Week 10 Reading: American Indian Fairy Tales, Part B

File:GrosserWagen-Berlin-20110628.jpg
The Plough on Wikimedia
This is a continuation of my American Indian Fairy Tales unit notes. Like the last section, this one is narrated by Iagoo, a wise old man who tells stories to the village’s children. Morning Glory is a curious little girl, and she was mentioned in the last section, as well, and her brother is Eagle Feather. Something that I like about this unit is that whenever there is a Native American word the author will put the English after it, even if the word occurs multiple times throughout the story. This is helpful when dealing with readings from other languages.
One of the lengthy stories in this unit is How the Summer Came. It is a legend that also has a number of origin stories within. In this tale, a young boy lives on the Earth at the time when all of the animals get along with humans and there is only one season, Winter. Hearing that an Eagle had flown close to a crack in the sky and had felt warmth coming from it, the boy asks his father, who has supernatural powers, to bring Summer down from the sky. This tale is a great depiction of cooperation with others who are nothing like you and the things that can be accomplished when people (or animals) set aside their differences. Eventually, through a lot of perseverance, the animals and boy’s father break through the sky and bring down not only Summer, but Autumn and Spring, as well. The boy’s father, however, gets stuck in the sky where he stays and becomes the constellation of the Plough.
As I mentioned in the last set of notes for this reading unit, these stories are so vivid and the imagery is so intense that it is easy to get an idea of the setting. American Indian Fairy Tales was one of my favorite units because I got a sense of belonging to the Earth through the depiction of bright colors, mountains, stars, rivers, animals, etc. Although these stories are longer than average, they are worth reading. It is nice to read stories that have originated in your own land. This way, we can get a sense of what the peoples who lived here before us thought of the land and we can experience a little bit of how they lived.

You can access these tales here: link.
Larned, W. T. American Indian Fairy Tales. 1921.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introductory Post

Image
Personal image, Carlie and me Personal image, Yat Fan and me        Hello! My name is Bridget Clayton and I am a French major and Music minor at the University of Oklahoma. I am currently taking my last semester completely online, as I have already finished my French courses and gone through Capstone. I’m just finishing up some upper-division credits.        I was originally a Music major because I love playing clarinet. Throughout high school, clarinet was the most important part of my life. However, I went through a lot of personal and familial issues during my first two years at OU, and I was struggling in some key music courses, like music theory. French had been my minor, but I realized that I was doing exceptionally well in my language classes, and as I did not want to teach music, I switched my major and minor. My last semester was a big success. I was taking four French courses, including Capstone, and was in one of the bands a...
Read more

Week 10 Story: What Summer Thought of Being Taken from the Sky

Image
Image on  Flickr Once upon a time when the Earth was new, there was only one season, Winter. The people of Earth, whether of the plains, the mountains, or the oceanside, lived in fear of the North Wind. As the Earth was still so young, there was still plenty of magic in it. The North Wind possessed some of this magic and was so powerful that he could shapeshift into the form of a human. The waters of the Earth were always icy, if not completely frozen over. The ground was caked with snow and thus mostly infertile. Earth’s people made thick clothes and large fires to battle the North Wind’s blows, and they questioned why they were subjected to such harsh conditions. Perhaps you know the tale of the great O-jeeg who brought down the Summer from the heavens so that Earth’s peoples could enjoy its warmth. Brought down also were Spring and Autumn. These four seasons have since shared the responsibility of watching over the Earth. The North Wind was most di...
Read more