Native American Literature
Oral Literature: Myths and Legends
A. Devices
1. Repetition
2. Enumeration – to name or list in order
3. Incremental development – process of small gains or losses.
4. Ritual beginnings and endings
5. Use of archaic ( old or primitive) - language
6. Specific structure
a. Introduction: harmonious situation
b. Thesis: one or more episodes showing disruption of harmony
c. Antithesis: measures employed to overcome disruption
d. Conclusion: restored harmony completed by cycles of four or some power of
four (four songs four nights, etc.)
7. Terse style (neat, brief and concise)
B. Functions
1. Beliefs about nature of physical world
2. Beliefs about social order and appropriate behavior
3. Beliefs about human nature and the problem of good and evil
C. Characteristics of Myths
1. Myths: primal world
2. Beings are animal spirits in more or less human form: monsters, confusions of nature
D. Characteristics of Legends
1. Culture hero orders the world
2. Culture hero turns animal people into animals
3. Other beings become landmarks
4. Flows into historical time (real heroes)
E. Figures
1. Culture heroes
a. Dramatize prototypical events and behaviors
b. Show how to do what is right and how we become the people we are
c. Shape the world and gives it its character by theft of sun, fire, or water
d. Often of divine birth
e. Myths are not concerned with original owners, only with culture hero's
acquisition of them
2. Trickster heroes (Raven, Spider)
a. Provide for disorder and change
b. Enable us to see the seamy underside of life
c. Remind us that culture is finally artificial
d. Provide for the possibility of change
e. May be “over-reachers” who gets their comeuppance
F. Themes
1. Formation of the world through struggle and robbery (Pacific coast)
2. Fortunate fall; creation story
3. Theft of fire
4. Migration myths: accompany emergence myths
Name: _________________________
How Coyote Was the Moon
(Kalispell Idaho)
A long time ago there was no moon.
The people got tired of going around at night in the dark.
There had been a moon before, but someone stole it.
So they gathered together and talked about it.
“We need to have a moon,” they said. “Who will be the moon?”
“I will do it,” said Yellow Fox. They placed him in the sky.
But he shone so brightly that he made things hot at night.
Thus they had to take him down.
Then the people went to coyote.
“Would you like to be the moon? Do you think you could do a better job?”
“I sure would,” Coyote said.
Then he smiled. He knew that if he became the moon
He could look down and see everything that was happening on Earth.
They placed Coyote up in the sky.
He did not make the nights hot and bright.
For a time the people were pleased.
“Coyote is doing a good job as the moon,” they agreed.
But Coyote, up in the sky, could see everything that
Was happening on Earth. He could see whenever someone did
something they were not supposed to do and he just couldn’t keep quiet.
“Hey,” he would shout, so loudly everyone on Earth could hear him,
“That man is stealing meat from the drying racks.”
He would look down over people’s shoulders as they played
games in the moonlight. “Hey,” he would shout, “that person there is
cheating at the moccasin game.”
Finally, all the people who wished to do things in secret got together.
“Take Coyote out of the sky,” they said. “He is making too much
noise with all his shouting.”
So Coyote was taken out of the sky. Someone else became the moon.
Coyote could no longer see what everyone on Earth was doing,
but that hasn’t stopped him from still trying to snoop into everyone
else’s business ever since.