Reading Notes: California and the Old Southwest Part A

This weeks readings are based on Native American Folklore and I have chosen to read California and the Old Southwest.

What really stood out to me was that all the stories were from different tribes from the same region. It was interesting to get to read all the different version of the story of how the earth was created. The tribes included similar factors such as the Coyote playing a big role in a lot of the stories. Across all the stories, all the main characters are animals. This explains why Native Americans have such a big respect for nature and animals. Some of the creation stories sound similar to stories found in other religions like Christianity. There were multiple stories about a flood, which was also a big event in the Bible.

Bear climbing the mountain

Something that was cool was that all the stories gave explanations for why things are the way they are today. Such as the frog spitting fire into the drift wood explaining why driftwood would start a fire when two logs were rubbed together. Also, the squirrels being burned by the fire explained why his tail was curled as it is and why squirrels in that region have the black (ash) marks down their backs. I usually prefer stories to have some sort of moral to them or a lesson to take away. However, these stories, in a sense, did having something to learn from the stories but instead of being value based they were explanations of the world around us. This might be something fun to try in my stories. I compare it to the musical 'Wicked' which went back and went back to explain what events led up to the movie "The Wizard of Oz."

One thing that confused me in all the stories was that whoever it was creating the world, whether it was Coyote or the Spider, they kept destroying the world over and over. It seemed to be a reoccurring theme that there was always an initial disappointment with how the earth was created and that it needed to be scrapped and done from scratch. One a few of the stories did something to save some of the humans who were already on the earth. What if the story was that the creator was initially pleased with his creation and he didn't destroy it and start over? It would likely be a boring story but maybe another plot twist could occur that would be less drastic but still interesting.

Bibliography: Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest by Katharine Berry Judson (1912).