Native American Trickster Tales
Oral Tradition
Trickster tales an example of oral tradition. Before the invention of writing, the majority
of human experience recorded via memorized tales.
The Iliad and the Odyssey, two of the oldest stories in the Western world, transmitted orally long before they were written down.
Myths for Life
“Myth in its living, primitive form is not merely a story told but a reality lived.”
–Bronislaw Malinowski
Myth
From the Greek word mythos, literally an explanation couched in story form that attempts to explain all the fundamental, important questions of human existence.
Archetypes
Trickster tales are archetypal, embodying primal patterns that are widely applicable to many human beings, in many times and places.
Native Americans talk about beginning time again and again in their tales.
Native American Concepts
Earth and Nature as living and acting forces
Pantheistic: everything is a part of God; nature, God, and the world are all one.
Created and creator not separate All are connected
Characters often include animals and plants
European Contrast To those used to patterns of European fairy
tales and folktales, Indian legends often seem chaotic, inconsistent, or incomplete. Plots seem to travel at their own speed, defying convention and at times doing away completely with recognizable beginnings and endings.
Characters of the myths also change greatly from myth to myth: Coyote is a powerful creator one moment, a sniveling coward the next.
Additional Contrasts
Infants display alarming talents or powers. Births and deaths alternate as fast as
night and day. To apply Western logic to these tales is
impossible and unnecessary: the native tales are not intended to be single self-contained units; they are incomplete episodes connected in a chain or a progression of tales that travels back into a tribe’s traditions.
Regional Variations
Legends vary according to a people’s way of life, the geography, the climate, the food they eat and how they obtain it.
The Plains nomadic buffalo hunters tell stories very different from the Eastern forest dwellers.
Regional Variations, II
To the Southwestern planters and harvesters, the coming of corn and the changing of seasons are primal concerns, while the sea people of the Northwest are concerned with ocean monsters, swift harpooners, and powerful boat builders.
Likewise, the cultures overlap and influence each other.
Common Themes and Motifs
Despite their variations, a common theme binds the tales together–a concern with fundamental issues about the world in which humans live.
We encounter again and again in a spectrum of forms, the story of the children of the sun, the twin brothers who bring culture, perpetual destruction and recreation, heroes and tricksters: motifs.
Myths and Culture
The mythological cultures of the tribes also contain influences of history and the particular experiences of each tribe.
By moving these often cataclysmic events into the realm of myth, the storyteller can at once celebrate, mourn, and honor the past… and hope for a time the great heroes may return to their people, restoring them to glory.
Origin of the Term “Trickster”
Trickster is the term first used by Franz Boas in the late 19th century to describe a mythic creature who appears in the oral tales of the peoples of Native America.
Native Americans don’t use the term Trickster at all.
Origin of term not important. Inner psychological manifestations of an
outward physical state.
Trickster Archetype
Purpose: To inform, to guide, or to explain. Little distinguishment is made between
animals and humans, the natural and the supernaturalCoyote, rabbit, hare, raven, jay, and wolverine
are animal names for human, temporal experiences that are archetypal
Three Purposes of Trickster Tales Entertain Teach appropriate behavior, i.e., don’t do
as the trickster does Explain (etiological function): why reality is
soHow the leopard got its spotsWhy the magpie steals
Native American Trickster
The “trickster” is different in European literature. Usually human form
Native American trickster is not always the prankster or jokester
Often the creator of: the earth evolution (through his treachery) transforming the world / earth the trickster’s morals often conflict
Trickster Is the Spark
Scandalous Very highly sexed, often
sexual misconduct Disgusts Amuses Shifting shapes Outwitting the powerful Pranks Disrupts Humiliates
Questions Addressed by Tales
1. How did the universe come to be?
2. Why am I here?
3. What is my purpose?
4. How should I live?
5. Where am I going?
Trickster Today
Wile E. Coyote and Bugs Bunny
Jim Carrey in The Mask
Sources
http://www.pittstate.edu/engl/nichols/coyote.html http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/oal/oaltoc.htm Erdoes, Richard and Alfonso Ortiz, eds. American Indian
Trickster Tales. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.