Native American Tales and Stories
An American Indian's Statement on Story-telling
Storytelling also allows people to get to know one another. Cherokee storyteller Freeman Owle says that storytelling is "two-way interaction" between the listener and the storyteller. He says that when the children of today watch television, they get only one-way interaction. "They have no input, they have no identity, they have no place, and they have no one there with them." In American Indian communities, as long as the stories are being told, that identity will exist, that sense of knowing who you are and where you came from.
Source: Currie II, Jefferson. "American Indian Storytelling." NCPedia.org, 2013, web, 12 Aug. 2013.
Traditional Native American Literary Expression
When European explorers began to conquer the Americas, they found more than three hundred cultural groups speaking some two hundred languages from several major language families - in North American alone. These nations varied widely in political organization, economic structures, family structures, and cultural values, but they all had in common a rich oral literature, developed over centuries and perfectly responsive to cultural needs and social relations. However, the oral nature of traditional Native American literary expression, the violent political and land struggles between the colonists and native nations, and their differing social systems made it difficult for the European colonists to appreciate native creativity.
There are significant differences between the written and oral modes of expression, even without considerations of translation or divergent cultural expectations. But all literatures present verbal creation rising from negotiations between individual talent and supporting tradition regardless of the format. A vibrant oral tradition was central to most Native American societies and continues to be so today. Through the oral tradition, people pass on their wisdom, their understanding of how to survive, their cultural values, and their sense of identity. Native American societies clarify their relationship to the universe, to both seen and unseen powers, as exemplified by the Coyote Trickster tales of the Navaho Nation. They formally encode a worldview and make sacred their paths through life in a way that requires the older generations to encourage and guide the younger ones. In the oral tradition, communities are bound together, and individuals find or are given their places in society. Over centuries, an expressive body of literature has matured. That literature may be divided - according to European traditions - into oral narratives, oratory, song/poetry, and religious expression. However, these categories are not exclusive and commonly overlap.
Oral narratives might consist of sacred or secular stories. Most often they were told by an elder in a storytelling session with young people and adults in attendance, as were the myths and morals of the Cherokee. Some narratives were told in religious circumstances as part of a larger ritual. Others deal with more historical material, as do stories of many nations’ stories concerning their first contacts with white Europeans - or with the experience of one person, hero/heroine, or ancestor.
Native American orators perfected their rhetorical skills during such events as council meetings, religious presentations, welcomings, petitions, and meetings with other clans and nations. The highly personal and transitory nature of this form has made it difficult to record, but some speeches of noted orators and chiefs, such as the Seneca chief known as Red-jacket, were recorded at official meetings between the Nations and European colonists.
Native American song may be also of a religious or personal nature. However, the oral context of a song or chant makes it something quite different from the poetry of the Western - European American - traditions; the importance that poetry places on appreciating each word and pause is similar to the appreciation of Native American song traditions. The reader must supply much of the music, gesture, and social context that informs the expression.
The forms of Native American religious expression may vary from dance dramas stages as public ritual to personal vision songs, depending on the individual Nation’s tradition and religious activity. Religious, expression may take the form of a highly formalized series of chants/songs that take years to learn or a personal rite evoking an animal spirit protector (sometimes known as a “totem”). Expressions from any of the other categories may also be religious. It must be remembered that to many Native American Nations, such as the Cherokee, the boundary separating the religious and the secular is undefined.
Because oral literature is a performance literature is a performance literature, written texts of oral expression present only one dimension of a multifaceted experience. In Native American oral performance the audience plays a crucial role in shaping the total expression. An intense interactive context is built up, extending into a tradition of previous performances and a web of shared cultural expectations and references. In reading written translations of verbal acts, we may unaware of aesthetic norms and cultural expectations unique to Native Americans in general or to a specific Nation. Even the best of translations must struggle to give the reader of English some sense of the texture of the language used - which might include its formality, voice, word choice - and of the dramatic sense of performance and religious ramifications of the verbal event. But from these translations we gain deeper insight into the native peoples of the Americas and into the fascinating variety of literary expression illuminating the human experience.
Storytelling also allows people to get to know one another. Cherokee storyteller Freeman Owle says that storytelling is "two-way interaction" between the listener and the storyteller. He says that when the children of today watch television, they get only one-way interaction. "They have no input, they have no identity, they have no place, and they have no one there with them." In American Indian communities, as long as the stories are being told, that identity will exist, that sense of knowing who you are and where you came from.
Source: Currie II, Jefferson. "American Indian Storytelling." NCPedia.org, 2013, web, 12 Aug. 2013.
Traditional Native American Literary Expression
When European explorers began to conquer the Americas, they found more than three hundred cultural groups speaking some two hundred languages from several major language families - in North American alone. These nations varied widely in political organization, economic structures, family structures, and cultural values, but they all had in common a rich oral literature, developed over centuries and perfectly responsive to cultural needs and social relations. However, the oral nature of traditional Native American literary expression, the violent political and land struggles between the colonists and native nations, and their differing social systems made it difficult for the European colonists to appreciate native creativity.
There are significant differences between the written and oral modes of expression, even without considerations of translation or divergent cultural expectations. But all literatures present verbal creation rising from negotiations between individual talent and supporting tradition regardless of the format. A vibrant oral tradition was central to most Native American societies and continues to be so today. Through the oral tradition, people pass on their wisdom, their understanding of how to survive, their cultural values, and their sense of identity. Native American societies clarify their relationship to the universe, to both seen and unseen powers, as exemplified by the Coyote Trickster tales of the Navaho Nation. They formally encode a worldview and make sacred their paths through life in a way that requires the older generations to encourage and guide the younger ones. In the oral tradition, communities are bound together, and individuals find or are given their places in society. Over centuries, an expressive body of literature has matured. That literature may be divided - according to European traditions - into oral narratives, oratory, song/poetry, and religious expression. However, these categories are not exclusive and commonly overlap.
Oral narratives might consist of sacred or secular stories. Most often they were told by an elder in a storytelling session with young people and adults in attendance, as were the myths and morals of the Cherokee. Some narratives were told in religious circumstances as part of a larger ritual. Others deal with more historical material, as do stories of many nations’ stories concerning their first contacts with white Europeans - or with the experience of one person, hero/heroine, or ancestor.
Native American orators perfected their rhetorical skills during such events as council meetings, religious presentations, welcomings, petitions, and meetings with other clans and nations. The highly personal and transitory nature of this form has made it difficult to record, but some speeches of noted orators and chiefs, such as the Seneca chief known as Red-jacket, were recorded at official meetings between the Nations and European colonists.
Native American song may be also of a religious or personal nature. However, the oral context of a song or chant makes it something quite different from the poetry of the Western - European American - traditions; the importance that poetry places on appreciating each word and pause is similar to the appreciation of Native American song traditions. The reader must supply much of the music, gesture, and social context that informs the expression.
The forms of Native American religious expression may vary from dance dramas stages as public ritual to personal vision songs, depending on the individual Nation’s tradition and religious activity. Religious, expression may take the form of a highly formalized series of chants/songs that take years to learn or a personal rite evoking an animal spirit protector (sometimes known as a “totem”). Expressions from any of the other categories may also be religious. It must be remembered that to many Native American Nations, such as the Cherokee, the boundary separating the religious and the secular is undefined.
Because oral literature is a performance literature is a performance literature, written texts of oral expression present only one dimension of a multifaceted experience. In Native American oral performance the audience plays a crucial role in shaping the total expression. An intense interactive context is built up, extending into a tradition of previous performances and a web of shared cultural expectations and references. In reading written translations of verbal acts, we may unaware of aesthetic norms and cultural expectations unique to Native Americans in general or to a specific Nation. Even the best of translations must struggle to give the reader of English some sense of the texture of the language used - which might include its formality, voice, word choice - and of the dramatic sense of performance and religious ramifications of the verbal event. But from these translations we gain deeper insight into the native peoples of the Americas and into the fascinating variety of literary expression illuminating the human experience.
