The Native American Trickster stories were definitely not what I expected them to be. I expected something along the lines of Aesop's Fables, but these particular trickster stories were somewhat different from the usual trickster tale I was taught in grade school. The stories to our culture are very immature, vulgar, and immoral. But I could see the same story being played out on an episode of The Simpson's, or Beavis and Butthead.
For the Native Americans these stories were a form of orally told entertainment. As obscene as they get, the Native Americans found them quite amusing. For instance, in The Winnebago Trickster Cycle the main character has a run in with a strange talking bulb. The bulb says if he is eaten he will make the person who has eaten him defecate. The main character ignores this warning and proceeds to eat the bulb. He ends up letting loose wind as he walks, until his gas becomes so violent he is actually flying up into the air.
During this description I couldn't help but be amazed that the Native Americans found this appropriate enough to discuss for entertainment. It made me realize that even though settlers thought them of as barbarians, they were actually ahead of their time. This sort of entertainment is acceptable and profitable in our society today. Most television shows utilize the immature humor and successfully captivate audiences.
Another occurrence from the Winnebago Trickster Cycle I found to be shocking was when the Trickster pretends to be a woman. He not only throws on a dress and struts like a woman, he actually creates a vulva out of elk's liver. He then proceeds to create breasts for himself out of elk's kidneys. He also is able to get pregnant. This section of the story leads me to wonder about the people who translated these stories.
I can only imagine their reaction when the Native Americans described how Trickster pretended to be a woman. If it is just a little shocking to read today, I can not imagine just how shocking it must have been to hear it first hand. For the sake of history and the Native American culture I am certainly glad they recorded this.
I feel when we read something from other cultures it may be shocking, but what we do with this information and what we learn from it is even more amazing. We learn a great deal about the Native American's personalities, humor, and beliefs. We are able to understand their culture more, and finally we are entertained by something fascinating.
I really enjoyed the Native American Trickster Stories. They really molded a different perspective of the Native American's for me. Many of the lines from the stories I read were so unbelievable that I had to make sure I read them correctly. As far as everything else assigned to read, these stories truly stand out above the rest. I would definitely recommend that everyone read the Trickster stories for some humorous entertainment.
You May Also Find These Documents Helpful
-
When Anna Woodward and Josiah Flint lived in Steuben County, New York, it wasn’t unusual for Indians to stop by the cabin to trade. One day an Indian squaw with her papoose strapped to a board came to trade baskets for bread. When finished, they started down the path. They were scarcely out of sight when Anna heard a piercing scream and ran to see what was wrong.…
- 188 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays -
In Native American culture, the storyteller holds an important position, telling tales that transmit and preserve the tribe's basic beliefs. Do you think Thomas's stories serve such a function? Or, do you think that he is, as Victor characterizes him, simply "the crazt story-teller who talked to dogs and cars, who listened to the wind and pine trees"…
- 416 Words
- 2 Pages
Good Essays -
In Horace Miner’s “Body Ritual among the Nacirema,” the reader is introduced to an interesting group called the Nacirema, whose culture is then described and dissected in very tribal and primitive terms. At first, it is unclear as to where or how this culture exists under the guidelines and practices and beliefs its society maintains; but, the reader soon discovers, with contextual clues and a bit of pondering, that Nacirema is actually American culture. Miner uses creative contextual clues and diction to confuse the reader, letting the discovery and satire push his purpose, as well as allow reflection on how certain societies tend to inaccurately…
- 1038 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
In this video, I learned that the white Americans who were colonizing America saw the Indians differently from themselves. They stereotyped all Indians as savage and uncivilized things. They used these stereotypes because they were unfamiliar with Indian culture. The Europeans were afraid of tthe Indians and as a result of their Ignorance, they tried to kill them off, assimilatet them, and move them off the land. Since they viewed them as unequals due to their skin tone, it was justification for all the wrong ways the Europeans treated the…
- 91 Words
- 1 Page
Satisfactory Essays -
The destruction of Native American culture by invading europeans and the eventual adaptation and simulation of Western culture in hindsight was a completely foreseeable and inevitable tragedy that even the possibility went ignored until it was far too late. James Welch’s Fools Crow is an in depth depiction of the Native…
- 1927 Words
- 8 Pages
Better Essays -
Most of the Native Americans that was in this campaign belong to the Oneida Indian Nation group. This Oneida Indian Nation group had a lot to say about this situation. Ray Halbritter, a representative for the Oneida Indian Nation said “ The use of such an Offensive term has negative consequences for the Native American community when it comes to issues of self-identity and imagery.” (Skinner). With this being said this issue spread to Native Americans everywhere and they would not stay quiet while others would disgrace their family’s…
- 1247 Words
- 5 Pages
Good Essays -
I continued to read, and the more I read, the more confusing it became. The author speaks of things that this tribe do in their day to day lives in a prehistoric kind of way, but the similarities are just way to coincidental to our way of life. I asked myself, is this what we used to develop ourselves with? I mean is this the basis we have come to utilize our way of life? As I continued to read, I wonder how it is that no one I know has never spoke of such a tribe.…
- 760 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
Another false impression of Native Americans by the Haydens relates to their spiritual beliefs and culture. When Frank was asked to treat Marie’s illness, he mockingly said that he’d do a “little dance around the bed,” and “[beat] some drums.” (35) Here, Frank makes fun of their rituals and beliefs, showing his little respect and naïve opinion towards the culture of Native Americans.…
- 716 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
The student found that these preschoolers believed that Native Americans were feather wearing aggressive war-like people (387). This study reveals that the assumptions we make about others comes from what we have been told or what we have seen on televisions, in books, or in museums. Typically, the audience has not been told the whole story, allowing for the distorting of historical information about people of color leads people of all ages to make assumptions that may go unchallenged for a long time. Along similar lines of thought, Peggy McIntosh notes in her essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” that “when I am told about our national heritage or about ‘civilization’, I am shown that people of my color made it what it is” (395). It is clear when reading feminist literature, that representations of groups of people have long term affects on how these groups are framed and understood. Luckily, feminism is an epistemology and a methodology- therefore, I believe feminist anthropological methods could remedy problematic exhibits that frame non-White cultures as ‘primitive…
- 543 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
First of all, we’ve seen the wild, savage and bloodthirsty animal persona, depicting Native Americans as the villains against innocent and helpless white settlers, with the typical Anglo hero. After the Second World War, Westerns started to sympathize with American Indians, depicting them as a misunderstood, peace loving people who only attacked when threatened. And, by the 1970s, the genre of “white man becoming Indian” was becoming popular, showing the evil of the white men and vilifying the army. In TV, we’ve seen the transformation of Native Americans from stereotypical dimwitted cartoon characters to pidgin speaking sidekicks of white protagonists. In the world of gaming, natives have gone from being sexual pursuits, to mystical tournament fighters of the arcades and dinosaur/monster hunters. “While marketing and media presentations are not solely responsible for causing or maintaining prejudice and discrimination, they should be held accountable for those times when they participate and preserve it” (Merskin 2014:198). In a nutshell, while they may not have started these presentations, they still were involved in it. However, regardless of the images that media has bestowed upon them, those that I interviewed suggested that most of their native traditions have stayed the same, despite all the changes in pop…
- 598 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
Storytelling is important in Native American literature. It began through “…both oral performances and in the imagination of written narratives, cannot be discovered in reductive social science translations or altogether understood in historical constructions of culture in one common name” (Vizenor, 1995, p. 1). Storytelling is the verbal source of stories; a well told story takes its reader on a quest or journey and well descriptive. “The metaphors in oral stories are mundane, abstruse, mysterious, unnamable, and more, but few collections in translation reveal the rich context of the songs and stories” (Vizenor, 1995, p. 7). Native American culture uses stories and songs to entertain as well as a way to teach the youth and inspire. Storytelling is an important tool in the Native American society. Storytelling is how Native Americans passed down the history, heritage, and traditions of their culture. “Tragic wisdom is the source of native reason, the common sense gained from the adverse experience of discovery, colonialism, and culture domination” (Vizenor, 1995, p. 6).…
- 1208 Words
- 5 Pages
Powerful Essays -
Not only did they kill unarmed women and children, but they ripped off their faces and cut them into pieces. What the Natives did was just sickening, and the feelings that European-Americans could be summarized by, “ … there fell vnder the bloudy and barbarous hands of that perfidious and inhumane people… three hundred forty feuen men, women, children… a frefh murder, defacing, dragging, and mangling the dead carkaffes into many pieces.” As mentioned in many writings done previously by Englishmen, Native Americans were consistently labeled as “barbaric” or “savages”. Crimes, such as the murder of hundreds of Virginians, brought an increased hatred to Native…
- 844 Words
- 4 Pages
Good Essays -
The news vans from a dozen different television stations were gathered around the massive crowd of people outside of what was once the closed down and abandoned Museum in Coutts. Coutts is a Small town located just above the border into the United States. I saw the reporters interviewing the people looking to get their side of the story as they waited for the event to be underway the grand opening of the museum of native American history. One reporter was interviewing a tall Native American who wore a name tag that said I am Blackfoot on it. The man said to the news reporter “I remember 3 years ago when Mel started this petition to reopen this museum, we all thought he was crazy, he would come around with these little name tags…
- 2144 Words
- 9 Pages
Powerful Essays -
1998:77). In fact, it’s interesting to note that American Indians themselves objected to film portrayals from the very beginning. Even President William Howard Taft encouraged them to fight against the misrepresentations as shown in the moving picture theaters that were popular at the time. In his book, Custer Died for Your Sins, Vine Deloria states that “many white people claim Indian ancestry, usually by a grandmother who was an Indian Princess; most tribes were entirely female for the first three hundred years of white occupation” (Deloria, 1969:3). To sum it up, people believe that having an Indian ancestor will make them understand and relate to these people. But, what they don’t understand is that blood has nothing to do with it. The purpose of this study is to explore the history of and various positive/negative representations and stereotypes of Native Americans in popular culture and getting the perspective from Native American people. I will cover various examples of these representations through live display, cinema, television, video games, and music. The purpose is to give people a better understanding of this issue on what is the true identity of the…
- 647 Words
- 3 Pages
Good Essays -
These stories were not just related to the history of Native tribes, but it was a way for them to preserve and entertain the people in their culture as well. When the stories were being told, there seemed to be a breath of life within the culture that refined the verbal language, and gave significance to the history of tribes. All of the stories told were about life lessons that had taught tribes about honor, leadership, and love. When it came…
- 1353 Words
- 6 Pages
Good Essays