ErinManko

Native American Readings

I found many Native American readings to be interesting, however, some were a bit difficult to read as Amanda pointed out in her blog. The fact that some of these readings were questionable made you wonder if they were at all reliable. I guess that is the point of the stories being told by mouth and not being written down. They capture an esscence of purity because these stories are told for generations and each time they are told they are "tweaked" a bit.

I noticed many of the stories referred to the the Whites. The Native Americans mainly had negative views of the White Man. Crazy Horse, probably the most famous Native American was a great warrior who was looked up to. Crazy Horse had a negative view of the White man , basedon the U.S. Army. This kind of makes me mad because he judges the white man based on incidents with the Army, not EVERY white man out there. People in our society do this all the time and I dont think it is fair. Just because you have a bad incident with one person of a group doesn't mean the whole group is like that. Also as Linda said, Crazy Horse got caught trying to steal another man's wife. Maybe he wasn't the great leader everyone thought him to be.

I found it very interesting the way the white and yellow skinned people were compared in the Creation of the Whites.. This story is very similiar when compared to our own Creation story today. Most would think the Native Americans would make themselves the superior ones who obeyed the "Creator", but they made the White man be the one who obeyed him. The "Creator" takes away the clothing they alrady had (unlike Adam and Eve who never had clothing to begin with) , and they were now responsible for their own means of clothing and food. I think they may have created this story to account for the way they lived in the wild outdoors in comparison with the civilized White man. The Native Americans seem to blame the White man for their downfalls because they (the white men) have temptations.

I think its interesting how these Native American stories are passed from one another and through the years are slightly changed. When the same story is compared by two different people it is usually a bit different. Even in today's society we have funny stories in our families that through the years may have been embelleshed upon to make them funnier or more interesting. Even though we are a culture that writes everything down ( like blogging!) , many of the best stories are those which are told not read.