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The World Mythology
Spirits, Heroes & Hunters from North American Indian Mythology
A retelling of traditional North American Indian tales recounts the stories that native Americans passed along orally from generation to generation before and after the European invasion.
132 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1981
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 7, 2014
I love to read mythology books. It enriches our understanding of the cultures of other people, because through the mythology, folktales, and religion of a particular people we get to see their inner worlds. Everyone has an inner world, and any race with a genuine tight bond among each other has, effectively, a shared inner landscape.
Understanding other races of the earth helps us understand our own race, because it is only through contact with the Other that we understand ourselves. If everyone was naturally predisposed towards thought instead of action, nobody would "know" he is a thinker instead of a doer. But because a thinker meets a doer, he knows that he is one instead of the other.
Similarly, I come from a background that hails deities who are either sovereign over natural phenomenon, beyond natural phenomenon, or who embody ideals such as Justice, Strength, Purity, etc.
Whereas the Native Americans have stories about talking animals and people who turn into animals who teach people about ceremonies necessary to make it rain or to have a successful hunt. All of their myths have the theme of natural phenomenon, and a lot of them deal with how or why certain animals act the way they do. They are closer to nature than I am. It's not MY heritage, it's someone else's - and that helps me understand my own. But in order for this to work it's also necessary for you understand your own, but that's a rant for another day.
Also, someone's heritage/culture is not better than someone else's, though of course all people will naturally consider their own to be better than someone else's since it resonates more powerfully with them.
Myths also enriches the imagination. Myths will always permeate our minds and the stories that we tell regardless of rather or not we acknowledge their power.
Plus, some of them can be genuinely spiritually moving and reading/hearing them can be an exercise in intuition (just like how math is an exercise in reasoning). To quote joseph campbell, "Myths come from the same realm as dreams" and "A myth is a public dream, a dream is a private myth".
This particular book is not a complete collection. It doesn't contain every myth of the North American Indians (that book would be massive, and compiling it would be impossible) and I think there is too few of a selection here. It only skims the surface.
The book begins with a simple and interesting introduction that explains that the Native Americans are not one unified civilization, but rather a diverse population of tribes who all had different lifestyles depending on where they lived (and North America is a diverse landscape!) with Eskimos in the north living in a different way than the horse riders of the Great plains, who live quite differently from the tribes living in what we know call Florida (who, because of the landscape, focused on the "gathering" part of "hunting and gathering").
Because of this, as the introduction points out, the myths are very different from one place to another. However, one can still find the underlying themes of the native american mythology. Just as, as in numerous comparative religion and mythology scholars have pointed out, the mythologies of the celts, the greeks, the romans, the norse, the slavs, etc are all very similar- but also different - and it is easy to find the similarities.
I found this introduction the best part of the book and a perfect way to start this collection of myths. Each myth that was re-told began with a blurb of where the myth was found and short information about that tribe, which goes to show the incredible diversity of people who existed on the pre-colonial North American continent.
The stories themselves are told rather matter-of-factly, which is both good and bad. It's good because that way I am more certain that the myths are not being tampered with to add more "pizzazz" (as Hollywood often does to greek myths, or as publishers of mythology books for children often do, sadly). It's bad because often the myths can be made boring by that form of storytelling, and a myth should be anything but boring. I think a good collection-of-myths book should tell myths in such a way that they contain a balance of "this is actually how the traditional story goes, including the confusing parts that don't make sense to our modern minds" and "let me tell you this in a way that will appeal to you and entertain you".
I understand that the people who colloborated to write care about the integrity of the stories quite a lot, but this book is marketed to children 10-12, and I fear that someone that age may lose interest fast.
My favourite stories were "Sedna, the witch under the sea", "the girl who married a bear", "scar face and the sun dance" "Hasjelti's dance" and "The Hummingbird Brothers".
Each story also contains pencil drawings, and there are 18 paintings littered throughout the volume. In my opinion, if a book, especially a book like this, has illustrations in it it should enhance the story. It should make me even more absorbed, help me feel the atmosphere more, make my imagination come even more alive. The pencil drawings all do that. They are done in an authentic North American Indian way.
The paintings are a mixed bag. Some of them are great and add to the story, but some of them are, quite frankly, unappealing. The bad ones are either too dull or the people have weird faces. In fact, the illustrator is bad at painting faces.
Overall, this is a great book for someone starting to get an interest in mythology (and all people should, especially the youngun's!). For someone a little more experienced in mythology-reading it is not recommended.
I have three other books from the "World Mythology" series that I look forward to reading and reviewing.
Understanding other races of the earth helps us understand our own race, because it is only through contact with the Other that we understand ourselves. If everyone was naturally predisposed towards thought instead of action, nobody would "know" he is a thinker instead of a doer. But because a thinker meets a doer, he knows that he is one instead of the other.
Similarly, I come from a background that hails deities who are either sovereign over natural phenomenon, beyond natural phenomenon, or who embody ideals such as Justice, Strength, Purity, etc.
Whereas the Native Americans have stories about talking animals and people who turn into animals who teach people about ceremonies necessary to make it rain or to have a successful hunt. All of their myths have the theme of natural phenomenon, and a lot of them deal with how or why certain animals act the way they do. They are closer to nature than I am. It's not MY heritage, it's someone else's - and that helps me understand my own. But in order for this to work it's also necessary for you understand your own, but that's a rant for another day.
Also, someone's heritage/culture is not better than someone else's, though of course all people will naturally consider their own to be better than someone else's since it resonates more powerfully with them.
Myths also enriches the imagination. Myths will always permeate our minds and the stories that we tell regardless of rather or not we acknowledge their power.
Plus, some of them can be genuinely spiritually moving and reading/hearing them can be an exercise in intuition (just like how math is an exercise in reasoning). To quote joseph campbell, "Myths come from the same realm as dreams" and "A myth is a public dream, a dream is a private myth".
This particular book is not a complete collection. It doesn't contain every myth of the North American Indians (that book would be massive, and compiling it would be impossible) and I think there is too few of a selection here. It only skims the surface.
The book begins with a simple and interesting introduction that explains that the Native Americans are not one unified civilization, but rather a diverse population of tribes who all had different lifestyles depending on where they lived (and North America is a diverse landscape!) with Eskimos in the north living in a different way than the horse riders of the Great plains, who live quite differently from the tribes living in what we know call Florida (who, because of the landscape, focused on the "gathering" part of "hunting and gathering").
Because of this, as the introduction points out, the myths are very different from one place to another. However, one can still find the underlying themes of the native american mythology. Just as, as in numerous comparative religion and mythology scholars have pointed out, the mythologies of the celts, the greeks, the romans, the norse, the slavs, etc are all very similar- but also different - and it is easy to find the similarities.
I found this introduction the best part of the book and a perfect way to start this collection of myths. Each myth that was re-told began with a blurb of where the myth was found and short information about that tribe, which goes to show the incredible diversity of people who existed on the pre-colonial North American continent.
The stories themselves are told rather matter-of-factly, which is both good and bad. It's good because that way I am more certain that the myths are not being tampered with to add more "pizzazz" (as Hollywood often does to greek myths, or as publishers of mythology books for children often do, sadly). It's bad because often the myths can be made boring by that form of storytelling, and a myth should be anything but boring. I think a good collection-of-myths book should tell myths in such a way that they contain a balance of "this is actually how the traditional story goes, including the confusing parts that don't make sense to our modern minds" and "let me tell you this in a way that will appeal to you and entertain you".
I understand that the people who colloborated to write care about the integrity of the stories quite a lot, but this book is marketed to children 10-12, and I fear that someone that age may lose interest fast.
My favourite stories were "Sedna, the witch under the sea", "the girl who married a bear", "scar face and the sun dance" "Hasjelti's dance" and "The Hummingbird Brothers".
Each story also contains pencil drawings, and there are 18 paintings littered throughout the volume. In my opinion, if a book, especially a book like this, has illustrations in it it should enhance the story. It should make me even more absorbed, help me feel the atmosphere more, make my imagination come even more alive. The pencil drawings all do that. They are done in an authentic North American Indian way.
The paintings are a mixed bag. Some of them are great and add to the story, but some of them are, quite frankly, unappealing. The bad ones are either too dull or the people have weird faces. In fact, the illustrator is bad at painting faces.
Overall, this is a great book for someone starting to get an interest in mythology (and all people should, especially the youngun's!). For someone a little more experienced in mythology-reading it is not recommended.
I have three other books from the "World Mythology" series that I look forward to reading and reviewing.
June 27, 2022
Picked this up at a Goodwill for $1 and I'm glad I did. It was great getting some insight into indigenous mythology. I've always like cultural myths and this book was exactly what I wanted it to be.
It contains a multitude of stories and some genuinely fantastic full page art pieces. It's not very long and simple to read.
It contains a multitude of stories and some genuinely fantastic full page art pieces. It's not very long and simple to read.
October 28, 2012
Great info to add to the classroom.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews