“The cruel father then took a knife and cut off the first joints of her fingers. Falling into the sea they were transformed into whales, the nails turning into whalebone. Sedna holding on to the boat more tightly, the second finger joints fell under the sharp knife and swam away as seals; when the father cut off the stumps of the fingers they became ground seals. Meantime the storm subsided, for the fulmars thought Sedna was drowned.”

— Tales of the North American Indians, Tale 1 · served from our shelf  receiptuncorrected OCR — being verified against the scan