A History of American Literature

8 The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods

Woman” brought the sacred pipe that “stands for all that grows on the earth” to the

tribe and then transformed herself from woman into buffalo. “As soon as she van-

ished,” the story goes, “buffalo in great herds appeared” furnishing the people with

“everything they needed – meat for their food, skins for their clothes and tipis, bones

for their many tools.” Having given the pipe that holds creation together, White

Buffalo Woman then effectively gives herself to hold the tribe together, offering her

flesh that others might live. This story of origins is typical in its celebration of the

special nature of the storytellers: in this case, their possession of the pipe and the ties

that bind them to what are called here “our relations, the buffalo.”

The heroes and tricksters who are described creating humanity out of mud,

leading the people to their homeplace, appointing the rituals and furnishing corn or

buffalo, are permitted many other adventures and activities. Very often, the birth of

the hero is shrouded in mystery. In the legends of the Northern Cheyenne, the hero

Sweet Medicine is born to a woman “no man has touched” but who became pregnant

after voices and visions appeared to her on four consecutive nights. Even more often,

the hero faces trials that vary widely from tribe to tribe: most tribes, though, tell of a

ferocious monster that must be evaded – an ogre in a cliff, a sea monster, a glutton-

ous creature often in the shape of a bull or bear that swallows people – and ordeal by

fire or water. Like other legendary beings associated with a different order in time – a

time before the floods, perhaps, or before the arrival of Columbus – the hero is able

to speak to animals and they are able to speak to him; often, he assumes their shape or

they carry and conceal him. Sometimes, the hero is actually an animal, or more likely

a human who is at the same time an animal, like Spider Woman, Man-Eagle, Bear-

Man, Wakinyan Tanka the Great Thunderbird, or Old Man Coyote. And creatures

they have to fight usually assume shapes and personalities as remarkable as theirs.

Many tribes, for instance, tell of a great water monster, Unktehi or Uncegila to the

Sioux, whose fossil bones are now scattered across the Badlands of Nebraska and the

Dakotas. More bizarre is No Body, the Great Rolling Head, a creature who tumbles

over mountain and prairie, destroying everything in its way and devouring people

with its monstrous teeth. Other legendary monsters include Delgeth, a ferocious

man-eating antelope, the Lord Killer of the Whales, Yeitso the terrible giant of the

East, and a giant so gigantic that Coyote walks into its belly believing it to be a moun-

tain cave. And in several tales the monster assumes the shape of a white man. In one

Chinook legend, for example, the hero is confronted with a “thing” that “looked

like a bear” but with “the face of a human being.” It emerges from “something out in

the water,” just like any sea monster: only, in this case, this “strange something” is

“covered with copper,” has “two spruce trees upright on it” with “ropes tied to the

spruce trees.” And it loses its power when the “strange thing” carrying it is set on fire.

What these tales of heroes rehearse, among other things, are clearly the fears and

aspirations of the tribe. Set in some mythical times, but also a product of collective

memory, they describe actions that require not only retelling but ritual reenactment: the

tellers would be likely to imitate the heroic maneuvers of the hero, his saving gestures, as

the tale is told. And, eliding very often with tales of origin, they may explain life and the

location of the tribe: why the tribe is as and where it is, the legendary past that has made

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