Sioux Tale's A Woman Kills Her Daughter

The Sioux tale, titled “A Woman Kills her Daughter”, describes the repercussions of a mother’s decision to murder her daughter after falling in love with her son-in-law. In the myth, a mother, her daughter, a younger son, the daughter’s husband, and the daughter’s son live together. Once the mother realizes her feelings for her daughter’s husband, she begins planning the murder of her daughter. She eventually asked her daughter to go swinging by the water with her, so they went to the swings, which hung on a tree branch over the water. The mother chose one and made the daughter sit on the other. Upon swinging, the daughter’s swing’s rope immediately snapped, and she fell into the water to drown because the mother had sabotaged one swing by

People in the tribe, particularly men, were expected to possess the four great virtues of bravery, fortitude, generosity, and wisdom (Hassrick, 32; Cress and O'Donnell, 135). Men were instructed to “‘help others as much as possible, no matter who’” and it was believed that following these four rules, “men lived and prospered” (Hassrick, 36; Hassrick 53). The husband’s generosity is seen through his obligation to help his wife and his wisdom is seen through his successful plan to get rid of his mother-in-law. A man’s wealth, hunting ability, and possession of supernatural abilities were considered extremely admirable and seen as determinants of having a “‘good family’” (Hassrick, 14). We see the husband’s supernatural abilities in the story, as he is able to transform into trees and was able to recover the wife back to her original form after she was cut in half. We can see the husband possesses these respected traits, and as a result of following these values, he is rewarded. By contrast, these values show the opposing qualities that were considered harmful to society, like selfishness, which we

Ite was extremely conscious of her beauty and began to neglect taking care of her children's welfare. The Sun god thought she was beautiful and invited her to sit with him at a feast, despite him being married to the Moon goddess. When Ite sat next to him, she was shamed by the others and was eventually condemned for her vanity, her ambition to take the place of another married woman, her faithlessness to her children’s father, and her negligence to her maternal duties. Her punishment involved being sent to the human world, where she would live without friends, her children, or her husband, (Hassrick, 249-250). Like Ite, the mother was removed from her community as punishment for her negligence of parental duties, her infidelity, her attempts to take the place of her daughter, and because she ignored the mother-in-law