Creation stories
This week we learned about the creation story of the Cherokee, the emergence story of the Lakota, and the Origin Story of the Hopi. The most interesting part about these stories was their similarities. What stood out to me the most was the origin of many appearances of Animals and the world itself from the Cherokee creation story. The black bear’s coloration coming from being burnt is my favorite example. This idea of animal origin is not exclusive to the Cherokee as the Lakota say that Bison were the first humans to walk the earth. Another similarity all three stories have is the importance of the number four. In the Cherokee story, the birds fly in four directions and the world itself is held up by four silver cords. The Lakota tribe believes the number four is important because when leaving Wind Cave they stopped four times to pray. The Hopi origin story states that the first people went in four different directions to find the center place. The similarities don’t stop there in both the Lakota and Hopi stories mankind originated from the ground and I find this idea very interesting and I feel it adds credit to their claim. The final thing I want to talk about is the Lakota’s wind cave and how cool of a location the wind cave itself is. While in class we talked about how actually going to an area you’re writing about is important. While I did not physically go to the wind cave I did take an online field trip there on Google Maps and is a grand location and I understand how the Lakota believed within lies access to the spirit world. It’s interesting enough I plan on visiting one day in the future.
Oral Tradition
I feel it was very important that I listened to these stories instead of reading them. Verbal storytelling is extremely important to native american culture. This is because many tribes did not have a written language so verbal storytelling was important to persevering history. This also means hearing a verbal story is hearing the story in its original format which is important. In class we also talked about when hearing stories we can think about how the story may have evolved over time and what the original story or events may have been.