Title: How The Possum Got Its Tail

General Information About Item:

• Origin Story
• Language: English & Choctaw
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: A.J.J.
• Date Collected: May 26, 2020

Informant Data:

•  Informant A.J.J is a female Dartmouth student in the class of 2021. She was born in Norman, Oklahoma but now lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. She is affiliated with several Indigenous groups: Choctaw, Quapaw, Sac and Fox, and Miama tribes.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: This is a story that is often told in Informant A.J.J’s Choctaw culture. There are several Choctaw words used in the item and they are italicized for easy spotting. Choctaw people are originally from the Southeast United States but now live in Oklahoma due to relocation by the United States Government. This story is often told by elders to younger kids in order to explain how things came to be and to be told to the next generations. Storytelling is a really important part of all of her tribal cultures and they are all regarded as true and how things came to be.
• Social Context: Informant A.J.J first recalls heard this story for the first time when she was in kindergarten when her mom came and told this to her class. She also speaks about the way that stories are passed down generation to generation and revered as sacred.

Item:

• The story of how the possum got its tail teaches a lesson that people shouldn’t be so vain, otherwise bad things will happen to you. In the case of the possum, it had a long bushy, beautiful tail and it bragged to all its friends about it, so one day the raccoon told the possum her tail wasn’t as beautiful as his because it didn’t have stripes, so he instructed her to burn stripes in her tail. This ended up just burning all the hair off, leaving the possum without her beautiful tail and replacing it with a skinny pink tail that most possums have today.

Transcript:

• “The Possum used to have a voluptuous, colorful, beautiful tail and the Possum was very vain. The Possum would go around to the Fox and say “look at my beautiful tail”. And the Fox would be like “that’s great, Possum,” because the Fox didn’t really care. Then the Possum would go to Bear (nita), and say “look how beautiful my tail is, don’t you wish your tail was nice like mine? Yours is so short.” Next, the Possum would go to the Rabbit (chukfi) and say the same thing like “look how beautiful my tail is. It’s so much better than yours.” Basically, the Possum just went around to all the animals and bragged about how perfect and beautiful her tail was and how their tails should be like hers. All the animals got together, and chukfi, the trickster in a lot of cultures, was like “we have an idea” and they were trying to figure out what to do with possum and her being too vain about her tail and chukfi came up with a plan. The next day, the Possum was doing her rounds and bragging about her tail and rubbing it in their faces. The Possum when up to the Raccoon (shawi) and was like “do you like my tail? It’s so pretty!” And the Raccoon said, “that’s great but do you know what would make it even more beautiful?” The Possum sat there and thought about it and asked. Then the Raccoon said, “if it had stripes on it like mine, wouldn’t that make it so much prettier?” Possum agreed and thought stripes would make her tail better. So she begged and begged the Raccoon to tell her how he got his stripes on his tail. The Raccoon then told the Possum to tie pieces of material throughout her tail wherever she wanted stripes and then set the material on fire. She then lit the fire and all of the bushy hair on her tail got burnt and she was screaming all around. She was so upset because her beautiful tail was now a skinny, little pink thing. That’s why the Possum has the tail it does today. The other animals said, “you better remember not to be so vain, because things like this will happen.” Now, this is why all the possums today have the tails like they do.”

Informant’s Comments: 

• “One thing that was interesting is that i grew up with this story and I went to a museum. The possum in the museum had a really pretty tail, and I thought wait a minute, maybe this possum wasn’t so vain and that’s why its tail is like that!”

Collector’s Comments:

• This was a really interesting story to me as an Ojibwe woman because in my culture, we have a similar story about how the bear lost its long bushy tail, so I found it funny to compare the two stories, each having their own unique moral of the story. In the case of my Ojibwe story, the moral is don’t always listen to what people tell you, but in the case of this Choctaw story, the moral of the story is to not be vain or else bad thing will happen to you.

Collector’s Name: Caitlin Wanic (’21)

Tags/Keywords:

• Oral Storytelling
• Origin Myth
• Choctaw
• Animal Story