Native American Creation Stories
Native American Creation Stories
Things to think about:
- Why do people tell these kinds of stories?
What do these stories reveal about a culture?
- What happens when oral stories are written down (especially by or for another culture)?
- Baym explains that these stories offer a “general cultural outlook and offer perspectives on what life is like and how to understand it” (18)
- Many are not written down until the late nineteenth century
- Performative element is also lost—traditionally these stories were often told with dances, music, etc.
- Often stories of community, communalism, cooperation, balance
- Emphasis on the immediate world that can be looked upon, known, and understood
Iroquois Creation Story:
- Iroquois people were concentrated around what is now the Northeastern US and Southern Canada
- Organized into Five Nations: Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga (later Six when the Tuscarora joined)
- Called themselves “People of the Longhouse”
- Largest towns had 2000 people
- Importance of warfare and peace: Hiawatha founds League in response to war after losing five daughters; leads to code of peace
- Women have central role in society
- Owned property
- Made major social decisions
- Society is a “she”
- Image of mother-cultivated families is supported in creation story
- About twenty-five versions on the tale exist, some longer and some shorter, the first was recorded in 1653
- Cusick’s 1827 version in text is a mix “Indian-inflected English and what the Euro-American culture of the period would have defined as polite literary style” (Baym 20)
Pima Stories:
- Pima were concentrated in central Arizona
- Encountered the Spanish in 1500s
- First recording of these mythologies is from a Spanish journal (1694)
- Creation stories, though, not recorded until the 20th century
- Thin Leather, a full-blooded Pima, told our versions to J.W. Lloyd beginning in 1903, and published them in 1911
- Aw-aw-tam, Indian Nights, Being the Myths and Legends of the Pimas of Arizona (stories traditionally told over a period of four nights)
Work Cited
Baym, Nina, editor. The Norton Anthology of American Literature: Volume A. NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003.
Source: http://webpages.shepherd.edu/hhanraha/courses/eng204/204notes/creationstories.doc
Web site to visit: http://webpages.shepherd.edu/
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Native American Creation Stories
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Native American Creation Stories
