Native American Folk Culture

Folk Culture Folk culture refers to the localized lifestyle in creating their culture. It is usually

handed down through oral tradition and has a strong sense of community.

(Festival of American Folklife 1982, 1968 of American Folklife. National Gallery of Art San Fransisco California)

Native American Folk Culture

Verbal:Folklore

Non Verbal: Folk Art

Partly Verbal:Games, Riddle,

Superstition

Non Verbal: Folk Art

Folk Painting/Drawing

Quilt

The quilt shown here is one such item.  During the "Giveaway" this quilt and

other useful items will be generously given to those who are the neediest in the tribe. 

Usually, they are presented to widows and orphans first and then,

to the next in line who are facing the most difficult times.

One tradition of Sioux Native Americans

Sculpture

South West Native American Mini-Vases $11.97

Pottery

Bear vase wall plaque with arrow frame

Decoys

White-Wing Scoter, (1864-1950).

Canvasback Drake, (1826-1900)

.

Toys

Mask Doll

Wicker

Wicker Basket

Wicker Medicine Man

Dream Catcher Kit

Buffalo Plains Man Drum

Native Canoe

Leather drum beats with the spirit of the American buffalo

and lends a Southwestern accent to your home’s decor

This model canoe has the look of real leather and wood,

with a bear in a river painted on the side. An impressive image of Native American craftsmanship.

Beadwork

Alaskan Beadwork

Lakota TurtleNorthern Plain

Indian

Partly Verbal: Games, Riddles, Superstition

Game

Image adapted from "Games of the North American Indian", Culin:1975

The dice game has innumerable variations across North America. This traditional game is called Hubbub in southern New England. The game described in the 1600s includes five or six small dice which are tossed in a wooden bowl or basket. The game is accompanied by sticks or beans for scoring. Dice were usually carved from bone or antler, in some versions plum or peach pits were used. Dice were engraved, burned and polished or painted to distinguish one side from the other when they are tossed.

Bowl & Dice Game

"Tewaaraton" / "Baggataway" In the original Native American versions of the game, each team was made up of anywhere between 100 and 1,000 players on a field that stretched from 500 yards

to half a mile, or even sometimes several miles long.

The game was played with much preparation performed by the Shaman, or medicine man, including purifying the players'

bodies with vomit-inducing liquids, rubbing their bodies with the sap from Willow trees (so they could "spring" to their feet if

knocked down), and scratching their bodies with a comb-like object made from rattlesnake teeth (called a Kanuga) that

would be used to make them bleed. The players would also prepare by eating only the meat from animals with a strong

heart (for example, they would not eat chicken before a game).

The ball was typically made from deer-skin and filled with dirt and twigs. It was also common for the ball to contain parts of animals, such as bat wings, to give the ball the characteristics and strengths of that animal. The goals were typically a large

rock or tree that the ball had to hit, rather than passing through goal posts. The length of these games varied, and could last for

several days.

Choctaw

Superstition

Bear Native Americans always believed that the bear breeds only once

every seven years and it always seems to fall on the time that the cattle would be giving birth to their young, The native Americans

believe that every part of the bear has great spiritual power.

Cobwebs In America Native Americans believe that if cobwebs are seen inside your

tepee that lets you know that no lovemaking has occurred in there in such a long time, if a girl found a cobweb on her door it let her know that her lover was calling on another girl in same village, some older people believed that if you

had a cut and covered it with a cobweb it would heal it.

…………..and so on

Verbal: Folklore

Folklore Folklore is the traditional, unofficial, non-institutional part of culture. It

encompasses all knowledge, understandings, values, attitudes, assumptions, feelings, and beliefs transmitted in traditional forms by word

of mouth or by customary examples

Jan Brunvand. The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction, 2nd edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 1978

Narratives:

LegendFolk Tales

Fairy Tales Tricksters Tales

Myths

Folk Songs

Legend A traditional historical tale (or collection of related tales) popularly

regarded as true but usually containing a mixture of fact and fiction (di. dictionary)

Native American Legend

The Legend of Deep Lake, Ummatila Tribe (Donald M. Hines,The Forgotten Tribes, Oral Tales of Teninosand Adjacent Mid-ColumbiaRiver Indiana Nation.Great Eagle Publishing Inc)

Old Man and Old Women (Telling about how people create people), (Tracker Folk, Collection of Native American Tales)

Folk Tales Folk tales often have to do with everyday life and

frequently feature wily peasants getting the better of their superiors.  In many cases, like in the folk tales we've

selected, the characters are animals with human characteristics (di. dictionary)

Batle Between Eagle and Owl

(Donald M. Hines, The Forgotten Tribes, Oral Tales of Teninos

and Adjacent Mid-ColumbiaRiver Indiana Nation.Great Eagle Publishing Inc)

Beatle Between Eagle and Owl Eagle was a great hunter, and Owl a great

medicine man. A dispute arose between them as to their powers in battle. They fought! They flew

upward as is Eagle’s wont, but Owl kept with him, plucking out his feathers. Out of sight they went, and finally Owl succeeded in tearing out the last feather of Eagle. This last feather was the central

or bearing –up feather of his tail. Eagle, who always killed so many people of the air, fell lifeless

to the ground. Owl whose medicine was the strongest, returned victor to the eart

Fairy Tales

Fairy tales are a subgenre of folk tales and almost always involve some element of magic and good triumphing over evil.   A good rule of thumb: if there's a fairy in the story, it's a fairy

tale (di. dictionary)

Native American Fairy Tale

Red Swan“He flew swiftly toward the magician's lodge.”

Trickster Tales

In the Native American oral tradition, the vulgar but sacred Trickster assumes many forms.  He can be Old-Man Coyote among the Crow tribes, Raven in northwestern Indian lore, or, more generically, "The Tricky One" (such as

Wakdjunkaga among the Winnebago or Manabozho among the Menomini), to mention just a few of his manifestations (Nicholas, 1997)

Trickster alternately scandalizes, disgusts, amuses,disrupts, chastises, and humiliates

(or is humiliated by) the animal-like proto-people of pre-history, yet he is also a creative force transforming their world,

sometimes in bizarre and outrageous ways, with his instinctive energies and cunning.

Eternally scavenging for food, he represents the most basic instincts, but in other narratives, he is also the father of the Indian people and a potent conductor of spiritual forces in the form of sacred dreams.

Coyote and the Monster A long, long time ago, people did not yet inhabit the earth. A

monster walked upon the land, eating all the animals--except Coyote. Coyote was angry that his friends were gone. He climbed the tallest mountain and attached himself to the top. Coyote called upon the

monster, challenging it to try to eat him. The monster sucked in the air, hoping to pull in Coyote with its powerful breath, but the ropes

were too strong. The monster tried many other ways to blow Coyote off the mountain, but it was no use.

         Realizing that Coyote was sly and clever, the monster thought of a new plan. It would befriend Coyote and invite him to stay in its

home. Before the visit began, Coyote said that he wanted to visit his friends and asked if he could enter the monster's stomach to see

them. The monster allowed this, and Coyote cut out its heart and set fire to its insides. His friends were freed.

         Then Coyote decided to make a new animal. He flung pieces of the monster in the four directions; wherever the pieces landed, a new

tribe of Indians emerged. He ran out of body parts before he could create a new human animal on the site where the monster had lain. He used the monster's blood, which was still on his hands, to create the

Nez Percé, who would be strong and good. 

Myth

Joseph Cambell in his Hero With the Thousand Faces asserted that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into

human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very

dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth (1973:3)

Native American Myth

Selu & Kana’tiThe Origin of Corn

(A Myth from Cherokee TribesOr Ani-yun Wiya )

The Cherokee believed that they always had live there and that their ancestral mother Selu, had given them corn on which they

depended for subsistence(Perdue, 1999: 13)

Note: The complete story is in Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835.

Theda Perdue, University of Nebraska Press & London

Thank You