Reading Notes: Native American Stories; California and Old Southwest, Part A

A newspaper clipping about the story book in which these great stories are housed.

For countless generations Native communities throughout North America have told stories about their worlds. in a time before written forms of communication, the storyteller used both collective memory and individual inspiration to fulfill one of several possible goals. Perhaps it might be to amuse or to instruct or to imagine. Some stories could only be told at certain times of the year. Others could not be told to all members of a village or encampment. But regardless of their purpose or their content, the stories mattered. They reflected values; they imparted lessons. They told how a place, an animal, a people came to be. As with the fables or songs or chants or ballads of different groups around the world, American Indian stories offered much in time to a wider audience curious to learn more about Native history and heritage. These stories, which include the ancient and the revered Coyote as their God and sacred animal, talk about creation of the earth from dust, the creation of man from the feathers of birds by the Coyote and becoming what is the known as the form of man, in addition to the story of Coyote as the main trickster, a classic trope used to portray the cunning of the coyote. Most of these source stories are from the Navajo in the Southwest and provide insight into their culture, what they value, how they live their lives, and what things these people held dear to them in harsh times.

Bibliography: Judson's "Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest." http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/03/myth-folklore-unit-california-and-old.html