The Seba library treats Mink in 5 passages, across 3 authors (including Kurtz, Ernest, Ketcham, Katherine, Radin, Paul, Ricoeur, Paul).
Mink took pity on them. He heard that on the other side of the world there was something called the Sun… So Mink decided to steal the Sun for the People.
This passage establishes Mink as a compassionate culture-hero and thief whose benevolent act of stealing the Sun for humanity generates dangerous pride and leads him to attempt the hubristic theft of Time itself.
, The Spirituality of Imperfection Storytelling and the, 1994thesis
Mink outwits Trickster and gets bear meat… Mink soils chief’s daughter as Trickster planned.
This episodic summary shows Mink operating both as the Trickster’s superior (outwitting him for food) and as his instrument (executing the Trickster’s scheme of social defilement).
, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, 1956thesis
The mink would not come out from under the ice and there was thus no way in which he could get at him. Trickster did not care how he did it but he certainly wanted to revenge himself on the mink.
Mink’s evasion of the Trickster’s pursuit — retreating under the ice beyond all reach — illustrates Mink’s function as a figure of slippery cunning that even the arch-trickster cannot overcome.
, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, 1956thesis
‘Let us run a race and let the one who wins be the chief. The one who loses will then dish out the food’ (said Wakdjunkaga to mink).
In Radin’s reading of the cycle as social satire, Wakdjunkaga’s race-challenge to Mink serves as pointed criticism of chiefly authority and the ceremonial ethics of food distribution.
, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, 1956supporting
Mink’s major essays on the philosophy of history have been collected by Brian Fay et al. in a posthumous volume entitled Historical Understanding.
Ricoeur references Louis O. Mink, a philosopher of history, in a footnote — a purely bibliographic aside unrelated to the mythological or depth-psychological uses of the term.
, Oneself as Another, 1992aside