American Indian Trickster Tales (Myths and Legends) Read Free

live in poverty, but he is lord of the land. As Hamilton Tyler recounts in PuebloGods and Myths, he is said to have brought to the Hopi “a stone tablet which contains the instructions and on which was written all the life plan of the Hopi people.... He said, ‘The whole earth is mine. As long as you keep this, it all belongs to you.’ ” This dual character, god and trickster, is a common complication in the tales in this book.
    Masau‘u is also the boundary maker and the god of planting and agriculture. During Hopi planting ceremonies, a Masau’u impersonator is the center of the action. Ekkehart Malotki and Michael Lomatuway’ ma, in their book of Masau‘u stories, describe a scene out of a clown act in the circus, as Masau’u takes on any number of “challengers” dressed like cowboys, rival tribespeople, or other characters. He chases the opponent and subdues him with a sack, then robs him of his clothes and puts them on himself, but in a style that’s clearly all wrong—moccasins on the wrong feet, sash tied on the wrong side, and so on.
    Yehl, the Raven, is the supreme Trickster and hero of the Pacific Northwest coast tribes. He plays a prominent part in the legends of the Haida, Tlingit, Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, and Quileute tribes. He appeared out of the chaos, after the deluge. In the words of writer Marius Barbeau,
    It was then that Yehl, the supernatural Raven of Siberian and Northwestern mythology, began to fly over the desolate wastes. He became a transformer rather than a creator, for in his primeval wanderings through chaos and darkness he chanced upon pre-existing things—animals and a few ghost-like people. His powers were not coupled with absolute wisdom and integrity. He at times lapsed into the role of a jester and a cheat, covering himself with shame and ridicule.
    Among the Raven stories are found some of the most abstract and bizarrely plotted of all Native American legends. They seem to unfold in a realm of fantasy, totally divorced from the so-called real world.
    The fact that almost all of these Tricksters are animal characters underscores the Native Americans’ close identification with nature. Howard Norman perfectly describes this reorientation in the relation between humans and the natural world: “these tales enlighten an audience about the sacredness of life. In the naturalness of their form, they turn away from forced conclusions, they animate and enact, they shape and reshape the world.”
    All Lakota ceremonies end with the words “Mitakuye Oyasin, ” meaning “All my relatives,” which includes every human being on this earth, every animal down to the tiniest insect, and every living plant. During a television panel show a Christian priest once posed this challenge to Lame Deer, a Lakota holy man from the Rosebud Sioux reservation: “Chief, your religion and mine are the same. The Cross and the Sacred Pipe mean the same thing; so do the suffering of Christ and the suffering your people undergo at the Sun Dance. It is all the same—just the language, the words are different.”
    “Father,” Lame Deer replied, after a long pause, “in your religion, do animals have a soul?”
    “You got me there,” answered the priest.
    Christianity teaches that only humans have souls. Indians believe that even a stone, a tree, or a lake has a soul, a spirit, and there are strict systems of beliefs about the effects of telling certain stories in certain ways or at specific times. Even Trickster stories told principally for entertainment must still be told strictly according to tradition. It used to be that in some tribes, stories were told only in winter. Bad things would happen to the person who told them in summer; he or she might be bitten by a rattlesnake or become sick. In some places, stories could not be told in the daytime because that would make the teller go bald. In some tribes the narrator is forbidden to change or omit a single word in a legend, while others permit free