Readings (Trickster Tales)

Here are the Native American stories about Coyote:

Here is a link to "Coyote and Bull," a story from the Nez Perce tribe.

http://www.ucan-online.org/legend.asp?legend=5913&category=8

"Coyote as Medicine Man" is also known as "Coyote and the Mallard Ducks":

http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/Coyote-And-The-Mallard-Ducks-NezPerce.html

"The Origin of Eternal Death" is also known as "Coyote and Eagle go to the Land of the Dead"

http://www.native-languages.org/wishramstory.htm

In this story from the Shoshone, Wolf tricks Coyote:

http://www.shoshoneindian.com/legend_001.htm

Here is another Raven story ("Raven and His Grandmother") from the Aleut:

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore27.html

Closer to us geographically is "Rabbit and Fox," an Iroquois story:

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore40.html

"How Rabbit Brought Fire to the People" is a Creek story:
http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore61.html

Enjoy!

Dr. Szlyk

Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth (Part 2)

Link

If you would like to explore more about creation myths, feel free to click on the link above.  The picture above the link is Herb Roe's illustration of the Hero Twins from the Mayan myth of the Popol Vuh.

More Creation Myths

We will start off EN 211 with some Native American creation myths, so I thought that I would post a few sites that my students in last semester's mythology class found.  Not all of these myths are from the Americas, however.

The picture above is of Bill Reid's sculpture of Raven and the First Men, a creation myth from the Haida nation, a people from Canada's Pacific Northwest.  The sculpture is now in Vancouver's Museum of Anthropology.

Let's begin with an overview from Worldhistory.net, a British site.  This overview will give you the differences and the similarities between various creation myths (Greece, Japan, The Bible's, and so on).

http://historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab83

Wikipedia's overview is more extensive with many more examples. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth

In fact, you may find the Haida's creation myth here, explaining the sculpture above & below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myth#Haida


You may also enjoy this creation myth from Hawaii:

http://www.mythome.org/hawaiicreation.html

Here is a picture of the goddess Pele from Twisted Cocktail Party Physics, a blog.

These Cherokee myths recount the origins of various parts of creation like game animals, corn, and medicinal plants.

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore80.html

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore82.html

Being a New Englander, I have to include the Mik'Maq's creation story:

http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/lore21.html

As a point of comparison to the Native American creation myths, here is a link to a retelling of the Greek creation myth.  The article was originally posted at Williams College's web site.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080424092313/http://www.cs.williams.edu/~lindsey/myths/myths_16.html

In addition, here is a link to a retelling of Genesis' creation myth, also originally from Williams College's web site.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080430155831/http://www.cs.williams.edu/~lindsey/myths
/myths_15.html

The picture below is one of British poet and artist William Blake's illustrations from Paradise Lost.  In this illustration, Satan is spying on Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  This picture is from Wikipedia, and the illustration itself is in the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Or you may prefer to read the Japanese creation myth of Izanagi and Izanami, a story that my student found to be beautiful yet tragic.

http://www.mythencyclopedia.com/Iz-Le/Izanagi-and-Izanami.html

Below is a contemporary illustration of this story by Gospodar Svemira, which I found at Wikipedia.

To put these stories into perspective, you may want to look at what Joseph Campbell and others have had to say on myths and sacred tales:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/perspectives1.html