Research source

Small Turtle never meant Sun and Moon to travel together

Date of account: Published 1917
Source: Myths and Legends of British North America
Reference: Myths and Legends of British North America · selected passage 11
Rights: public_domain
Language: English retellings of First Nations traditions
Translation: Compiled by Katharine Berry Judson from identified sources
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

Small Turtle never meant Sun and Moon to travel together. But one day Moon ran into the hole at the edge of the earth much too soon. She also ran in ahead of her husband, Sun. Sun was very angry. Moon stayed under the earth for a long while. Small Turtle went after her one day to see what was the matter. She found Moon small and pale because of Sun’s anger. Then Small Turtle tried to make her large again. Moon would grow larger for a while, and then remember Sun’s anger, and fade away again, until she was only a strip. She does so even today. That is why Moon is so pale, and why she keeps changing as she does.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

Lattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.

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