Native American Mythology

by Hartley Burr Alexander

• ISBN13: 9780486444154
• ISBN10: 0486444155
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-09-21
• Publisher: Dover Publications

Summary

This fascinating and informative compendium of Native American lore was assembled by one of twentieth-century America's premier ethnographer/anthropologists. Hartley Burr Alexander recounts the continent's myths chronologically and region-by-region, offering a remarkably wide range of nomadic sagas, animist myths, cosmogonies and creation myths, end-time prophecies, and other traditional tales. Legends include stories of sun worship and trickster pranks, episodes from the lives of the gods and the ghost world, and secret societies and totemic spirits.

Table of Contents

Author's Preface	p. III
Introduction	p. XI
The Far North	p. 1
Norseman and Skraeling	p. 1
The Eskimo's World	p. 3
The World-Powers	p. 5
The World's Regions	p. 6
The Beginnings	p. 8
Life and Death	p. 10
The Forest Tribes	p. 13
The Forest Region	p. 13
Priest and Pagan	p. 15
The Manitos	p. 17
The Great Spirit	p. 19
The Frame of the World	p. 21
The Powers Above	p. 24
The Powers Below	p. 27
The Elders of the Kinds	p. 30
The Forest Tribes (continued)	p. 34
Iroquoian Cosmogony	p. 34
Algonquian Cosmogony	p. 38
The Deluge	p. 42
The Slaying of the Dragon	p. 44
The Theft of Fire	p. 46
Sun-Myths	p. 48
The Village of Souls	p. 49
Hiawatha	p. 51
The Gulf Region	p. 53
Tribes and Lands	p. 53
Sun-Worship	p. 55
The New Maize	p. 57
Cosmogonies	p. 60
Animal Stories	p. 64
Tricksters and Wonder-Folk	p. 67
Mythic History	p. 69
The Great Plains	p. 74
The Tribal Stocks	p. 74
An Athapascan Pantheon	p. 77
The Great Gods of the Plains	p. 80
The Life of the World	p. 82
"Medicine"	p. 85
Father Sun	p. 87
Mother Earth and Daughter Corn	p. 91
The Morning Star	p. 93
The Gods of the Elements	p. 97
The Great Plains (continued)	p. 102
Athapascan Cosmogonies	p. 102
Siouan Cosmogonies	p. 105
Caddoan Cosmogonies	p. 107
The Son of the Sun	p. 112
The Mystery of Death	p. 115
Prophets and Wonder-Workers	p. 120
Migration-Legends and Year-Counts	p. 124
Mountain and Desert	p. 129
The Great Divide	p. 129
The Gods of the Mountains	p. 132
The World and its Denizens	p. 135
Shahaptian and Shoshonean World-Shapers	p. 139
Coyote	p. 141
Spirits, Ghosts, and Bogies	p. 145
Prophets and the Ghost-Dance	p. 149
Mountain and Desert (continued)	p. 154
The Navaho and their Gods	p. 154
The Navaho Genesis	p. 159
The Creation of the Sun	p. 166
Navaho Ritual Myths	p. 169
Apache and Piman Mythology	p. 175
Yuman Mythology	p. 179
The Pueblo Dwellers	p. 182
The Pueblos	p. 182
Pueblo Cosmology	p. 185
Gods and Katcinas	p. 187
The Calendar	p. 192
The Great Rites and their Myths	p. 196
Sia and Hopi Cosmogonies	p. 202
Zuni Cosmogony	p. 206
The Pacific Coast, West	p. 212
The California-Oregon Tribes	p. 212
Religion and Ceremonies	p. 215
The Creator	p. 217
Cataclysms	p. 221
The First People	p. 225
Fire and Light	p. 230
Death and the Ghost-World	p. 233
The Pacific Coast, North	p. 237
Peoples of the North-West Coast	p. 237
Totemism and Totemic Spirits	p. 240
Secret Societies and their Tutelaries	p. 245
The World and its Rulers	p. 249
The Sun and the Moon	p. 254
The Raven Cycle	p. 258
Souls and their Powers	p. 262
Notes	p. 267
Bibliography	p. 315
Plates	p. 327
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