American Indian Myths And Legends

In today’s society, the Native American culture is found only in reservations and is not well known. Portrayed as

In American Indian Stories, University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London edition, the author, Zitkala-Sa, tries to tell stories that depicted life growing up on a reservation. Her stories showed how Native Americans reacted to the white man’s ways of running the land and changing the life of Indians. “Zitkala-Sa was one of the early Indian writers to record tribal legends and tales from oral tradition” (back cover) is a great way to show that the author’s stories were based upon actual events in her life as a Dakota Sioux Indian. This essay will describe and analyze Native American life as described by Zitkala-Sa’s American Indian Stories, it will relate to Native Americans and their interactions with American societies, it will

In American Indian life, they believe their life is interconnected with the world, nature, and other people. The idea of a peoplehood matrix runs deep in Indian culture, in this essay the Cherokee, which is the holistic view of sacred history, language, ceremony, and homeland together. This holistic model shapes the life of the American Indians and how their sense of being and relationship to their history is strong and extremely valuable to them. This essay will try to explain how each aspect of the peoplehood matrix is important and interconnected to each other and the life of the Native Americans.

“Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.-Native American proverb” This is a Native American proverb that shows how important storytelling and stories are to the Native Americans and their culture. Storytelling was a big way of teaching their lifestyle to their younger generation. Storytelling is very important to the Native American culture because it helps explain their way of life, faith, and helps teach life lessons to the younger generation.

In her book American Indian Stories, Zitkala-Sa's central role as both an activist and writer surfaces, which uniquely combines autobiography and fiction and represents an attempt to merge cultural critique with aesthetic form, especially surrounding such fundamental matters as religion. In the tradition of sentimental, autobiographical fiction, this work addresses keen issues for American Indians' dilemmas with assimilation. In Parts IV and V of "School Days," for example, she vividly describes a little girl's nightmares of paleface devils and delineates her bitterness when her classmate died with an open Bible on her bed. In this groundbreaking scene, she inverts the allegation of Indian religion as superstition by labeling

As the proverb goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Beauty, as we know it, is subjective to each individual. However, some individuals are primed to perceive beauty as deriving from physique, clothing, and accessories; neglecting more important traits such as honesty and kind-heartedness. Aaron Shephard portrays in his short story, “The Hidden One: A Native American Legend”, that neglecting such traits results in failure. Any woman who makes deceitful attempts at proving they’re capable of seeing the Great Hunter is cast away. Little Scarface’s unpleasant older sister would “hold[] her down and burn[] her arms and face with sticks from the fire” (Shepard 1) and lie to their father about it. She claimed to see the Hunter and lied about that as well. The mistreated little girl is stripped of having appealing clothing and, what some may consider, a beautiful face; yet, only with her pure soul intact, she ultimately succeeds. The image of beauty the author is attempting to paint for you is that physical appearance only gets you to the door; the Hidden One, symbolized as the prize, is obtained with a “good heart”, free from “jealous[y] and cruel[ty]”.

Myths, legends, and folklore from the various Native American tribes that once inhabited the current day United States have puzzled and intrigued anthropologists, sociologists, and historians alike. These stories, meticulously passed down from generation to generation through the sacred art of storytelling, open a window into the past. Through this window, one can witness the cultures, belief systems, and lifestyles that thrived before European settlers ever set foot upon American soil. Although these tribes, numbering in the five hundreds, were both linguistically and regionally diverse, their stories still contains key identifying factors that typify Native American oral literature ("An Introduction"). The characteristics

This paper tries to explain Jack Weatherford's Indian Givers by examining the history of the Native American connection to many agricultural products would not have been produced without the knowledge that Indians gave. Weatherford further stipulates that it is through these advances in agriculture that the United States has remained a strong contender in the global market, that without the influences of the Native Americans on the early settlers those early immigrants to America would not have survived. Through his work, "Indian Givers: How Indians of the Americas Transformed the World", Weatherford brings an insight to a people that most

For most of my life, the word “Native American” had immediately made me think of feathers, powwows, and a society uncorrupted by civilization. However, in watching the movie Smoke Signals, a movie that depicts the modern Native American culture, I learned many other things. For one, I learned that many of the customs that modern Native Americans have are very similar to my own. I also saw that the family life of the Native Americans in the film had many of the same problems that my family had undergone in the past years. This film was unlike any that I have ever seen; therefore, it reached me on a very personal level.

All humans are interested in their origins and trying to account for their existence through creation stories. Native Americans tribes are no different from the rest of humanity. The tribes’ stories explain how people came into existence, how they came to be live on the lands they do and the how people interact with nature and each other. These trends can be seen in the legends of three tribes hailing from New England to the Great Lakes Region.

Like a coin dropped between the cushions of a couch, traditional oral storytelling is a custom fading away in current American culture. For Native Americans, however, the practice of oral storytelling is still a tradition that carries culture and rich history over the course of generations. Three examples of traditional oral stories, “How Men and Women Got Together”, “Coyote’s Rabbit Chase”, and “Corn Mother”, demonstrate key differences in perspectives and values among diverse native tribes in America.

Folk tales and storytelling have been prominent constituents to Native American culture since the 1800s in order to pay tribute to their early beginnings, preserve the historic truth, and allow future generations to continue their legacy. While reading this selection, “Origin of Folk Stories,” by Arthur C. Parker, it is of capable understanding as to where the storytelling had been derived from in correspondence to this specific tribe called the Seneca. Parker identifies himself with the Seneca tribe through his father’s descent and uses his Native American background as a motive in many of his writing constructions. Each Native American tribe possesses a different history and background to maintain, and storytelling is their unique way of passing on the legacy. In his story “Origin of Folk Stories,” Parker is essentially utilizing customary components of Native American culture while emphasizing a single tribe’s mythological background, which in turn suggests that each Native American tribe has their own story to tell.

The Iroquois myth story is based on how the universe was created. This story is introduced with "sky people" living on a floating island. The woman in the story lived on the island, falls down to the water below and creates the earth and the sky with the assistance of the "sky people" who turned into animals. She eventually ended up having twin sons who created the rest of the world. They synchronized the seasons, created animals and all of the remaining aspects of the world. One of the son is good and the other is evil. They both created a balance of ease and happiness with difficulty and hardships. Obviously, this story of creation is a myth because it explains how the earth and sky are first non-existent and then created through the steps

The moment we walked into class, we were faced with the first assignment, “Native Americans: Before and After.” I pondered the significance this assignment had to do with the class, as it seemed pointless at first glance. Looking at it now, however, it plenty. The whole exercise

The depiction of American Indians is a topic that has been and will always be discussed heavily in both the film industry and in also just in day to day life all around you it is easy to see native Americans being portrayed in every context of your life. Some examples are sports teams like the Red Skins and the Cleveland Indians or tobacco products like American spirit tobacco products all portray the Native American as one single figure with little to no difirenation between these logos and mascots. The Hollywood film industry has taken and the American Indian and thrown him through the ringer only to leave him out to dry, due to this abuse the native American people and population