Storytelling: The Wolf man and his Two Wives

A long time ago there was a man named Guillermo who had two wives. Though they were married, Guillermo’s wives did not love him, or even like him for that matter. They had all wed through an arranged marriage, to which the wives were very displeased with. Because of their displeasure they were not good wives to Guillermo. He would be out hunting all day and when he would return nothing would be done around the house. No food made, no cleaning had been done, and no wives in sight. They were much younger than Guillermo, so they would always be out partying and having relations while Guillermo did all the work. When the wives did finally return home they would always get chewed out by Guillermo. This became such a regular thing that Guillermo decided the only way to teach his wives to be good was to move away from the big village, where they would all be alone. So he packed up everything and moved them off on the prairie and camped at the foot of a high butte.

Every evening about sundown the man used to climb up to the top of this butte and sit there and look all over the country to see where the buffalo were feeding and and wonder if his wives would ever be good to him. On top of the hill there was a buffalo skull, on which he used to sit.

One day one of the women said to the other, "It is very lonely here; we have no one to talk with or to visit."

"Let us kill our husband," said the other; "then we can go back to our relations and have a good time."

Early next morning the man set out to hunt and, as soon as he was out of sight, his wives went up on top of the butte where he used to sit. There they dug a deep hole and covered it over with light sticks and grass and dirt, so that it looked like the other soil near by, and placed the buffalo skull on the sticks which covered the hole.

The wives waited and watched for Guillermo to return, and finally they saw him coming over the hill carrying all the meat he had killed. Guillermo came home, dropped off the meat, and climbed up his butte to sit on the buffalo skull like he had always done. But this time when he went to go sit on the buffalo skull, the sticks broke and he fell into a hole. Once Guillermo had fallen in the hole, the wives packed up all their belongings and made their way to the big camp, crying and mourning over the death of Guillermo. They told the people of the village that he had been gone for days on a hunting trip and that he had not returned, so they assumed that he was dead.

Now Guillermo didn’t actually die, but was stuck in the pit and was in an unbearable amount of pain. Guillermo thought that he would surely die here. A pack of wolves was hunting nearby and saw Guillermo stuck in the pit. Guillermo assumed that they would just eat him, but to his surprise the wolves pulled him out of the pit and brought him to their den. They brought him to the leader of the pack that had special healing powers and he brought Guillermo back to full health. On top of healing him the pack leader turned Guillermo’s head and hands to that of a wolf, but left the rest of his body unchanged.

Guillermo joined the pack helped the wolves steal meat from the big camp. The wolves normally couldn’t get near the meat because of the villager’s traps, but with Guillermo, the man wolf, they could get to the meat easily. The villagers discovered that the traps kept getting pulled and knew they must put a stop to whatever it was. That night Guillermo and the wolves set out like usual to steal meat, and like always Guillermo went first to unhook all the traps. But this time while he was unhooking the traps, the villagers jumped out and surrounded him. They caught him with ropes and brought him to the light of the fire, and at once they knew who it was.

“Guillermo it is you, we thought you had died?” said the villagers. Guillermo explained to the villagers what his wives had done and how the wolves had saved him. This made the villagers angry and they knew that the wives would need to be punished. Rather than killing the wives, the villagers sentenced them to exile to where they would have to live the remainder of their days alone, fending for themselves. The wives were never heard from again.

The wolf man

Bibligography: The Wolf Man- Blackfoot Storybook, Grinnell

Author's Note: I actually made my story pretty close to the original. Some of the things that I changed was about why the wives tried to kill the man, because in the story they didnt elaborate on it very well. I also changed the punishment that the wives had for trying to kill the man, because in the original it doesnt really specify. Also as you already noticed from reading I named the main character Guillermo because he didnt have a name before.