Native American Literature

Section 1: Background

Visitors to America

1492 Christopher Columbus

1499 Amerigo Vespuci

700-1000 years ago, the Chinese traveled to North America

700-1,000 years ago, Phaecians traveled to North America

1,000+ years ago, Norsemen traveled to North America

First human migration across the Bering Strait

• 20-40,000 years ago

• Land bridge flooded approximately 12,000 years ago

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061017-bering.html

Population of the “New World”

First Estimates : 4-6 Million

Some Scholars Estimate : 20-30

Million

Most People Agree : around 10

Million

Key Definition

• Ethnocentrism: The belief that one’s own culture is superior to the culture of another people.

• It is important for us to maintain a level of cultural relativism when discussing other cultures as well as studying the history of our own culture.

http://cleveland.indians.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=cle

http://www.authentichistory.com/diversity/native/comics/

Native Americans have been and are…

Romanticized

Anglicized

Trivialized

Languages

There were about 1,000 different languages spoken in North and South America.

Native Americans didn’t have any written language, instead information was passed along through the oral tradition.

Why do you think….

Native Americans did not have written language?

Without the benefit of lightweight paper it was not practical to carry hides, pottery, or other media carrying indigenous stories.

A (complicated) exception…

• Lenape (Delaware) of modern day eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey were thought to have recorded their origin story on birch bark

• Walam Olum (“Red Record”) was documented by Rafinisque in 1830s

• Ethnographers now believe the story is based only in part on Lenape pictograms

Section 2: Differences Between Oral and Literate Societies

I. In an oral society, all history and literature is memorized.

Europeans had the Printing Press. This beneficial invention allowed information to be spread over vast areas relatively quickly.

How do you think European literature will be different than the Native American’s?

Oral Tradition vs. Literacy

II. Being literate means more than

being able to read.

People who are not in a literate society have some difficulty with abstract terms.

Abstract Terms• Love• Justice• Honor • Freedom• …

• To compensate, in the oral tradition storytellers express these things in concrete terms.

Precedent for the oral tradition in canonical literature

Homer Shakespeare

The Oral Tradition (cont’)

III. The oral tradition relies on performance, not the printed word.

Much of the significance is lost on the reader.

• Also, the stories require prior knowledge of people, places or events for complete understanding.

The Oral Tradition (cont’)

IV. Because things were not written down, most Native American stories have been destroyed. What is left was collected in the 19th century.

The Mayan chants were written by Mayans in Spanish; what does that mean?

Section 3:Types of Native American Stories

I. Origin and Emergence Stories

A. Explain origin of earth and it’s people.

B. Explain relationship between people, animals, the Earth, and the cosmos.

C. Define gender and social roles.

D. Account for tribe’s unique topography and climate.

I. Origin and Emergence Stories (Cont’)

E. Tells the origin of the tribe’s most significant social institutions and activities.

F. Chaos Order

Dark Light

Undetermined form Humanity

II. Cultural Hero Stories (Native American version of the Epic)

A. Cultural hero forms and creates social norms.

B. Generally, Native Americans didn’t believe in the return to chaos.

*** norms?

*** return to chaos as in Western epics?

III. Historical Narratives

A. Tells the story of major historical events and major movements of the tribe

B. Memory stories are very accurate.

C. However, because of a lack of time keeping, it is hard to determine time span.

IV. Trickster Tales

A. Test limitations of culture,

customs, and social roles.

B. People appear in animal forms.

(bear, coyote, buzzard, raven)

C. Feature humorous and scandalous attempts to violate customs and values of a tribe.

IV. Trickster Tales (cont’)

D. Trickster is a wanderer on the fringe of society

E. The two goals of the trickster: Food and sex