Native American traditions are rich and varied.

There are over five hundred Native

American languages, each one as different as English is from Arabic. Each Indian
nation has its own myths, its own histories, its own personal stories. As Native
American author N. Scott Momaday writes, “The voices are all around us, the
three voices. You have the mythic and the historical and the personal and then they
become a wheel, they revolve, they alternate. . . . Myth becomes history becomes
memoir becomes myth. Three views stand out in this highly contested debate:
those of legal bloodlines, cultural traditions, and bicultural production. As literary
critic Kenneth Lincoln notes, one “working definition of ‘Indian,’ though criteria
vary from region to region, is minimally a quarter blood and tribal membership”;
Native American literature, then, would be those works written by someone who
legally is Native American, regardless of their content or style. A second
perspective links Native American identity and literature with the preservation of
cultural traditions. Literary critics who rely on this view focus on aspects of
“traditional” Indian culture in contemporary American Indian literature, such as the
continuance of oral traditions. A third trend in Native American studies defines
American Indian identity and literature not in terms of what it preserves (whether it
be blood or culture), but rather as a bicultural mixture of Native and European
American people and traditions. Some Native Americans have argued that since
their indigenous cultures have always assimilated aspects of other cultures
(including those of other American Indians), to be Indian is to be bicultural, or
multicultural. Many American Indians define themselves not primarily as “Native
Americans” but as members of a specific tribe. It is important as you read the
authors in this unit to remember that what you know about the Navajo and their
religious traditions probably will not apply to the Chippewa, a people
geographically, linguistically, and culturally separate from them. Some scholars
have suggested, however, that Native American communities within a particular
geographic region tend to be culturally more homologous because they are often
from the same language family and because cultures are often shaped by the
landscapes out of which they emerge.

Oral traditions vary by region and tribe, and scholars have tended to examine the
influence of the American Indian oral tradition upon contemporary American
Indian written literature in two ways: (1) the content and (2) the style. When
people explore how the content of the American Indian oral tradition has
influenced contemporary literature, they usually turn to the stories and songs of
American Indian peoples. These stories tend to focus on particular characters and
to include standard events and elements. Some of the most common tale-types
include gambler, trickster, creation, abduction, and migration legends.
Contemporary authors can use these tale-types in their works: for example, Leslie
Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony retells Yellow Woman stories— a Pueblo
Abduction Cycle. Oral style has been characterized as empathetic, participatory,
situational, and reliant on repetition. In the oral tradition, repetition is crucial both
for ceremonial reasons and because it aids in the process of memorization and
provides narrative cohesion. To repeat words is also to wield a certain power.
Perhaps most importantly, the oral tradition is tied to the land: as author and critic
Greg Sarris explains, “The landscape becomes the bible and each stone, each
mountain, each set of trees or a river, or a section of the river becomes a text,
because they become a way of remembering stories, and stories associated with
that place.”

General Characteristics

Folktales have been a part of the social and cultural life of American Indian and
Eskimo peoples regardless of whether they were sedentary agriculturists or
nomadic hunters. As they gathered around a fire at night, Native Americans could
be transported to another world through the talent of a good storyteller. The effect
was derived not only from the novelty of the tale itself but also from the
imaginative skill of the narrator, who often added gestures and songs and
occasionally adapted a particular tale to suit a certain culture.

One adaptation frequently used by the storyteller was the repetition of incidents.
The description of an incident would be repeated a specific number of times. The
number of repetitions usually corresponded to the number associated with the
sacred by the culture; whereas in Christian traditions, for instance, the sacred is
most often counted in threes (for the Trinity), in Native American traditions the
sacred is most often associated with groups of four (representing the cardinal
directions and the deities associated with each) or seven (the cardinal directions
and deities plus those of skyward, earthward, and centre). This type of repetition
was very effective in oral communication, for it firmly inculcated the incident in
the minds of the listeners—much in the same manner that repetition is used today
in advertising. In addition, there was an aesthetic value to the rhythm gained from
repetition and an even greater dramatic effect

The terms myth and folktale in American Indian oral literature are used
interchangeably, because in the Native American view the difference between the
two is a matter of time rather than content. If the incidents related happened at a
time when the world had not yet assumed its present form, the story may be
regarded as a myth; however, even if the same characters appear in the “modern”
present, it is considered a folktale. Whereas European fairy tales traditionally begin
with the vague allusion “once upon a time,” the American Indian myth often starts
with “before the people came” or “when Coyote was a man.” To the Eskimo, it is
insignificant whether an incident occurred yesterday or 50 years ago—it is past.

Important Dates:

In 1490s Columbus lands in the Bahamas, returns to Spain with first Indian slaves
(1492)

In 1830s, William Apess, “An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man” An
essay (1833)

John Rollin Ridge (Yellow Bird), The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, “
the Celebrated California Bandit”

In 1990, Joy Harjo, In Mad Love and War (1990) poem

Gerald Vizenor, Landfill Meditations: Cross blood Stories (1991)

Simon J. Ortiz, Woven Stone (1992) short story

Luci Tapahonso, Saanii Dahataal: The Women Are Singing (1993) poems

Greg Sarris, Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream (1994) short story

Joy Harjo, The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1994) poems

Diane Glancy, Fire sticks (1993) collection of stories.

Writers
Sherman Alexie: one of the best known Native American writers today. He has
authored several novels and collections of poetry and short stories, a number of
which have garnered him prestigious awards, including a National Book Award

Leslie Marmon Silko: A key figure in the first wave of the "Native American
Renaissance" (a term fraught with controversy, but that's another discussion), Silko
is an accomplished writer who has been the recipient of MacArthur Foundation
Grants and a lifetime achievement award from the Native Writers' Circle of the
Americas. Her most well-known work is the novel Ceremony.

Janet Campbell Hale:

Growing up on reservations helped inspire some of the work of this writer and
professor, and she honed her gift for the written word at UC Berkeley while
earning her M.A. in English. Her novel The Jailing of Cecelia Capture was
nominated for a Pulitzer and is perhaps her best-known work