By Ken Kalb

Many Native American myths could equally be called folktales: they seem to be about ordinary people, not gods. However, the Native American attitude is that everything is animated by divinity. Hence ordinary people, animals and places are divine. Often the people are not even named, or are given a convenient tag, such as Rabbit Boy – raised by rabbits. Nor is there much attempt to characterize them. Universal principles are held to be more important than individual traits.Whereas Greek myths were shaped and ordered by classical authors, few Native American myths were written down before the late 19th century. Thus the apparent inconsistencies of the right-brain oral tradition are still very much present.

Native American spirituality: Among all tribes there is a strong sense that behind all individual spirits and personifications of the divine, there is a single creative life-force, sometimes called ‘the Great Mystery’, which expresses itself throughout the universe, in every human, animal, tree and grain of sand. Every story, too, is a working out of this life-force.

The role of animals: An aspect of this outlook is the major role played in the stories by animals, who often speak to humans and assist them. Most tribes thought of individual members of a species as expressions of the spiritual archetype of that species, which in turn embodied a particular spirit power.

The Four Directions: Another key feature of the Native American spiritual outlook is found in the powers ascribed to the Four Directions, which occur either literally or in symbolic form throughout the stories. These are often represented by particular colours, or by animals. The Four Directions have to be in balance for all to be well with the world, and often a central point of balance is identified as a fifth direction; for example, four brothers represent the outer directions, and their sister the centre.

Narrative types: Native American myths include all the types found worldwide, such as stories of creation, and of heroic journeys. However, they are particularly rich in ‘trickster’ myths. Notable examples are Coyote and Iktome. The trickster is an ambiguous figure who demonstrates the qualities of early human development (both cultural and psychological) that make civilization possible, and yet which cause problems. He is an expression of the least developed stage of life, which is dominated by physical appetites.

The Quillayute is a Chimakoan tribe living along the Quillayute River, a six-mile river on the Olympic Peninsula. The fishing village of Lapush is at its mouth.

These stories are adapted from Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest by Ella E. Clark, University of California Press, 1953.

Long ago, there was a sad time in the land of the Quillayute. For days and days, great storms blew. Rain and hail and then sleet and snow came down upon the land. The hailstones were so large that many of the people were killed. The other Quillayute were driven from their coast villages to the great prairie, which was the highest part of their land.

There the people grew thin and weak from hunger. The hailstones had beaten down the ferns, the camas, and the berries. Ice locked the rivers so the men could not fish. Storms rocked the ocean so the fishermen could not go out in their canoes for deep-sea fishing. Soon, the people had eaten all the grass and roots on the prairie; there was no food left. As children died without food, even the strongest and bravest of their fathers could do nothing. They called upon the Great Spirit for help, but no help came.

At last the Great Chief of the Quillayute called a meeting of his people. He was old and wise. "Take comfort, my people," the Chief said. "We will call again upon the Great Spirit for help. If no help comes, then we will know it is His will that we die. If it is not His will that we live, then we will die bravely, as brave Quillayute have always died. Let us talk with the Great Spirit."

By Robson Bonnichsen and Alan L. Schneider

Some Crow traditionalists believe that the world, the animals and all humans were created by a wise and powerful being named Old Man Coyote. The Brule Sioux have a different tradition: after a great flood, the only survivor was a beautiful girl, who was rescued by an eagle. She married the eagle, and their children became the Sioux people. Where did the native people of the Americas really come from? When did they first appear in those lands, and how? Just as the Judeo-Christian tradition teaches that human beings originated when God created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, so every Native American tribe has at least one creation story.

Archaeologists, meanwhile, take a different view of how people first appeared in the Americas. Although they are sharply divided about the details, they are convinced by the archaeological record that the original peoples of the Americas migrated from elsewhere. Where they came from and when they arrived are questions that remain to be resolved. Some answers, however, are beginning to emerge, and they indicate a process that was far more complicated than was ever imagined.

In one sense, both scientific theories about human origins and nonscientific traditions about the genesis of a particular tribe have something in common. All people and all cultures strive to understand the world and their place in it. Origin stories - whether traditional accounts or scientific theories - help satisfy those yearnings. They describe how and when people came to be on earth, and they explain how people survived and prospered in their surroundings. But there are key differences as well. Scientific origin theories are subject to reevaluation as new evidence emerges: indeed, in the past several years the prevailing scientific view about the origins of the first Americans has shifted dramatically. Nonscientific origin theories, by contrast, derive from supernatural or mystical revelation; they tolerate neither doubt nor revision and must be accepted on faith.