Week 10 - Reading Notes Part A

(Image taken by Edward Curtis)

Stories from Native American culture have always fascinated me because of how they used to be told on the very land we live in today. I think it is important for us to understand the culture whose land we now inhabit as a way to honor them. This week I chose to read about Native American Heroes because it is important to know what a culture values and despises, as it turns out, both of these systems can be evaluated by reading a simple hero versus villain story. This segment showed me how much the cultures valued cleverness, forgiveness, and honesty as qualities of a hero. We can see in all the stories that there is a hero that stays away from error and is aided by fortune in one way or another, may it be sailing into Eagle Land or stumbling upon a white tailed deer in the woods. Villains in these stories are unusually cruel, usually being members of the heroes own community (if not family).

Bibliography: Tales of the North American Indians is a collection of stories translated by Stith Thompson and can be found at MythFolklore Blog.