The Monstrefact: Blood Clot Boy

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses Blood Clot Boy, a heroic monsterslayer from indigenous traditions of the North American prairie…

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Your Mind, focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in
time as our core Stuff to Blow Your Mind episodes
have been about the Prairie. I wanted to turn to
some mythic beings associated with these lands, and in searching

(00:33):
around for the right topic, I found not a monster,
but a monster slayer in the form of Katoyus or
blood clot Boy. Katoyus is a mythic hero of the
Blackfoot or Nisitipi people, whose historic lands include vast expanses
of the North American Prairie. Katoyus gets his name, which
means blood clot from his miraculous birth. So global myth

(00:57):
folklore and religion is full of this particular motif, including
such figures as Peach Boy in Japanese tradition, who is
of course born to an elderly couple from a magical peach.
In the traditions of Catoyus, and various related heroes of
indigenous North American traditions, this hero is born out of
a blood clot which falls from the wound of a bison.

(01:20):
When an elderly couple boils the blood clot hoping to
make a soup, this miraculous infant emerges and swiftly matures
into a monster and giant slaying hero, as Eldon Yellowhorn
discusses in Calling Down the Spirits in the Sky, Blackfoot
Astronomy and Sense of the Sacred, published twenty twenty in
Intersections of Religion and Astronomy, This hero is associated with

(01:45):
blood red Mars in the Night Sky and in Blackfoot Astronomy,
this being his ultimate place in the heavens after he
finally dies in heroic battle, but before that can happen.
Before he perishes, he indeed protects the word against aggressors,
food deniers, cruel sons and laws, and of course monsters

(02:05):
of plenty. In nineteen eighties Plistocene Animals in Folk Memory,
folkloris George E. Langford discussed Blood Clot Boy as he
factored into the traditions of the Cree and Ojibwei peoples,
and indeed he pops up in several different indigenous mythologies,
and as Langford explorers, has connections to other tales in

(02:26):
which a hero is born from the body of a
mother slain by an ogre, and the hero then avenges
his mother by of course, of slaying that ogre. The
ogre in question, he points out, sometimes might take on
avert bear like qualities or be thought of as some
sort of a monstrous bear, but other times is described
in more clearly fantastic terms. So it just depends on

(02:49):
the telling and the particular tradition. These mental images that
you might have right now of Catoeus and his miraculous
birth from a bison's blood clot a certainly enthralling, But
we can't let the pure mental spectacle of the thing
distract us from its significance. He is a castaway turned hero,
born directly from the blood of the bison, the sacred

(03:12):
source of food, shelter, and spiritual life for the Blackfoot
people and other indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. Bison
wants rome North America and numbers estimated to be between
thirty and sixty million before the coming of Europeans and
the subsequent mass slaughter of the creatures. In the eighteen seventies,
a government sanctioned act that was intended to undermine and

(03:34):
control the Plain's Native American tribes. I have to admit
I had not heard of blood clot Boy before researching
Prairie and Prairie based folkloric traditions. So I feel like
my life is richer for knowing about him, and I'm
going to have to look around to see if I
can find some other good sources about the various tales, adventures,

(03:55):
and exploits of this hero and related heroes. So perhaps
so come back and explore another one in an upcoming
episode of The Monster Fact. And indeed, you can tune
in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact, The Artifact
or Animalogus do Pendium each week. As always, you can
email us for suggestions comments you name it at contact

(04:15):
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows