Analyzing Native American Mythology Native Mythology discovers facts and information about the culture of Native American Indians and Native Mythology. Native Americans have explanations for creation, life, and nature. Comparing and contrasting the three stories, The Earth on Turtle’s Back, When Grizzlies Walked Upright, and The Navajo Origin Legend, the beliefs and customs of Native Americans will be seen. In Earth on Turtle’s Back, a sky woman fell into a hole where all the animals at the bottom tried to get a piece of earth to live on. The muskrat ended up grabbing it and placing it on the turtle’s back. The sky woman brought vegetation and life into the new world. In When the Grizzlies Walked Upright, the Chief of Skyland came down onto earth and created a …show more content…
For the most part, they always have a superior force that creates humans. Most of the myths include curiosity of a character or express their empowerment of the characters beliefs or of their dreams. Native American myths will include animals and they show them a lot of respect, like in The Earth on the Turtle’s back, where the muskrat was the hero. There is also a sacrificial figure in that story, which was the turtle. In When the Grizzlies Walked Upright, the Chief of Skyland created the mountains. All three stories represent how the Native Americans say life came about or how the world was created. They are for the most part, very similar to each other. The stories can be told differently through the Native Americans and are commonly said orally. The stories are either a creation myth or an origin, but these three stories were creation myths. The beliefs and customs of The Earth on Turtle’s Back, When Grizzlies Walked Upright, and The Navajo Origin Legend, were all very similar to each other in the sense that they all had some sort of a creator and that they all say there is a superior force.
Adjacent Iroquois tribes, such as the Mohawk natives, shared a very similar creation myth (Redish and Orrin, “Native American Legends”). The cultures of both tribes influenced each other, and as a result, the myths became closely related. The Huron creation myth is heavily based on the culture at the time. The myth mentions beans, corn, and pumpkins being planted on the turtle. The Huron culture often depended on beans, corn, and squash for survival (Redish and Orrin, “Wyandot Indian Fact Sheet”). These were the essential plants on which the culture depended. The Huron tribe was thankful for these life-giving plants and showed this in their myth by stating that they came from a divine
The Native American’s way of living was different from the Europeans. They believed that man is ruled by respect and reverence for nature and that nature is an ancestor or relative. The Native American’s strongly belie...
Betrayal is being disloyal to others and even oneself, therefore betrayal can cause many emotional fallouts and baggage within relationships. In the story, The World on the Turtle's Back, betrayal is a huge factor in how the story plays out, as it is in the song The Letter by Kehlani, Genesis 4:1-16, and Matthew 26:14-16 . Three ways in which betrayal is portrayed in the story, the song, and the Bible is by the actions people take to one another, disconnections in relationships that lead to betrayal, and emotional baggage.
These stories were all myths about the tribes. All three of the stories include that they all take places in nature. The first story took place in the Desert, this would be the story of “The Coyote”. The next place would be in a cave located in the Great Plains, this form of nature was in the story “The Buffalo and the Corn”. The last form of nature would be located in the Appalachian Mountains, this place occurred in the story “The First False Face.” These different locations show the different landforms and geography of the United States. The last similarity would be they all have magical powers. In the story “The Coyote” the people use magic, through personification to make animals talk, and animals in real life don’t talk, so that is a form of magic. In the story “The Buffalo and the Corn”
Duane Champagne in Social Change and Cultural Continuity Among Native Nations explains that there has never been one definitive world view that comprises any one Native American culture, as there is no such thing as one “Native community” (2007:10). However, there are certain commonalities in the ways of seeing and experiencing the world that many Native communities and their religions seem to share.
Much of the literature written by Native Americans from the Southeastern U.S. draws from traditional tribal myths. Many of these myths have been transcribed and translated into English by various ethnographers and folklorists, and, in the case of the Cherokee, myths have been collected and published in acclaimed books. Anthropologist James Mooney, an employee of the federal government at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, collected a large number of mythological stories from informants during his years of fieldwork among the Eastern Band of the Cherokee in western North Carolina; Mooney incorporated that material into the important compilation Myths of the Cherokee (1900). A century later, folklorist Barbara R. Duncan, a researcher employed by the Museum of the Cherokee...
Community, rituals, magical beliefs and practices are very important things to Native American people. Native American people live by these rituals and beliefs, they live around their community; their community isn’t just that, but their family as well. Parents don’t just raise their children but the whole community has a hand in raising all of the children. Family is a very important part of Native American people’s lives, they keep traditions going with their families, parents raise their children the same way that they were raised by their parents.
For the Native Americans to explain their existence, they created stories that described how things came to be. These stories are much like the ones that you would find in the Bible, and are very insightful in getting a better understanding of the Native Americans religious viewings. The Native Americans strongly believed in spirits and beings of another world. In the Iroquois Creation Story, these believes are strongly represented by telling the story of two brothers. This story is a representation of how the world was created. There is a good minded brother and a bad minded brother, which are not just brothers but twins. These unborn brothers and their mother were sent to the back of a turtle that in order to secure them from the dangers of the dark world she fell to. In a hurry to be born, the bad minded brother murders
In the Native American myths “The Coyote,” “The Buffalo and the Corn,” and “The First False Face” there are many similarity. One good similarity is that they all are confusing. They are folk tales, but come one these stories are on a new level of craziness. These stories are not suppose to be realistic I know, but they have no logic what so ever. Another one is that they all have native Americans. These are Native American myths so this would have been obvious but it’s a similarity. They
The native American tribe the Iroquois Confederacy has an origin story for the start of folk stories. This is an interesting piece of writing in the way that it describes how stories began. It shows the high regard for the art of storytelling. This story starts off by telling the reader about a young boy who had lost his parents. There was no other family that would look after him so he raised himself the best that he could. This young boy was unhappy as the villages saw him as an outcast and wanted nothing to do with him. The young boy one day came across a canoe. Once in the canoe the boy was brought into the sky and paddled until he stopped atop a peek. The boy had made a home and at night heard a voice calling out to him. The voice demanded the boy offer him Tabaco. After the boy obeyed the voice the voice preceded to tell the young man a story. The voice then told the young boy a set of rules that he must follow if he wanted to be told stories. This continued for a while and the boy also came
Comparing The Earth on Turtle's Back, When Grizzlies Walked Upright, And the Navajo Origin Legend
Myths – as they are known to most of the world – give insight into the pasts of various countries and religions as the people saw them. They have been used to explain phenomena in nature or describe the tales of courageous and important men and women throughout history. Creation myths in particular define how the Earth itself was created, along with the universe, heavens, hell, people, and creatures that exist today. Genesis of Christian mythology, for instance, tells the story of how the single deity God spoke and formed everything from day and night to man and woman. Various African creation myths, such as with the Yoruba, explain the creation of the Earth through at least a couple gods working together and all life sprouting from a seed.
People have been living in America for countless years, even before Europeans had discovered and populated it. These people, named Native Americans or American Indians, have a unique and singular culture and lifestyle unlike any other. Native Americans were divided into several groups or tribes. Each one tribe developed an own language, housing, clothing, and other cultural aspects. As we take a look into their society’s customs we can learn additional information about the lives of these indigenous people of the United States.
Mythology is the traditions that have been passed down orally, among a culture, for many generations. Myths can include several different elements, often varying slightly. Most include fantasy or unnatural characters, such as monsters, dragons, gods and goddesses. Myths generally tell a story which is the basis for many beliefs among a culture. Greek and Roman myths encompass the gods that the cultures worship. Myths often serve to teach a lesson or play on superstitions. The origin is unknown and because it has been handed down orally, there are variations in the story. The story often travels around to other cultures also. This leads to similar myths among cultures. Similar situations and characters appear in several myths. An example of this is the
The different categories of mythology are explanatory myths and adventure myths. Explanatory myth will break down into smaller sub divisions called Cosmogony, nature myths, and eschatological myths. Explanatory myths these are myths that nature or certain events and customs of different cultures. Cosmogony is a big word for creation myths. Creation myths explain the origin of the universe. They use primal gods and animals to tell the story. There are different types of creation myths as well. The first is the single stage creation where a god existed ex nihilo. Which means a god existed in a vast space and created the universe out of nothing. The other is multi stage creation. In this the universe is created by one god. His children then continue to create the rest of the world. Nature myths have to do with animals and everyday phenomena like the rising and setting of the sun. The last explanatory myth is eschatological. This tells how death and other bad things came into the world and how the world is going to end. The next category of mythology is adventure myths. These are myths that involve humans. These are stories of major events in history that parts have been embellished or forgotten and made up. Now that you know the different categories of mythology we will look at the different regions where the stories came from.