Blood Clot Boy

For the comic by Al Columbia, see The Blood-Clot Boy.

Blood Clot Boy is a figure in the mythologies of several Native American tribes, including the Blackfoot, Arapaho, Santee, and Lakota. He is typically depicted as being born after a clot of blood from a buffalo was placed in a pot of boiling water,[1][2] although the manner in which Blood Clot Boy is given life can vary between versions of the story.[3][4]

Native Americans passed down a majority of their tales through oral tradition rather than writing them down, resulting in many variations of the same story with some retellings being drastically different from one another. Despite this, there is the presence of recurring characters and themes from story to story with varying degrees of similarity and significance to the myth between each iteration.[5]

  1. ^ Grinnell, George Bird (1913). "Blackfeet Indian Stories". Internet Archive. pp. 13–16.
  2. ^ Salzmann, Zdenek; Salzmann, Joy (1952). "Arapaho Tales II". Midwest Folklore. 2 (1): 21–22. ISSN 0544-0750.
  3. ^ Peniska, Edna; Robertson, Paul; Frerichs, Robert; Olson, Paul (1979-01-01). "A Few Great Stories of the Santee People". Department of English: Faculty Publications: 18–19.
  4. ^ Pustet, Regina (2021). Lakota Texts: Narratives of Lakota Life and Culture in the Twentieth Century. University of Nebraska Press. p. 360. ISBN 978-0-8032-3735-3.
  5. ^ Fixico, Donald L. (2013). Call for Change: The Medicine Way of American Indian History, Ethos, and Reality. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-4356-9.