"Before there were animals, there was a woman who depended upon charity because her husband had died. Hoping to be rid of the burden, the people she lived with threw her over the side of a boat. As she grasped onto the gunwales they cut off her fingers which dropped into the water and became the animals of the sea. Her thumb became a walrus."

Inuit of Ungava Bay
recorded by Lucien M. Turner, 1882-1884