Legends of the Pacific Northwest Unit
Part A: Favorites
How Silver-Fox Created the World
This was one of the most unusual creation stories I have read thus far. Instead of some fantastic supreme being creating the world, in this story it is done by Silver-Fox with the help of his companion (slash servant?), Coyote. Silver-Fox and Coyote live in the sky above that which was only water. Silver-Fox goes behind Coyote's back and begins to create the world (Coyote is against this for some reason). Throughout the actions of Silver-Fox to create the world, his character is made increasing unlikable - he is bossy, superior, and sneaky. There are many arguments between Silver-Fox and Coyote about how the seasons should be divided and what type of food should be provided on earth. I imagine that Silver-Fox and Coyote will continue to be opposing forces as I continue the reading.
Three Coyote Stories
The Creation of Mankind: the rivalry between Silver-Fox and Coyote is reintroduced - Silver-Fox makes people out of sticks and Coyote wishes to do the same and tries to do as he saw Silver-Fox do, but his people turn into wood-shavings when he touches them
How Coyote Got His Cunning: Here we meet Chareya, the Old Man Above, who is also attributed with creation in these folktales. He tells the animals that in order to rank them, each would be given a bow and the length of the bow determined which animal was the most important. Coyote resolves to stay awake so he can get to Chareya first and get the longest bow. He falls asleep, however, and is the very last animal to get his bow. Taking pity on the Coyote, Chareya grants the now unimportant the most cunning of all the animals.
How Coyote was Killed: Coyote decided he wanted to travel the sky world. He is, after much pleading, able to convince Star to take him into the sky. As they travel, Coyote becomes very cold because he is very high up in the sky world and Star is not warm like Sun. He falls back to the earth and is squashed flat.
Coyote seems to serve as the hardluck comedic character in these folktales, the foil of the clever Silver-Fox.
How the Old Man Above Created the World\
This unit contains multiple creation stories which is very interesting. They don't all exactly align which makes me wonder how it was decided which creation story was the true one within this culture. In this story, Chareya, the Old Man Above creates a hole in the sky so that he can get down to the earth and so that the sun can shine and melt the mass of ice and snow that is the earth. After the earth is melted, he creates animals from sticks and leaves and makes the grizzly bear to be master of them all. The Old Man lives in an ice teepee because he comes to fear the grizzly he has created. The story ends with the coming of the "pale-face" the White Man. According to the story, after the White Men came, the Old Man went away. This paints an interesting parallel of how the culture of the Native peoples of North America slowly went away with the coming of the European colonizers.
How Beaver Stole Fire
This is my favorite story from this unit thus far. In this world, all living things are personified including animals and even trees. The Pine Trees it seemed held the secret of fire but refused to share it with the animals. Without fire, the animals nearly froze to death come winter. Beaver decides to steal the fire from the Pine Trees while they are holding council. The action following, the Pine Trees' pursuit of the thief gives a bit of an etiology of the geography of the Pacific Northwest - where certain trees stand today, is where each tree gave up in its pursuit of beaver. Old Cedar chased Beaver for the longest but eventually gives up at the top of a very high hill atop which, to this day, he stands alone.
Chinook Wind
This story reminded me a bit of the Hatfields and McCoys and the generations long feud that existed between the two families. Here, the two rival families are the Chinook brothers, who cause the warm wind to blow, and the Walla Walla family, who causes the cold wind to blow. They decide to finally hash out all of their differences in the form of the wrestling match. Whoever loses must have his head cut off. Coyotes is set to be the judge but he cleverly fixes the contest so that the Chinook brothers would fall and so they are all killed. One of the Chinook brothers leaves behind a son and wife and the wife tells her son that he must avenge his father's death when he grows older. Meanwhile, the Walla Walla brothers are wreaking havoc in Umatilla where his grandparents live - they constantly make the cold wind blow and steal the fist of Young Chinook's grandparents. Young Chinook is able to outwit the Walla Walla brothers so that they can no longer steal fish from his family. They challenge him to the same wrestling match that his father had fallen in, but this time, Coyote fixes the contest in Young Chinook's favor so that a balance could be restored between the two winds.
As-ai-yahal
This story gives several etiologies, but the most prominent is the etiology for summer and winter. As-ai-yahal tricks the East Wind, who freezes the earth so no one can obtain food, into believing that melting water is herring so the Wind stopped blowing and the snow and ice melted giving way to a much warmer season.
Three Raven Stories
The Origin of Daylight: The cousin of the Raven, Gull kept the light of the earth in a small box which he guarded carefully. That was the only light on earth. So Raven tricks his cousin into opening the box by causing a thorn to be stuck in Gull's foot and claiming that he cannot remove it without light.
Owl and Raven: Owl, who is close friends with Raven, makes a dress for Raven but Raven refuses to sit still as Owl tries to fit the dress. Annoyed with Raven, Owl, dumps the contents of a blubber lamp all of the white dress of Raven, and since then Raven is black all over.
The Spell of the Laughing Raven: A pair of moccasins is stolen and in a series of events, makes its way into the hand of grizzly, who is killed by Old Gray Wolf for possession of the moccasins. Because Old Grizzly was killed, the Klamath Lake People fight the Northerners while Raven laughs and laughs.
Woodrat and Rabbits
This story is surprisingly morbid. The jist is that Woodrat challenges several rabbits to a quarrel and when they refuse he quarrels with them anyway ultimately killing 5 of them and eating them with is other. Eventually, Woodrat and his mother are caught and burned to death. Morbid as it was, I liked the sudden turn the story took. It was unexpected which made the story that much more interesting.
Why There are no Snakes in Takhoma
This is a sort of a version of the flood that is required to reset creation after the creator becomes disgusted by its wickedness. However, there is a twist in that it is the animals, not mankind, that need to be reset. A medicine man shoots arrows into a cloud to make a chain for all of the good animals to go up to escape the flood. However, it is discovered soon that some bad animals as well as snakes are trying to ascend. The medicine man breaks the chain of arrow causing the bad animals to fall back to the earth and be drowned in the flood.
Part B: Favorites
Cry-Because-He-Had-No-Wife
This story was a bit difficult to follow - it has so many different twists and turns and parts that seem somewhat disconnected from the rest of the story. However, it was a very interesting story, nonetheless. A boy is known for crying day and night because he wishes for a wife. He starts on a tremendous journey to find the girl that will be his wife. He must outsmart a giant, get past a deadly cliff, and then outrun a great horse that guards the girl's house. He does all these things and is able to marry the girl, after which, he has a man's body. The two then travel back to the man's home and must use different types of whips in order to get home on the horse. This story in its entirety made me think of a Greek Epic like the Odyssey in which the hero must encounter several strange obstacles and characters throughout his journey. Some parts of the journey were difficult to understand completely like the bit about the whips.
Two Thunder-Bird Stories
The Golden Age: This story tells of how the Tinne people lost their immortality because they failed to obey the Thunderbird. As long as they kept a sacred arrow given to them by the Thunderbird, they would not have to die, but eventually, they use the arrow and they have to die like everyone else.
Origin of the Thunderbird - we learn here where this mystical Thunderbird even came from.
The Thunderbird was created when the south wind catches a whale and cuts it across the back instead of longways. The whale turns into a bird which was the Thunderbird
An Indian's Vow to the Thunder Gods
This story was a little sad. It reminded me of the story of Rumplestiltskin but without the happy ending. A woman promises to give her first child to the Thunder Gods as a tribute, but after her son is born, she is overcome with joy and love for the boy and forgets all about her promise. Eventually, the Thunder Gods strike the boy dead, finally claiming his life as their own and the woman mourns heavily and as she ages, her story comes to be known through the sad song she sings about her loss.
Chinook Ghosts
In this story, a group of ghosts decide they wish to have a wife and thus take away Blue Jay's sister Ioi. Blue Jay goes to the land of the dead which appears as a large village where the men are skeletons, the people of the village fish for leaves and branches which are their trout and salmon, and the canoes used are old and worn. Blue Jay proves to be a menace in this world and the ghosts command Ioi to send Blue Jay home, Blue Jay does not follow his sister's instructions and dies on the way back. Now that he is to be a resident of the land of the living rather than a visitor, he can see the town as those living see it: full of men, not skeletons, actual salmon and trout, and new gleaming canoes. This was a very interesting twist to the story and it was cool to note the contrast drawn here between life and death especially to those who are not dead yet.
The Memaloose Islands
This is another story involving a visit to the land of the dead by one who is not yet dead. A maiden loses her husband and visits the death island to find him. She and her father journey by canoe and once they reach the island, the maiden steps out on the shore where she meets her husband but her father returns. The maiden and her husband dance all evening and they fall asleep. When she awakes, the maiden discovers that she is actually in the land of the dead rather than just on its shoes and flees back to her own village. Eventually, a baby is born to the woman, half human half spirit, and the woman's father wishes for his mother to meet the baby. He warns his mother not to look upon the child until it is ten days old, but predictably, the old woman cannot wait and gazes at the child who promptly dies. This angers the spirits and from then on, living people were not able to visit the land of the dead. This was interesting to me and I wondered if it had some sort of symbolic meaning, like people who were in the habit of living in the past learned how not to do so.
Coyote and Grizzly
The story begins with Old Grizzly becoming ill from eating too many Indians (talk about morbid!) and so she sends for Coyote as a medicine man. But Coyote decides that it is really in everyone's best interest for Grizzly to just die. He tells the grizzly that she is sick from eating too many Indians and she becomes angry at this for some reason, jumping up to chase him. Coyote runs from Grizzly all the time taunting her and finally tricks her into crossing a bridge which cannot support her weight. She falls and drown and Coyote is able to go back and tell his people that he has killed the troublesome Grizzly. Throughout this reading, I've sensed that Coyote has a bit of a complex - he needs to feel important which I suppose arises from his low rank derived from his story in the beginning of the reading.
Coyote and the Dragon
This is another testament to Coyote's apparent inferiority complex. He resolves to kill a dragon that had been plaguing the countryside. The dragon can only exist in the darkness so Coyote ropes down the sun to draw the dragon out of his lair, then releases this sun so that the dragon is killed.
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