Reading Notes: Sioux Legends Part A

I chose the unit Sioux Legends for week 9's reading, which consists of stories from Myths and Legends of the Sioux by Marie McLaughlin (1916) and Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa (1901).

The Rabbit and the Grouse Girls
In this story, the rabbit plays a malicious trick on a flock of grouse, and ends up capturing them in a bag.  The rabbit's grandmother is supposed to be keeping an eye on the bag of birds while the rabbit runs an errand, but is tricked into letting them free once again.  For this story, I was thinking about having each grouse trick the grandmother in a different way, so in a sense it would be several short stories.  One could trick her in the original manner, by telling the grandmother that she is her granddaughter, but the other tactics would vary.  One could flatter her and ask to see her beautiful face, tell her she forgot something, plead with her, or even say they've got to use restroom!  The possibilities are pretty endless with this story, and it could be a fun idea.

The Wonderful Turtle
I've got a couple of ideas for this story that is about a wise turtle that ends up marrying a beautiful woman.  At the end of the story, the woman cheats on the turtle (who slept all winter!) and ends up having a baby.  The turtle finds out and leaves her.  That's drama if I've ever heard it, so this story could be a good opportunity to use an idea I had a couple of weeks ago: Maury!  It's tacky, sure, but it could be pretty funny to have the woman go on the show, then have the turtle and a couple of other men show up, and then have Maury reveal the results of a paternity test.  Though I really want to use this idea at some point, I'm somewhat hesitant to use it with this story, because I feel like the turtle handled every situation with grace, whereas guests on Maury's show do not handle any situation with grace... I suppose there's no harm in changing the characters a bit, but I feel like it may be too shallow of an approach for this story.
Because the turtle is somewhat of a celebrity in this story, I was thinking that I could do a series of newspaper headlines with short article excerpts that talk about the main events in this story.  The first could be about how the turtle solved the argument between the tribe members, then about how the turtle married the chief's daughter, a missing persons ad for the turtle for when he disappears, and then last an article about the adultery scandal!

Wise Mr. Turtle.  An original drawing from the book.  Link