Tales of the Earth
Native North American Creation Mythology
David LeemingA comprehensive overview of Native American creation mythologies.
Tales of the Earth is a comprehensive yet concise overview of Native American mythologies. After outlining theories of the origins of Native North Americans, David Leeming considers the creation myths of many tribes, emphasizing four commonly occurring figures: the Great Spirit, the trickster, the goddess and the hero. Leeming suggests that in addition to these figures, Native American mythologies have in common a deep reverence for the earth, and for community responsibility as opposed to individualism – tenets that stand in stark contrast to the concepts of exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny that characterize the United States, a nation that was built on ancient tribal land.
A comprehensive overview of Native American creation mythologies.
Tales of the Earth is a comprehensive yet concise overview of Native American mythologies. After outlining theories of the origins of Native North Americans, David Leeming considers the creation myths of many tribes, emphasizing four commonly occurring figures: the Great Spirit, the trickster, the goddess and the hero. Leeming suggests that in addition to these figures, Native American mythologies have in common a deep reverence for the earth, and for community responsibility as opposed to individualism – tenets that stand in stark contrast to the concepts of exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny that characterize the United States, a nation that was built on ancient tribal land.
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Folklore is the study of oral narratives, often called myths, legends, or tales to distinguish them from written historical accounts, assumed to be based on reality. These highly complex narratives include cultural explanations about the origin and development of the world, beliefs, and philosophies. From these texts, folklorists study cultural beliefs, norms, traditions, and behaviors. In the past, practitioners who worked from a literary paradigm, as opposed to anthropologists interested in studying cultures as complex systems, concentrated on identifying and classifying specific motifs and then searching for commonalities and variations within or across geographic regions. In this volume, Leeming takes this taxonomic approach. Designed as an introductory folklore text for a popular audience, this book identifies four character types in creation narratives: the male Great Spirit, the trickster, the goddess, and the hero.
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In Tales of the Earth, Leeming discusses how key characters common to the creation narratives of indigenous North Americans, created the living, sacred landscapes to which Native American remain tied today. Importantly, he highlights how these narratives and the relationships to land they make possible often differ from non-native understandings of creation and the human place within it. Leeming does all this in an engaging, accessible style.
'Ken Lokensgard, Assistant Director of the Center for Native American Research and Collaboration, Washington State University
David Leeming is Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. He is the co-author of Gods, Heroes, and Kings: The Battle for Mythic Britain (2001) and author of numerous books on mythology including Myth: A Biography of Belief (2002), The Oxford Companion to World Mythology (2005) and Medusa: In the Mirror of Time (Reaktion, 2013). He lives in Stonington, Connecticut.
