The Scent of the Skunk

The Scent of the Skunk A Native American Folk Tale Retold by Bernice Insley

The skunk was once a larger animal than he is now- he was as large as a hill. But he became smaller and smaller and this caused him to worry.

“ If I grow smaller and smaller,” he said, “I will lose my strength. Then how can I hunt, and kill my game, and make my living?”

And so he thought and thought.

“ I know,” he said. “I will make a strong hunting medicine which will give me skill even when I am not so large as now.”

He hunted and hunted to find all the plants as he could grasp in his hand, he took them home. He ground them up very, very fine, like a powder.

Then, when this medicine was all prepared, he placed it in a little pouch that he carried with him wherever he went.

Then he said, “I will test my medicine against the biggest, strongest thing I can find.”

He looked around, and there he saw a large oak tree; nothing could be bigger or stronger than this oak tree, and decided to test his medicine against it.

He took some powder out of his pouch - only a pinch of the powder was needed - and put it in some water, and drank it. Then, to make still more powerful medicine, he sang, “Who is going out hunting, for I go out to hunt?”

Then the skunk shot at the oak tree - not with an arrow, but with this medicine, a foul-smelling liquid - and the tree shrank away and died, and looked as if it were burned. Nothing was left but a pile of ashes.