Tales of the North American Indians

by Stith Thompson (Editor)

"It is still, and probably will long remain, the most authentic and scholarly collection of Indian mythical tales." ―Frances Lee Utley

A classic collection of Indian myths and legends; mythological, hero and trickster tales; tales of magic and enchantment; many more.

Genres: Mythology, Native American, Folklore

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

Stith Thompson (March 7, 1885 – January 13, 1976) was an American scholar of folklore. He is the "Thompson" of the Aarne-Thompson classification system, which indexes certain folktales by their structure and assigns them AT numbers. He also developed an alpha-decimal motif-index system (A~Z followed by numeral) for cataloging individual motifs.

Reviews

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a compilation that is divided into themes (example: the animal spouse). Seems to have almost every NA tribe's tales or as many as possible. Can be hard to get through.

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly non-sensical. There were a handful of pretty decent ones that I'll probably circle back around to read. Which is saying a lot considering how atrocious I view most myth books. This book had a few unique ones. Granted, it still had the ones without any point.

One of the parts I thought was the most odd was toward the end there were Christian stories that had been tweaked to fit (barely) into their culture. Although one story did provide some humor.

Tower of Babel: "... they frequently made him drunk, and had connection with him. Thus they bore many children, and their father wondered how they became pregnant."

[db · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good reading for people interested in myths.

[Galion Public Library Teens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review by L.M.: "Someone who likes Native American stories would like this."