Native American Literature

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Native American Literature

• Section 1 Background

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Visitors to America

• 1492 Christopher Columbus
• 1499 Amerigo Vespuci

1,000 years ago, Norsemen traveled to
North America
700-1000 years ago, the Chinese traveled to
North America
700-1,000 years ago, Phaecians traveled to
North America
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First human migration across the Bering Strait

• 20-40,000 years ago
• Land bridge flooded approximately 12,000 years ago

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Population of the New World

• First Estimates 4-6 Million

Some Scholars Estimate 20-30
Million
Most People Agree around 10
Million
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Key Definition

• Ethnocentrism The belief that ones 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.

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Native Americans have been and are
Romanticized
Anglicized
Trivialized
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Languages

• There were about 1,000 different languages spoken
  in North and South America.
• Native Americans didnt have any written
  language, instead information was passed along
  through the oral tradition.

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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.
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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

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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 Americans?

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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.

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Abstract Terms

• Love
• Justice
• Honor
• Freedom

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

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Precedent for the oral tradition in canonical
literature
Shakespeare
Homer
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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.

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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?

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Section 3Types of Native American Stories

• I. Origin and Emergence Stories
• A. Explain origin of earth and its people.
• B. Explain relationship between people, animals,
  the Earth, and the cosmos.
• C. Define gender and social roles.
• D. Account for tribes unique topography and
  climate.

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I. Origin and Emergence Stories (Cont)

• E. Tells the origin of the tribes most
  significant social institutions and activities.
• F. Chaos ? Order
• Dark ? Light
• Undetermined form ? Humanity

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

• A. Cultural hero forms and creates social norms.
• B. Generally, Native Americans didnt believe in
  the return to chaos.
• norms?
• return to chaos as in Western epics?

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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.

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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.

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IV. Trickster Tales (cont)

• D. Trickster is a wanderer on the fringe of
  society
• E. The two goals of the trickster Food and sex