frightened, but knew that he had to find a way to put a stop to Unnatural Uncles ways. Unnatural Uncle approached the boy, and told him that they were going to go on a walk to gather wood. The boy naturally did as the uncle commanded and so they started walking. Unnatural Uncle led the boy down quite a ways until they were near a roaring river, he then told the boy to go and fetch logs down there for him because he was too old to get to them. As the boy went and started grabbing the logs, Unnatural Uncle snuck up behind him and pushed him into the fast flowing river, presumably leaving him for dead. Unnatural Uncle walked home to inform his wife that the boy was dead.

As he was about to walk into his home he was met by a mob of angry villagers, led by his own wife and the boy. They boy had survived through the rapids and quickly run to tell the wife and the rest of the village what had just happened to him. He rounded up the other men of the village to confront Unnatural Uncle of his crimes, and here they all were. The villagers arrested Unnatural Uncle and ultimately gave him the death penalty for his crimes. The boy went on to become the new chief of the village, for showing so much courage to stand up to Unnatural Uncle.

Authors note: For this story I stayed pretty true to the original story of Jealous Uncle from the Hero Tales story set. What I focused on more though is a background of why Unnatural Uncle started killing the boys. Also in the original story the uncle tried to kill the boy multiple times until the boy himself finally defeated the uncle, so I changed that up a bit but most of it is the same. I included an image of the Titan lord Cronus who in greek mythology ate his children the olympians when they were born so that they would not rise up against him. His wife Rhea however tricked him into eating a rock instead of the olympian Zeus, Zeus late overthrew Cronus and freed his siblings. Reading this story made me think a lot about Cronus and his story. 

Cronus eating the Olympians