Native American Storytelling: A Reader of Myths and Legends

The myths and legends in this collection have been selected both for their excellence as stories and because they illustrate the distinctive nature of Native American storytelling. They are drawn from oral traditions of the major culture areas of aboriginal North America, and include trickster tales, origin myths and stories of domestic sexual conflict. In a substantial introduction and headnotes to each story, editor Karl Kroeber highlights the otherness of Native American narratives, in which suspense is insignificant, metaphors hardly used, protagonists are often unnamed and ambiguity of motives is stressed. He reveals the highly practical functions of myths and legends in Native American societies, demonstrating how they helped listeners to explore the efficacy of social practices and cultural institutions, and how they reinforced American Indians’ profound spiritual engagement with their natural environment. This collection makes accessible to any reader the uniqueness and diversity of Native American storytelling.

List of Figures. To The Reader. Tewa. 1. “Where They Were Living Lived Laughing Warrior Girl. . . ”. Kalispell. 2. “A Young Man (Rabbit) Lived With His Grandmother. One Day He Pitied Her. . .”. Kathlamet. 3. “There Was A Chief Of A Town. His Relatives Live In Five Towns". Tillamook. 4. “Wild Woman Was Living Alone. Her Husband, High Class Crane, . . .”. Sioux. 5. “A Man Lived With His Two Wives And A Brother. One Day The Brother. . .”. . Origins . Cherokee (A). 6. “In The Beginning There Was No Fire, And The World Was Cold, Until. . .”. Gros Ventre. 7. “The People Before The Present People Were Wild. They Did Not Know. . .”. Cherokee (B). 8. “When I Was A Boy This Is What The Old Men Told Me They Had Heard. . .”. Seneca (A). 9. “A Long Time Ago Human Beings Lived High Up In What Is Now Called. . .”. . Seneca (B). 10. “There Was A Lodge In The Forest Where Few People Ever Came. . .”. Eskimo. 11. “Two Men Were Trappers. One Of Them Kept Catching A Lot Of Ground Hogs; . . .”. Cherokee (C). 12. “Once When All The People Of The Settlement Were Out . . .”. . Trickster . Three Chinook–Wishram Coyote Tales. 13. “Coyote Heard About Two Women Who Had Fish. . .”. 14. “A Certain Old Man Was Sitting In The Trail With His Penis. . .”. 15. “Again Coyote Travelled Up The River. In The Water He Saw. . .”. Clackamas (A). 16. “Coyote And His Five Children Lived There, Four Males, . . .”. . Clackamas (B). 17. “They Lived There, Seal, Her Daughter, And Seal’s Younger Brother. . . .”. Hopi. 18. “In Oraibi The People Were Living. At The West End Of The South Row. . .”. Wintu. 19. “Long Ago There Came Into Being Some People Who Had Four Children,. . . ”. Yana. 20. “‘ Now Dig For Roots. The Nuts Are Already Ripe – Let’s Climb. . .’”. Navajo––Mountain Chant Myth. 21. “On The Morrow, When He Went Forth On His Hunt, His Father. . .”. Blackfoot. 22. “‘There Are Two Bright Stars,’ Brings–Down–The–Sun Said, ‘That Sometimes. . .’. Onondaga. 23. “Tall, Fierce, And Hostile, They Were A Powerful Tribe, The Stone Giants!”. Further Reading. Index

Karl Kroeber is Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University. His previous publications include Ishi in Three Centuries (ed. 2003), Artistry in American Indian Myths (1998), and Ecological Literary Criticism (1994). He is Editor Emeritus of Studies in American Indian Literature .