American Indian Myths and Legends [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION The 166 legends recorded here come from the heart and soul of the native people of North America. Some have been told for thousands of years, and they are still being told and retold, reshaped and refitted to meet their audience's changing needs, even created anew out of a contemporary man's or woman's vision. They arise out of the earth-the plants, herbs, and animals which are integral parts of the human realm. They are imbedded in the ancient languages and flow according to the rhythms of the natural world-a different pace indeed from that of a technological, man-made environment. Most industrialized people, eyes ever on the clock, fragmented by the pressing problems of a split-second, microchip society, have little time or inclination, it seems, to speculate on the communal nature of the universe. Mutually shared and supportive legends about the beginning and end of the world (and what happens in between) seem hopelessly beyond their vision. The native American, following the pace of 'Indian time," still lives connected to the nurturing womb of mythology. Mysterious but real power dwells in nature-in mountains, rivers, rocks, even pebbles. White people may consider them inanimate objects, but to the Indian, they are enmeshed in the web of the universe, pulsating with life and potent with medicine. As Ernst Cassirer has written, "The mythical world is at a much more fluid and fluctuating stage than our theoretical world . . . The world of myth is a dramatical world-a world of actions, of forces, of conflicting powers. In every phenomenon of nature it sees the collision of these powers. Mythical perception is always impregnated with these emotional qualities."* The world of the Pueblo Indians is bounded mythically and geographically by four sacred mountains, where holy men still go on pilgrimages * An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1962.