Native Oral Traditions
Native Oral Traditions
—from a Papago narrative
—a Papago song1
IF WE ARE
to speak of the
literature of the American West, we must speak first of
the native American literatures, for each of the two or
three hundred tribal communities living in the West
has invested this land with traditions of story and song.
The reciprocal relationship between man and the land is
a common denominator for all native literature. The land
is our source, and here, in Mary Austin's phrase,
"the land sets the limit."
2
Within the limits the land sets, it remains for man to
imagine ways of seeing and talking about it, ways of
knowing it. First Born emerges from the land only to
turn back and create it with story and song. The Papago
communities who join together to tell of First Born
invest the land with meaning. They make the land into
a cultural landscape.
Cultural landscapes are social and cumulative. They
are the natural result of a process which has
been carried on for centuries in native communities
on this continent. Cultural landscapes are made
whenever communities of people join words to place.
They enable man to feel a sense of
place, to hear the darkness rub the water.
The remarkable thing about the cultural landscape
that whites call the "American West" is that
it was created in absolute ignorance of the cultural
landscapes of the native communities it displaced.
The explorers, missionaries, trappers, ranchers,
and settlers who flooded the West saw it as had
Lewis and Clark, "a void to be imagined."
It was only in the late nineteenth century, when
most native American peoples were safely confined
on reservations, that we began to recognize the
achievement of native verbal artists and to realize
the intimate imaginative relations their stories
and songs shared with the earth.
To speak of these native verbal arts as literature
has certain dangers. In
a few significant cases, they were literally so:
the Toltec and Mayan glyphic systems of Mesoamerica
and the pictographic systems of the north Pacific
coast, Plains and Southwest. More commonly, they were
preserved wholly in the memory of those who performed
them, each performance being at once a kind of
publication and reading. Traditional native
American literatures are thus predominantly oral
and aural, not literal. So to speak of a native
American literature might have two meanings.
First and most significantly, native American literature consists of
stories and songs as they are performed in natural
contexts in the communities which support them.
Secondly, native American literature might be said
to refer to those transcriptions of story and song
from native American communities which record in
print the oral performances of native people.
It is the latter, of course, that academics
usually think of when they speak of native American
literature.
There is a connotative problem as well. In the
Euro-American tradition, we tend to think of
literature, indeed all the arts, as something
associated with marginal misfits and the discontented.
3
These are associations to leave aside in
approaching native literatures. In native
communities stories and songs count, they
make a difference, and those who make and perform
them are among the most valued members of the community.
They remind the people of who and what they are,
why they are in this particular place, and how
they should continue to live here. A Navajo
singer recently told us: "When one has
even one song, he will live for a long time.
He will live by it. He will guide his children
by it. He will guide his people by it."
4
Literature in native American communities has
always been central to man's existence.
It is not possible here to discuss all the native
literatures of the American West. Both space
and experience limit this discussion to some
thematic and generic similarities among them.
To an explication of these is added a brief
review of the history of collecting, translating,
and studying native oral literatures, as well
as a final comment on the continuing presence of
native literatures in the West.
Long ago, they say, when the earth was not yet finished,
darkness lay upon the water and they rubbed each other.
The sound they made was like the sound at the edge of
a pond. There, on the water, in the darkness, in the
noise, and in a very strong wind, a child was born.
First Born made the earth.
First Born made the earth.
Go along, go along, go along.
It's going along. Now all will remain as it is.
Despite their diversity, there are striking generic
similarities among the native American literatures.
Most native traditions distinguish between narrative
and song, and many consider prayer as a separate category
of verbal expression as well. Contemporary Navajo singer
Andrew Natonabah, for example, speaks of how "the
stories, the songs, and the prayers come together
to form a literature."
Anyone who glances at native American narratives must
be struck by their high level of organization. And one
who troubles to inquire into native thought on the
subject will discover important insights regarding form
and genre in native American tradition. Narratives tend
to be divided into those thought to be literally true
and those thought to be fictional. While these distinctions
resemble the European distinction between "myth" and
"folktale," it is very important to recognize that
native American people have long had their own ways of
talking about the distinctions. Winnebago, for example,
distinguishes between waikan, what-is-sacred,
and worak, what-is-recounted; Zuni between stories
of the chimiky'ana'kowa, the Beginning, which are
regarded as true historically, and telapnaawe,
"tales," which are considered fictional.
In Hopi society, tuuwutsi, stories about make-believe
things, are distinguished from stories which are ka'atsa,
"not false," that is to say the events of Hopi history.
5
Taken together, "true" narratives often form a kind of Bible for native
peoples, a collection of central religious texts which
furnishes an allusive background for other native
literary forms. The core story is of the origin or
emergence of life, and a wide range of other narratives
generally branches off from the origin narrative like
so many limbs from the trunk of a tree. These may tell
of the migration of ancestors, detail the adventures
Of culture heroes and account for the origin of specific
ceremonies, customs, and rituals. "True" stories
of this sort are set in real time and real space but
before the world is as it is now. It is common for
them to be filled with place names, to be lengthy,
to be told to initiates in ritual settings, to contain
esoteric language, and to be the subject of endless
allusion, discussion, and interpretation. Hopi Albert
Yava tells of discussing and debating the Hopi tradition
that Hopi people climbed into this world from a lower
world through a bamboo reed:
Ñe: that is what happened;
when it was morning they tried to feed
him, but he would not eat, and then he went outside and just sort
of walked around, the way one does when one does not feel right,
perhaps when one hears of a relative dying and one feels
like walking somewhere and lying down; that is what
happened to the boy, and that is why he did not think
of eating anything, of drinking any water; in the
morning he went out and walked toward the north where
the cactus was standing; then when the sun was a bit
this way and made a shade, he walked over and laid in
the shade; he laid down; he laid face down; and it
happened that his mother was missing him, so she
followed him; she found him and saw the way he was
and was also that way; she understood what he was
seeing and why he was that way.
Ñe: after she saw him, she went back.
Ñe: after he was like that for a while,
it became noon and the shade moved the way it does in the afternoon. . . .
One night we were talking about it (in the kiva) and someone
said: "Now how in the world could all those
people come through a bamboo? How could they get in?
How could it hold their weight? How could they get
through the joints?"
6
Such questions indicate that there exists a
tradition of native critical inquiry based on oral
literary texts which has largely gone unremarked by scholars.
Stylistically, "true" narratives show enormous
variation throughout the West. Consider, for example,
the expansive accumulative quality of this portion
of a Papago narrative told over four consecutive nights
by medicine man Frank Lopez. "Ñe:"
marks the narrative into stanzas and has no direct
translation in English.
Ñe: his heart felt very bad,
from thinking of it, after he heard how his father was killed;
7
8
Lone time ago,
at nighttime,
They all started dancing.
They were all singing.
They said the gaans were coming to them,
and they came to them,
at etso goheyo [yellow place called].
There were four of them:
black,
blue/green,
yellow,
white.
They all,
all the gaans came down.
A second kind of narrative is generally regarded as "fictional" in native American communities. "Fictional" narratives are usually told during the winter at night by grandparents to delight and instruct their grandchildren, but they may be told at other times and in other circumstances as well. These narratives are often set off from normal discourse by special phrases which serve as formulaic openings and closings for the story. Somewhat in the manner of the European "once upon a time . . ." they signal listeners that the tale teller is moving from the world of literal truth into the fictional world of the tale. In Hopi communities, for example, where these stories are called tuuwutsi, a storyteller will begin with "Aliksaii . . .," and close with "Pai yuk polo" (Now to here it ends). In between, the audience must also respond with the formulaic expression "oo" after each sentence, for, as one teller puts it, "the storyteller is touchy, if you do not respond she may pout and not tell a story." 9
Formulaic endings among the Lakota demonstrate the type of story being told. He ha yela owihake (that is all; that is the end) is used at the end of those stories whose main purpose is to entertain rather than skee (it is said) and keya pie (they say) which signify that the story is true. Among the Western Apache, the closing formula is vivid: shi goshk' dash jaa (That's the way my yucca fruit hangs). 10 The yucca fruit resembles a cluster of bananas and is a particularly apt image for the kinds of stories which the teller encloses between the opening and closing formulae.
"Fictional" narratives of this sort are often episodic or cyclical, and cluster around the adventures of a conventional character. The cante fable is common, and narrators of fictional tales often embellish and embroider their narrations with vocal tone change and gesture.
Probably the most popular character type for
these stories is the trickster figure, so
labeled because he deceives and is deceived
himself again and again in stories. He appears
in a wide variety of guises throughout the native
West: Raven, Rabbit, Fox, and most commonly
Coyote. The trickster is pictured as a humorous
character who never learns from his mistakes but
continually entertains through his absurd antics.
At the same time, the trickster tales often
teach the listeners the outcome of inappropriate
actions. The trickster often embodies qualities
such as lust, greed, envy, and avarice.
The adventures attributed to him in a single
telling might range from an historical narrative
about how he stole fire with his tail for the
People, to a satirical one in which he tricks an
Anglo farmer.
Like his real life counterpart, the coyote, the trickster has proved to be
remarkably adaptable and well-suited to the twentieth century. In "fictional"
stories about him, we see the beginnings of social protest as a theme
in a native literature of the West. Consider the following episode from a
cycle of trickster tales collected among the Minnesota Ojibway by Coleman. The Trickster/Hero Nanabozho is addressing a council meeting:
You're not the only one who's puzzled. Long ago there was plenty of deer.
There was enough meat for food, hides for clothing, sinew for thread, hoofs
for little baskets. I used to soak the brains and rub them on the deer hide
to soften it. I hung up the deer hide on racks before a slow fire to dry it.
I cut up the deer meat and put it into a clean cloth sack and then later I
used it for making soup. I sliced it and chopped it fine for soup and other dishes.
Now I can't do this. There are game wardens. The new laws affect me too. I go fishing
and turn around, the game warden tells me I'm over my limit. I want rabbit and I set my
snares, and the game warden tells me I can't do that either.
My brother I am troubled. But I feel sorry for you. I have two
dollars in the bank. You can have it. (Imagine Nanabozho having money in the bank.)
"Not long ago," Nanabozho said, "I controlled everything.
Now there are big officials. Tell me how to get on WPA."
11
Songs pervade every part of life in native American communities from such ordinary daily activities as corn grinding, working in the fields, traveling, and child care to more extraordinary ritualistic occasions. Songs are both ceremonial and non-ceremonial.
Ceremonial songs are often regarded as a kind of special speech in native communities, a speech which distorts the regular cadences and sounds of everyday conversation at the same time as it stretches language semantically to accommodate poetic, religious realities. Such special speech may be regarded as an esoteric language in some communities. In others, it may give voice to the supernatural. The Yaqui deer singer, for example, considers his songs to be the voice of the deer who "does not speak, but speaks in an enchanted way." l2
Ceremonial songs show considerable range in length and complexity throughout the American West. The Navajo Nightway Ceremony, for example, fills nine days and eight nights with some four hundred songs such as the following:
Tsegíhi!
House made of dawn.
House made of evening light.
House made of the dark cloud.
House made of male rain.
House made of dark mist.
House made of female mist.
House made of female rain.
House made of pollen.
House made of grasshoppers.
Dark cloud is at the door.
The trail out of it is dark cloud.
The zigzag lightning stands high up on it.
Male deity!
Your offering I make.
I have prepared a smoke for you.
Restore my feet for me.
Restore my legs for me.
Restore my body for me.
Restore my mind for me.
Restore my voice for me.
This very day take out your spell for me.
Your spell remove for me.
You have taken it away for me.
Far off it has gone.
Happily I recover.
Happily my interior becomes cool.
Happily I go forth.
My interior feeling cool, may I walk.
No longer sore, may I walk.
Impervious to pain, may I walk.
With lively feelings, may I walk.
As it used to be long ago, may I walk.
Happily may I walk.
Happily with abundant dark clouds may I walk.
Happily with abundant showers may I walk.
Happily with abundant plants may I walk.
Happily on a trail of pollen may I walk.
Happily may I walk.
Being as it used to be long ago, may I walk.
May it be beautiful before me.
May it be beautiful behind me.
May it be beautiful below me.
May it be beautiful above me.
May it be beautiful all around me.
In beauty it is finished.
In beauty it is finished. 13
By contrast, a Yaqui fiesta might consist of singing a dozen short compressed
and highly imagistic songs such as the following:
Non-ceremonial songs accompany nearly all the ordinary motions of native American life.
It is not uncommon for songs used in a ceremonial context to be sung outside the ceremony
for other purposes. Thus songs from the Navajo Nightway Chant might be used as traveling
songs, or a Yaqui deer song might be sung to accompany housework, or a Blackfoot ceremonial
song might find its way into the repertory of social dance singers. There are many songs
which are created for non-ceremonial purposes as well: lullabies, grinding songs, and the
like. This is a Hopi lullaby for example:
14
These three like enchanted night buzzards
hover above me.
These three like enchanted night buzzards
hover above me.
As they are coming with the light before dawn,
here from the enchanted light before dawn,
on top, on the highest point where the mountain sits,
they are swinging.
These three like enchanted night buzzards hover above me.
Owl, owl, burrowing owl with their eyes each other relishing.
15
Owl, owl, burrowing owl with their eyes each other relishing.
Whomever's child is a crybaby, we will eat.
Not you while crying, then go to sleep, not you will I eat.
Then you while crying go to sleep, you will I eat.
a-a-a-ya-a-ay, hu'hu'hu'hu'
aaha iihiihi
aahaaha iihiihi
Another type of non-ceremonial song which has become popular with many contemporary native
Americans is the "49." These "49s" are often sung at the end of a powwow or more
formal dance occasion or "after the party is over." They combine English lyrics and
native vocables into some strikingly ironic love songs:
l6
o-oo-o-o-oo
oh yes, I love you honey
iya hana yo
I don't care if you married sixteen times
I'll get you yet
hay-ha-a-a
During the late nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth, there arose a new type
of literature based on the oral tradition. This was a form of autobiography in which an
intermediary wrote down the life story of an elderly Indian. In many cases, the
autobiography becomes a vehicle for telling the history
of the tribe during the person's life and for explaining native American philosophy.
Perhaps the most popular example of the "as-told-to" narrative is Black Elk
Speaks. In this work, the poet John G. Neihardt recorded the experiences of the
Sioux holy man, Black Elk. The work traces Black Elk's spiritual quest and that of his
people from the time of Custer and the exploitation of the Black Hills. Black Elk offers
a unique native American view of the events as a counter to accepted American
history. He also offers to all his "listeners" a picture of the power and the beauty
of his native tradition.
A number of other works also relate the perceptions of native Americans in a rapidly
changing milieu. Among the more important ones are Maria Chona's Autobiography of
a Papago Woman; Crushing Thunder: The Autobiography of a Winnebago; Guests Never
Leave Hungry: The Autobiography of James Sewid, a Kwakiutl Indian; and Lame
Deer: Seeker of Visions. Common to most of these works is a description of the
traditional world view of the tribal peoples before European contact. Some, such as Lame
Deer: Seeker of Visions, also offer acute criticism of the materialism and lack
of spirituality in American culture.
Despite their diversity of language and literary form, there are striking thematic similarities among the native literatures of the West. Four major themes are the sense of the sacred, the sense of the beautiful, the sense of place and the sense of community. l7 Each of these elements is closely interwoven with the others since the native philosophies from which the literature proceeds are unitive and holistic.
The Sacred. Religion permeates all of native American life. There is probably no aspect of it that could be called non-religious. Religion more often than not centers on the concept of a power or a set of powers which inform all things and which need to be contacted through words and acts if the world is to continue. So it is that words in native American communities make a difference. They matter, for they are used to contact the sacred. The sacred in turn gives language meaning; it gives words power. The sacred has the quality of balance and harmony when all is well. It celebrates a relationship among all things, a relationship in which harmony and balance are key notions.
The Beautiful. Man expresses this balance and harmony of life in the patterned beauty of story and song. The form and style of story and song suggest the shape of the sacred. Thus we find symmetry, repetition, and balance (antithesis) present and valued aesthetically in traditional native American literature.
When the sacred is expressed in story and song, it links the individual
to his community and religion through aesthetic perceptions. Thus when a
member of a Yaqui audience hears a deer song, he might say, "When I hear the songs,
it takes my mind to the East, to the seyewailo." The beautiful is thus experienced
as something very personal throughout native American communities. Acoma writer Simon Ortiz
speaks of the importance of situation in feeling the beauty of the song:
My father tells me, "This song is a hunting song, listen." He sings and I listen.
He may sing it again, and I hear it again. The feeling that I perceive is not only contained
in the words but there is something surrounding those words, surrounding the song, and it
includes us. It is the relationship that we share with each other and with everything else.
And that's the feeling that makes the song real and meaningful and which makes his singing and my
listening more than just a teaching and learning situation.
l8
Place. The beautiful and the sacred are always linked to particular places. Mountains, lakes, rivers, and other natural phenomena define the relationship of the individual to his environment. This connection with the land is essential to native American thought. Many stories recount the birth or migration of tribes, which feel a sense of well-being, of harmony when they are within sight of a sacred spot. The land offers both power and security to the People. For example, the Lakota revere the Black Hills, and the Navajo and Hopi view many southwestern mountains as the dwelling place of the gods. In some cases, an area is connected with the mythic beginnings of a tribe in the place, as with the lake of emergence for the Taos people. In other cases, the land is a representation of an event which ties the very blood of the people to their environment, as with the tribes of the Upper Midwest and the pipestone area in Minnesota. A sense of place gives meaning and continuity to the People.
Community. Yet another central theme is the idea of community. Among such diverse groups as the Haida of the Pacific Northwest, the Pawnee of the Plains and the Zuni of the Southwest, there resides an abiding and pervasive sense of community. This community often extends beyond the human to encompass everything in the animate and "inanimate" realms. The individual is constantly reminded that he is part of the whole, not any more important than any creature around him. This radical sense of community requires respect and concern for all of creation. Thus, many of the mythic tales are concerned with the time when every being was an integral part of the tribe. Even though there may be a difference in the physical appearance of things, the spirit which informs all life is the same.
Patterns of interest in American Indian story and song as literature have been cyclic. Just as American interest in anything about the American Indian ebbs and crests about once a generation so, too, does interest in American Indian literature. These generational cycles are reflected in the publications of anthologies of American Indian oral literature. Natalie Curtis's The Indians' Book (1907) marks the crest of a first cycle of interest; the publication of George Cronyn's The Path on the Rainbow (1918), a second; the appearance of two anthologies around mid-century–Margot Astrov's The Winged Serpent (1946) and A. Grove Day's The Sky Clears (1951), a third; and the flood of anthologies which arrived in bookstores in the late sixties and early seventies, epitomized by Jerome Rothenberg's Shaking the Pumpkin (1972) and William Brandon's The Magic World (1971), suggest a fourth. l9 That the most recent cycle has only begun to ebb, and that during its course some fifteen new anthologies of American Indian literature appeared, suggests that the total force of these cycles of interest is cumulative and has shown quantitative growth.
Beginning in earnest in the late nineteenth century and continuing into the present,
collection, translation, and interpretation of native American literature has had
a similar cyclical character. Throughout these cycles,
the issues and arguments among scholars as to how native American literature
should be translated and interpreted have remained surprisingly the same.
In one sense then, the cycles early in this century set the tone for almost
everything which has followed. It was during the last years of the nineteenth century
and the first of the twentieth that Washington Matthews, Alice Fletcher, Jeremiah Curtin,
Frank Cushing, Franz Boas, and many other
ethnologists and folklorists gathered enormous numbers of narratives and songs from
tribal peoples throughout the American West. Printed in limited scholarly editions,
these translations quickly attracted the attentions of many non-Indian poets
and writers. Almost immediately an adversary relation was established between
the anthropologists who strove to represent the stories and songs of Indian
people in interlinear word-for-word translations of purported scientific accuracy
and the poets who reached for the emotional core of the stories and songs they read.
Comments such as the following one from Washington Matthews's Navaho Legends are indicative.
Matthews and Boas and the other ethnologists and folklorists in their tradition
have tried to represent the words of American Indian story and song as
accurately and scientifically as they could in their translations.
An early spokeswoman for the poetic interpretation of texts was Mary Hunter Austin.
She argued that the letter was less important than the spirit. Working
just after Matthews, early in the present century, she remarked that
she was so interested in "primitive concept" that she did not
bother to record the original form of the songs she encountered among
native people. Rather she "[stripped] them off as so much husk to get at the
kernel of the experience."
21
Indeed Austin preferred not to regard her work
as translation at all. In The American Rhythm she writes, "If forced to affix a
title to my work I would prefer to call it not translation, but re-expression."
22
Mary Austin and those poets who have attempted to translate, "retranslate"
or "re-express" native American story and song have all been far more concerned
with communicating the emotional core, the spirit, of the text than with rendering
an accurate transliteration of it.
The tension between these two views of translating American Indian
oral literature continues throughout all the cycles and is with us in the
present. Each view is associated with interpretive styles as well.
The ethnologists have through the years tended to stress the necessity
for viewing native American story and song against the backdrop of
native American culture. They argue that it is virtually impossible
to reach an understanding of native American literature without a
knowledge of native American culture. Moreover, they have often placed
considerable stress on native American interpretations of native American
literature, internal rather than external interpretations–what has
lately been called metafolklore. At the same time, the thrust of their
efforts has been in the main preservationist, many times resembling the
verbal equivalent of salvage archaeology. By contrast, the poets have
placed a far greater emphasis on incorporating the content and style
of native American story and song into their own creative work. They
argue that this is the only way one may really understand American
Indian verbal expression, by making it one's own. In this way, they hope to
introduce the native American tradition into American literature generally,
and, in Austin's phrase, redirect "the ultimate literary destiny of America."
Stephen Powers, in his "Tribes of California," gives in simple and direct language,
the story of how fire came to the Karok nation. A few years after he wrote, someone
worked his story into a "Poem," which appeared most artistically illustrated,
in one of our leading magazines. In this poem, the Coyote, in a quandary, is
represented as "stroking his goatee." Coyotes have no goatees; Indians have no
goatees. The act of stroking the goatee, in thought or perplexity, is the special
mannerism of a nervous American. No allusion could be more out of place in an Indian
legend. Should the poet referred to ever select any of the tales in this book to
be tortured into a poem, I beg that he will not, even for the sake of making a faulty
rhyme, put a beard on the chin of the Navaho Coyote God.
20
One of the constant features of writing about native American story and song is the statement or implication that it is dead or dying. Commonly an editor or collector reports that but for his efforts these "dying whispers" would be lost. If the American West is any indication, nothing could be further from the truth. In many communities, traditions of story and song continue and flourish. Revivalist movements are well under way as well. Spurred on by the move to teach and/or recognize native cultures in the public school system and by a growing network of community controlled and operated schools on the reservations, Indian people are bringing back, maintaining, and preserving large parts of their heritage that seemed to be slipping away from them in the years after the Second World War. Then, too, there are the efforts of such linguists as Dell Hymes, who is attempting to "restore" native American story and songs to communities along the north Pacific coast through his linguistic work with texts collected earlier in this century. 23 Finally, there has appeared in the decade or so since N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn (1968) a generation of Indian writers who seek in their own work to represent the content and style of the oral traditions out of which they come. Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain, Ortiz's A Good Journey and Silko's Storyteller are each in a significant way collections of materials from oral tradition with informed inside commentary. 24 They provide us with the most accurate, authentic and accessible approaches to native American oral traditions presently available.
LARRY EVEN, University of Arizona
and
PAUL
PAVICH,
Fort Lewis College
eFONT SIZE=3 FACE="Garamond"> BibliographiesMurdock, George P. Ethnographic Bibliography of North America. 4th ed. rev. by Timothy J. O'Leary. 5 vols. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files Press, 1975. Comprehensive bibliographies for each of the North American tribes, regularly updated.
Ruoff, LaVonne, and Karl Kroeber. "A Basic Bibliography for Teachers Initiating Courses in Native American Literatures." Supplement to Studies in American Indian Literature 4 (1980). Available from Karl Kroeber, ed. SAIL, Dept. of English, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. 10027. Best short bibliography available. Regularly updated.
Stensland, Anna Lee. Literature by and About the American Indian: An Annotated Bibliography. Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1979.
Series
A number of scholarly publications regularly include oral literature. Among the most important of these are:
The Journal of American Folklore
The Bulletins and Annual Reports of the Bureau of American Ethnology
Papers and Memoirs from the American Museum of Natural HistoryGeneral Collections
Bierhorst, John. The Red Swan: Myths and Tales of the American Indians. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976. A collection of national scope organized around topics.
Evers, Larry, ed. The South Corner of Time: Hopi, Nawajo, Papago and Yaqui Tribal Literature. (Originally published as Sun Tracks: An American Indian Literary Series, Volume 6.) Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1980.
Thompson, Stith, ed. Tales of the North American Indians. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966. A classic collection with voluminous notes and bibliography. Reprint of 1929 edition.
Turner, Frederick W. III, ed. The Portable North American Indian Reader. New York: Viking, 1973. A good general collection of oral literature along with autobiography, poetry, etc.
Tribal Narratives
Deloria, Ella. Dakota Texts. New York: AMS Press, 1974. Contains original Dakota, literal and free translations by this Sioux scholar. Reprint of 1932 edition.
Jacobs, Melville. The Content and Style of an Oral Literature: Clackamas Chinook Myths and Tales. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959. Translation and analysis of eight stories.
Kilpatrick, Jack F. and Anna. Friends of Thunder: Folktales of the Oklahoma Cherokees. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1964. Interesting collection which includes notes on beliefs and social systems.
Momaday, N. Scott. The Way to Rainy Mountain. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1969. A collection of stories gathered by Momaday from his Kiowa kinsmen.
Radin, Paul. The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. New York: Schocken Books, 1972. A classic account of the Winnebago trickster and hare cycles. Reprint of 1956 edition.
Ramsey, Jarold. Coyote Was Going There. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977. A good overview of the narratives from Oregon tribes.
Yazzie, Ethelou. Navajo History, Vol. I. Many Farms, Arizona: Navajo Community College Press, 1971. The emergence stories of the Navajo.
Autobiography
Crashing Thunder. Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of a Winnebago. Ed. Paul Radin. New York: Dover, 1963. Insightful account of a traditional Indian caught up in rapid change. Reprint of 1920 edition.
Fire, John (Lame Deer) and Richard Erdoes. Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972. The life of a Sioux medicine man, more critical of America than Black Elk.
Lurie, Nancy Oestreich, ed. Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister of Crushing Thunder: The Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961. The life story of a seventy-five-year-old woman who was born in 1884.
Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. New York: Pocket Books, 1961. The account of Black Elk's visionary experiences and his accounts of Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee. Reprint of 1932 edition.
Sewid, James. Guests Never Leave Hungry: The Autobiography of James Sewid, a Kwakiutl Indian. Ed. James P. Spradley. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969. The life of a chieftain born in 1913.
Underhill, Ruth. Papago Woman. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979. A clear and powerful account of the cultural changes in a Papago woman's life. Reprint of 1936 edition.
Song
Bierhorst, John. Four Masterworks of American Indian Literature. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974. Contains the Navajo Night Chant, helpful annotation.
Curtis, Natalie. The Indians' Book. New York: Dover, 1968. Songs from throughout the country, includes the musical notation for each song. Reprint of 1907 edition.
Day, A. Grove. The Sky Clears: Poetry of the American Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964. Includes both song texts and commentary, organized by various regions of the continent. Reprint of 1951 edition.
Underhill, Ruth. Singing for Power: The Song Music of the Papago Indians of Southern Arizona. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1938. Poetic translations along with commentary.
Criticism
Allen, Paula Gunn, ed. Studies in American Indian Literature. New York: Modern Language Association, 1983. Course outlines, strategies for teaching, and critical essays.
Chapman, Abraham, ed. Literature of the American Indians: Views and Interpretations. New York: New American Library, 1975. A good collection of essays, including those of N. Scott Momaday, Paula Allen, and Vine Deloria, Jr. Also contains essays by the controversial Hyemeyohsts Storm and Jerome Rothenberg.
Kroeber, Karl, comp. Traditional American Indian Literatures: Texts and lnterpretations. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981. Essays by Kroeber, Jarold Ramsey, Dennis Tedlock, Barre Toelken, Tacheeni Scott, and Dell Hymes.
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