The Boy in the Moon

Do you see the mark in the middle of the Moon, that looks like a man? Well, that is really a little Indian boy. It happened this way:—

Many years ago, there lived a Vuntakutchin boy. One Winter when he saw that his people had nothing to eat, he dreamed they killed a lot of Caribou. He told his dream in the morning, and the braves set out to hunt.

But before they went, the boy made his uncle promise that he would give him the meat of the leader Caribou. The uncle killed the leader, but when he came back from the hunt, he gave the boy the wrong meat, and kept the right meat for himself.

Well, the boy felt so badly that he cried for two nights. And on the third night he disappeared. He wore Marten-skin pants, and in the morning his uncle saw the left leg of the pants, hanging to the tent pole in the hole where the smoke goes out. And when the uncle went outside the tent, he found that all the Caribou, which had been killed the day before, had come to life again, and run away.

As for the boy, he had gone up to the Moon, and there he is now, with one leg bigger than the other, because the right leg has pants on it. From his hand hangs a little bag full of the wrong Caribou meat, and during the Autumn and Winter, when the sky is clear, you may see him standing in the Moon.