Child of the Moon
by Ed Ogle

Duncan Pryde, one-time Hudson's Bay trader and for a while a territorial legislator, was making a dog run from Coppermine to Cambridge Bay with a couple of Eskimos when the Americans put the first man on the moon.

"We were getting the poop on a short wave radio, and by standing outside our snowhouse, we could see the swift-moving satellite passing through the sky", said Pryde. I said, "Isn't that something, a man on the moon"?

"My Eskimo friends didn't seem to think much of the idea," Duncan later recounted, and I finally asked them why.

Said Ooksoot, "This may be new to the white man, but Eskimos have been doing this forever".

"A man on the moon"? Sure, said Nalovok. "Medicine men do it all the time".

"They seemed to believe it", Pryde said later, "so I asked them how".

"It's one of the best ways to get a baby for a man and wife who can't seem to make one themselves", Nalovok suggested. It seems that when a couple in that situation approach the medicine man, usually he will agree to look into the situation. He always finds two or three things wrong, things that preclude conceptions, and sets about to right them.

Regardless of what else is wrong with the couple, the medicine man usually finds it necessary for him to spend the night with the woman in question. Sometimes it is necessary for him to spend several nights. Then, if everything goes well, he will announce he is going to the moon to arrange for the baby. He'll take a couple of dogs and disappear behind some nearby hill or dune and be gone until the next day when he reappears.

Sometimes he will ask, "Did you see me rising through the air yesterday on my trip"? And when the baby comes just nine months after the medicine man ordered one from the moon, no-one is surprised at all.

Background Information

Every culture has their own legends for things: the beginning of the world, where man and woman come from and many, many others. Talk about these kinds of stories. Do you know of any?

Questions

1. Who put the first man on the moon?

2. What is a short-wave radio?

3. Why weren't the Eskimos impressed that a man had landed on the moon?

4. What is another word for swift?

5. What is a medicine man?

6. What problem are they talking about?

7. How do you think the medicine man solves the problem?

8. Does the medicine man really go to the moon?

9. Why do you think the Eskimos believed the story?

10. What is another word for recounted?

Other Activities: write down one of the legends you know.