Native American Folk Story Essay

Stories among Native Americans.
The smoke floats through the air and surrounds the village people. The eyes of everyone is on the village elder and no one speaks a word. This is a time for sharing the great history that the new generation must learn. Without written langue history and important lessons are spoken to the children of Native American villages. These stories’ hold a special meaning to the children as they are all they know about their ancestors. Often these stories have elements of mystical beings that help the Native people. In this way the people not only get a history lesson, but also a way of practicing religion. Each story is unique to the village and tribe that it was developed; however similar concerts can be seen as the
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
This story begins with two boys on lookout for the tribe. They both see a figure in the distance and move closer to see who is coming in the direction of their village. Once they are closer the see that it is a woman. One of the boys decided to go and embrace the woman. The boy that stays back watches as his friend and the woman are covered in a cloud. When the other boy then went to see what had happened the woman had shown the boy the bare bones of his friend. The boy was afraid, but the woman explained that she was a powerful spirt and no harm would come to her if he would listen to what she told him to do. The woman directed him to go back to his village and give directions on what to do when she was to come again. The sign for her coming again was four puffs of smoke. When the villages saw this they did as they were told when the woman appeared, however one man disobeyed and looked at her. This act of disobeying causes the woman to make the man’s eyes feel as though smoke was always in them. For the rest of the tribe though had listened to her and were rewarded. They were shown how to smoke a pipe and told that when the smoke of the pipe was visible that she would be listening to their prays. Then she would take their prays to the Wakan Tanka. She stayed with them for a while and finally disappeared in to smoke from a