Week 9 Essay: Native American Hero Tales

For this unit I read Native American Hero Tales. I did enjoy this unit and I did notice a few motifs along the way. The one I noticed was most prevalent was the appearance of the number four. I also noticed how male figures of a family can become very jealous of other male children within the family. The final thing I noticed was how the children, the main characters of the stories at least, were very hardy and resourceful.

The main story I noticed the four motif in was the Attack on the Giant Elk and Great Eagle. They use fours pretty much back to back in that entire story. The main character will use an attack four times, there were four spiders, four directions to turn, four tries to get into the lizard coat, four tries to get into the gopher hole, four eagles, and many more examples of 'four'. The only reason I could think of as to why they might use four so often, would be because of how important the number four is in nature. I think in the time that these stories were originally made, there were four main elements: fire, earth, water, and air, or at least some combination of the four. There are also four season and four directions. However, we know about the four seasons and four cardinal directions now, but I have no idea if they had the same concepts about them back then.

With the male figures, I could see how a chief could be jealous of new male members of the family. I see ti sort of like a pride of lions. The male lion will tolerate the male cubs in his pride only for so long before he will run them out, so as to avoid competition to be alpha male. Males who take over a new pride will just kill of of the cubs so he can start a new line, which is only half what the story of The Jealous Uncle was like. The uncle would kill any son born into his group and I think it could be because he didn't want to risk the boy growing up and taking his place before he died.

Finally, the main character of the few stories about the male figure killing the new male members of a family or even about children in general, the kids would be much more resourceful than the others. Usually they would have a few more tools than the others did, such as the knowledge that someone was going to try to kill them, or they would have others around them who were able to help them out a little. The point is that they paid more attention and thought outside of the box more than the other children. This creative thinking was what always helped them to escape their dire situation and make it back to their families.

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