American Indian Storytelling: An Introduction Created by: Sophia J. Jacobson 2006 (Please click on the screen to advance)

An Oral Tradition American Indians are a non-literate culture. The spoken word comes from their inner self (the breath of life). There are over 500 tribes in the United States, each with their own traditional stories.

Depending on the Tribe Stories are told only during certain seasons (after the first snowfall). Reciprocity to the spirits is acknowledged by an offering. Many tribes make an offering of tobacco. There are various types of stories.

Creation Stories Emergence: When a tribe emerges from inside the earth (ex: Dene or Navajo). Earth Divers: The earth is covered with water and an animal dives to the bottom and brings soil to create the land (ex: Anishinabe or Chippewa).

Creation Stories Address The Beginning Fundamental values Categories, and Relationships

Trickster Stories Vary from tribe to tribe. Explore the consequences of chaos and disorder, and Explore a world without design.

The human desire to be Free of rules. Unbound by time, space, or society. Is dramatically and often humorously played out by the American Indian Trickster

The Trickster’s Form Is unnamable and undefinable. He maybe a male, but comes in many forms. He can transform himself into many different shapes

The Trickster Permits people to vicariously experience the thrills and freedoms of utopian existence. Reveals the very meaning of the boundaries and relationships between bounded places that give order to human life.

The Trickster’s Actions are: Fun Exciting Gross, and Risque’

To the American Indian The Trickster stories have far more significance than simple entertainment. The Trickster can also be the Great Spirit, The Creator, or from the Western perspective, God.

Trickster Characters vary: One of the most popular, is Coyote from the southwest. Raven, from the Northwest. Nanaboozoo or Manabozho from the Woodland Indians. Iktomi, or Spider, from the Lakota.

Stories are usually told At night, when all the work is done. Storytelling could last most of the night. It is proper to give tobacco to the storyteller. And, Laughing is important. Here is a Trickster story:

The Bluebird and Coyote The bluebird was once a very ugly color. But there was a lake where no river flowed in or out, and the bird bathed in it four times every morning for four mornings. Every morning it sang:

There’s a blue water, it lies there. I went in. I am all blue.

On the fourth morning it shed all its feathers and came out of the lake in its bare skin, but on the fifth morning it came out with blue feathers.

All this while Coyote had been watching the bird. He wanted to jump in and get it, but he was afraid of the water.

On that fifth morning he said, “How is it that all your ugly color has come out and now you are blue and gay and beautiful? You’re more beautiful than anything that flies in the air. I want to be blue too.” Coyote was at that time a bright green.

“I went in four times,” said the bird, and taught Coyote the song. So Coyote went in four times, and the fifth time he came out as blue as the little bird.

That made him feel very proud. As he walked along, he looked on every side to see if anyone was noticing how fine and blue he was. He looked to see if his shadow was blue too, and so he was not watching the road.

Presently he ran into a stump so hard that it threw him down in the dirt, and he became dust-colored all over. And to this day all coyotes are the color of dirt. -A story report by Frank Russell in 1908-

Interpretation of Stories Are not told by the storyteller. Are the product of the person listening to the story. Here is a story of Visions of the End:

The Gnawing (Cheyenne) There is a great pole somewhere, a mighty trunk similar to the sacred sun dance pole, only much, much bigger. This pole is what holds up the world.

The Great Grandfather Beaver of the North is gnawing at that pole. He has been gnawing at the bottom of it for ages and ages. More than half of the pole has already been gnawed through.

When the Great Beaver of the North gets angry, he gnaws faster and more furiously. Once he has gnawed all the way through, the pole will topple, and the earth will crash into a bottomless nothing.

That will be the end of the people, of everything. The end of all ends.

So we are careful not to make the Beaver angry. That’s why the Cheyenne never eat his flesh, or even touch a beaver skin. We want the world to last a little longer. -Told by Mrs. Medicine Bull in Birney, Montana, with the help of an interpreter, Recorded by Richard Erdoes.

American Indian Storytelling: Reveals the interconnectedness of everything, Including the cosmos, And, Is sacred to American Indian people. Thank you for your time!