There is a legend called “ The Land of the Dead of the Nisqually” collected by Cecelia Svinth Carpenter and has been put in her book “Where the Waters Begin: The Traditional Nisqually Indian History of Mount Rainier”:
“The Squally-absch believed the world to be flat, and beneath its surface is the home of the dead, ‘Otlas-skio.’ Constant communication was maintained between this and the underground world by the spirits of the dead, as well as by the shamans or ‘medicine man,’ The country of Otlas-skio is filled with waving forests, grassy plains and running streams. Villages after the ancient type occupy the most beautiful places; the woods are filled with game and singing birds; brilliant flowers enliven the landscape and perfume th
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It is thus that they explain a case of suspended animation. “The Squally neither expect favor or reward, nor feared punishment after death. During life, however, he worshiped the benificent forces of nature and appealed to them for aid and assistance; he feared the evil forces represented by a multitude of demons. Whom he attempted to propitiate that he might escape their attacks. His ceremonial appeals to the good forces, and his attempt to allay the evil one, consituted the ritual of Nisqually theology. (Wickersham: 1898, 346)” Another legend is from “Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest” by Ella E. Clark, called “Mason Lake and the Crying Loon”:
“On the east side of the Olympia Peninsula is a small lake, Mason Lake, which the Indians said was the home of evil spirits. “Not far from the lake lived a litte boy, a very good swimmer. He spent much of his time in the salt water and on the shore of what is now called Hood Canal. His mother often told him that he must never swim in the haunted lake. It he should swim there, he would anger the evil spirits and they would punish him. But this little boy sometimes did what his mother told him not to do. “One warm day he disobeyed her and went swimming in the lake of the evil spirits. He could see no demons, but he did see many trout swimming about in the clear water. He swam and dived and had much fun all afternoon. He
The Wappinger are one of many Native American tribes. Originally from between the Bronx and the east side of the Hudson River. Except for a few small groups, most Wappinger had left the lower Hudson Valley by 1760 and settled in western Massachusetts with the Mahican at Stockbridge, the Iroquois in New York, or the Delaware in Pennsylvania. By 1700 epidemics (including malaria) had reduced the lower Hudson tribes to 10 per cent of their original number. Only a few hundred Wappinger remained in the lower Hudson Valley after 1700, and almost all were gone by 1758. One possible group of Wappinger remain in the region today, the Ramapough Mountain Indians (Ramapo Mountain People) in northern New Jersey. They are probably descendants of a mixture
Throughout human civilization, each unique civilization has its unique origins and the Native Americans are no exception. While the origins and history of many Asian and European countries are well known, the origins of Native Americans are not. Many theories exist about how the Native Americans’ ancestors arrived in North America but the widely accepted theory is the one I will discuss.
“Two days after we had set sail from the island of the cyclopes, a terrible storm blew my ships off course. The heavy gales swung us back and forth like a pendulum, and the waves nearly tore the ships in two. Like this we suffered for four days before we finally saw a sliver of land. We had arrived at Fídi, wooded island of the snakes. The island was immediately noticed due to the sturdy poplar and fir trees that lined its shore.
Nature has a powerful way of portraying good vs. bad, which parallels to the same concept intertwined with human nature. In the story “Greasy Lake” by T. Coraghessan Boyle, the author portrays this through the use of a lake by demonstrating its significance and relationship to the characters. At one time, the Greasy Lake was something of beauty and cleanliness, but then came to be the exact opposite. Through his writing, Boyle demonstrates how the setting can be a direct reflection of the characters and the experiences they encounter.
The discovery of the biker’s body is the turning point in not only the story, but also in the narrator’s life. In a short time, he has been beaten, has knocked out someone with a tire iron, almost raped a woman, found a dead body, and watched his mother’s Bel Air station wagon be destroyed. Which was all done for the rush of excitement. While hiding in the water that was previously seen as a tarn of doom, with all the nights occurrences spinning in his head, he has an epiphany. Standing there he realizes what becomes of “tough-guys” and discovers that he has found his salvation within his true self. Accordingly, as the narrator emerges from Greasy Lake, he is a new person with a newly discovered perspective. As the sun is rising and the songs of birds replace the sounds of crickets, he leaves the pool of once dismal waters (Boyle 118). This signals his rebirth and his baptism as a reformed adolescent.
One of the foremost themes of the novel is the concept of belonging to a place, in particular the connection to a homeland. A disturbance in the main environment signifies as the stimulating factor for the disruption of the man’s sense of belonging. There exists an fragmented sense of existence in the old land, something that is established primarily by the ominous, malicious serpent like figures that
The Black Hills are an isolated mountain range rising 3000 to 4000 feet above the surrounding plains of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana (Sundstrom et al. 1996). The importance of this land to the Sioux Nation goes beyond dedication to the place they have lived in for generations. The Lakota creation story itself incorporates the Black Hills in particular as central to their identity as a people. The Black Hills are not only regarded as the birthplace of Sioux culture in religious songs and legends, but as the first place created on Earth—literally the heart of the Earth, which is seen as Mother. Sioux spiritual lore utilizes metaphor both to explain and to embody the thing signified—the Black Hills are the heart of the Earth, and that concept is
I picked the Chinook tribe, which is a northwestern tribe located around the columbian river, or today's Washington and Oregon. The land and climate really defined how the Chinook people lived and is why it’s defined as a folk culture. The Chinook tribe is around large forests that the tribe uses to build canoes and large houses. The Chinook tribe would build these large houses and many people could live inside, these houses were made out of red cedar a tree that was very abundant in the area. The Climate where the Chinook tribe located was very harsh but easy at times. The climate existed of very rainy seasons with very hot seasons that defined what the Chinook tribe would wear. The Chinook tribe would wear little to nothing on the hot
The author symbolizes the water as transition and spirituality, the lake is symbolized as the elusive badness the boys want so badly. The narrator notices that none of them are as bad as they try to act. After that night the narrator realizes he cannot make it in that life, rather the narrator wants to go to the safety and security of his home and parents.
In the short story Greasy Lake written by T.C. Boyle, the story is about three friends who believe they are “bad”. On a particular night they go out looking for trouble, and trouble is what they find. The tone of this story is serious, dark, and very graphic. This story is full of literary devices. Metaphors and similes come thick and fast on the shores of Greasy Lake, and Boyle never contents himself with one when he can offer two or three. The comparisons for their abundance, are neither aimless nor without purpose; they enable us to see the referent from strategic points of view.
Thus the narrator of the story, as an older and more mature man, tells the story as an introspective look back at his misadventures. The protagonist begins to gain some insight into his possible future while in the “primordial ooze” (Boyle, 119) of Greasy lake .After finding the floating body and dealing with the destruction of his mothers battered station wagon he is mre reflective of the situation he is in. The narrator, looking back at
It was at one time, but not when the speaker and his friends were at it. “The Indians had called it Wakan, a reference to the clarity of its waters. Not it was fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires” (1). In a way, the lake represents the speaker. At one time (before the night he spent at greasy lake), he was like the lake. He was free of litter and garbage. He was clear and pure. After the night at the lake, the speaker was changed. He experienced what fear really was. He also learned what “being bad” was all about. He let go of his innocence. His childhood was over after the night at the lake. He was a man. He was a man who committed a
To begin, in the first part of the story, a city called Omelas and its inhabitants are described as one happy community, but a negative connotation on the city and its people is implied as the story progresses.”They
LeGuin’s description of Omelas engages all of one’s senses through her usage of rich visual, auditory and tactile imagery to ‘prove’ to the reader that Omelas is undeniably a utopia. The city of Omelas can be described as a place in which the inhabitants’ senses are constantly overwhelmed by sensations which are pleasing to their eyes, beautiful to their ears and sweet to their tongues. The unchanging state of this society which is surrounded constantly by sensory delight can be found in these descriptions; for instance, the “child of nine or ten [who] sits at the edge of the crowd, alone, playing on a wooden flute […] he never ceases playing” (LeGuin 275). In addition to the wooden flute, LeGuin describes, “a shimmering of gong and tambourine” (LeGuin 273). Following the narrator’s stunning description of everything which makes Omelas a utopia, her statement that the reader may, if he pleases, “add an orgy” in order to make the Omelas less “goody-goody,” makes it apparent that Omelas in many ways does not have to be concrete and limited to the previously provided descriptions. Her aim is not to describe a particular city, although it is named and its characteristics are already expressed, but to present the idea of a perfect city, a utopia in which bliss is fixed, and good fortune is wholly
Way behind the house, on the farthest side of my grandma's land sat a small broken structure made of light gray cement blocks, which we named our fort. The whole place reeked of minty sagebrush and dry dirt. We spent most of the long, hot days there pretending we were Indians trying to survive, or a family separated by human civilization. I can remember the constant bee stings that always surprised us. We appeared to be immune to their painful pricks. No matter how much the stings hurt, we always came running back to play.