Reading Notes: Myths and Legends of the Great Plains (Part A)

From reading these stories it became very clear that the Native Americans were a very spiritual group of people. They were a people who were deeply connected to everything in nature, from the animals to the weather. They believed that everything had a purpose, and that any act of nature was an indication of the will of greater beings. Many tribes also believed that gods and spirits played a very active role in their lives, influencing many day to day activities and seasonal rituals.

Arapaho Ghost Dance from around 1900.

Tattooed Ghosts

• Once a man dies he becomes a spirit that must travel the earth to reach his final destination known as Many Lodges
• while living, a person must tattoo their forehead or wrists so that the spiritual judge will allow them to pass on to Many Lodges
• if no tattoos are present, they are sent back down to earth out of the sky to walk the world forever.
• smoke of the cedar is sacred and will ward away spirits
• if a ghost calls to someone living and they answer, they will die soon after

Forked Roads

• The night stars light up the earth for spirits
• spirits are in the sky walking among the stars, the milky way acts as a road
• this story contains a list of actions that will prevent a spirit from entering the land of good spirits

The Eagle's Revenge

• An Eagle is a highly revered animal in native american culture
• one day a hunter killed an eagle for feasting on a deer he had slain
• that night a stranger appeared at their pow-wow and danced
• every-time he told a story, at the end of a song, a member of the tribe would die
• the spirit of the eagle's brother took human form and enacted revenge on the tribe for the death of his brother
• think about using animal-human transformations in a story

The Ghost's Resentment

• native tribes hold their deceased in high regard
• a group of men go to steal some cloth from a death lodge so they could make clothes from it
• a young man paints himself as a ghost and goes to the lodge ahead of them to scare them away
• a potential story could be to have all the men go one night and be scared by the young man, but then they go a second night
• the second night they are met by a real ghost, and suffer some sort of fate

Bibliography

Great Plains Unit

Image Information: Ghost Dance on wikimedia.