Traditional narratives (Native California)

The Traditional Narratives of Native California are the legends, tales, and oral histories that survive as fragments of what was undoubtedly once a vast unwritten literature.

History of Studies

A few versions of Native California traditional narratives were written down by Franciscan missionaries

Franciscan

Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....

, notably Jerónimo Boscana

Jerónimo Boscana

Gerónimo Boscana was an early nineteenth-century Franciscan missionary in Spanish Las Californias and Mexican Alta California...

in the early nineteenth century. Travelers, government agents, and local residents, such as Hugo Reid

Hugo Reid

Hugo Reid was a resident of Los Angeles, California who wrote a series of newspaper letters that described the culture, language, and modern circumstances of the local Gabrieliño Indians and criticized their treatment under the Franciscan mission system.-Life:Born in 1809 or 1810 in Cardross,...

and Stephen Powers, added to this documentation in the later nineteenth century.

As anthropology in the United States transformed itself into a profession in the early twentieth century, preserving a record of native myths became one of its first major undertakings. Alfred L. Kroeber

Alfred L. Kroeber

Alfred Louis Kroeber was an American anthropologist. He was the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and played an integral role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology, where he served as director from 1909 through...

at the University of California, Berkeley, was a key instigator of these efforts, and the University's publication series, such as the University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, as well as the Journal of American Folklore and other national journals, were important outlets for the results of the studies.

After the middle of the twentieth century, the work slowed somewhat. Much of the basic documentary work had been completed, and native cultural traditions had grown weaker with the passing of the decades. However, important contributions have continued to be made, especially in the presentation of narratives within their original languages as well as in translation.

Among some of the surviving descendants of the first Californians, narratives continue to be transmitted orally.

General Characteristics

Several general traits are recognizable in California's traditional narratives. These traits are not universally present, but they characterize most of the narratives:

Fluid genres

Folklorists have commonly attempted to distinguish between myths, legends, tales, and histories.

Myths are sacred accounts that are believed by narrators and listeners to be true. They are set in a period at or before the origins of the world as it is presently known, and they usually contain strong supernatural elements.
Legends are also believed to be true, and they may also contain fantastic elements. However, they are set later in time, after the world had assumed the form in which it was known to traditional cultures.
Tales are entertaining stories that narrators and listeners are not required to believe as true.
Histories are narratives of actually witnessed events that have been transmitted, with greater or less embellishment, to subsequent generations.

In the oral literature of native California, the lines between these genres are typically not at all carefully observed. It is often impossible to classify a narrative definitively as a myth, a legend, a tale, or a history. Cognate versions of the same narrative as told by different narrators may fall within different genres.

Sharing among neighbors

Many of the narratives are entirely unique, existing in only a single version. However, many others are known in multiple versions that vary but are clearly cognate with one another. The versions may come from different narrators within a single ethnolinguistic group, from different groups within a region of the Californias, or from groups that are scattered across the North American continent and even beyond. Patterns in the relative similarity of shared narratives are almost entirely dictated by the historic-period propinquity of the groups sharing narratives. Few if any patterns reflect preferential sharing among historically dispersed groups that originally shared a common linguistic descent. This suggests ongoing, creative modification of narratives, rather than rigid conservatism.

Weak narrative unity

Lengthy traditional narratives tend to have an episodic or picaresque character. Their unity comes mainly from the presence of a continuing central character or from a causal sequence of events, rather than from any overall theme, plot, or narrative purpose.

Fluidity in content

As a consequence of weak narrative unity, the stories often have a composite character. Motifs are rather freely added, dropped, or transferred from one narrative to another.

Moral ambiguity

In the traditional narratives of native North America, the Western expectation of essentially "good" or "evil" characters or events is generally not met. The same character is likely to act beneficently in one episode but malevolently in the next, according to the accepted norms of behavior or to criteria of general welfare. Many of the early discussions of this literature by outside observers were marred by attempts to characterize a mythic personage as either a beloved benefactor or an evil trickster, when both of these labels might be equally true, or equally false.

Surrealism in time

The events of traditional narratives are rarely set within realistic chronological frameworks. Time spans measured in years or decades are rarely specified. Characters often are conceived and grow to maturity within miraculously short periods.

Animal/human ambiguity

The characters in many narratives are known by the names of animals (or, less commonly, by the names of plants or other natural features). Often it is understood that the character is the forebear or prototype of the animal species. Its conversation, actions, and motives are usually human, while its physical characteristics may be either human or animal, and commonly the two are mixed in a logically inconsistent manner.

Kroeber's View

Kroeber distinguished three main cultural regions within California. Each of these was seen as having a distinctive pattern in its traditional narratives that set it apart from neighboring regions.

The small Northwest region was focused on the Hupa
Hupa
Hupa, also spelled Hoopa, are a Native American tribe in northwestern California. Their autonym is Natinixwe, also spelled Natinookwa, meaning "People of the Place Where the Trails Return." The majority of the tribe is enrolled in the federally recognized Hoopa Valley Tribe; however, some Hupa are...

, Karok, and Yurok. A creation myth was lacking in this region. Narratives typically related to a race that had preceded the presently known human beings in the regions. Long stories about the travels and adventures of a culture hero were characteristic.
The Central region, encompassing most of California, possessed a creation myth that often employed the Earth Diver motif. Kroeber distinguished North Central and South Central divisions within this region, consisting respectively of the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys plus the coastal and mountain areas adjacent to them.
The Southern region included Takic
Uto-Aztecan languages
Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family consisting of over 30 languages. Uto-Aztecan languages are found from the Great Basin of the Western United States , through western, central and southern Mexico Uto-Aztecan or Uto-Aztekan is a Native American language family...

- and Yuman-speaking groups. It had a distinctive creation myth but lacked most of the tales common in the Central region, at least to judge from the surviving records.

Gayton's View

Anna H. Gayton reexamined Kroeber's regional divisions. While finding them generally valid, she stressed the gradational character of the transitions between the regions. She also suggested that variability in their links with regions outside of California was a key to understanding internal differences:

Links with the Northwest Coast region of North America permeated Kroeber's Northwest region within California. These links extended well beyond the Hupa-Karok-Yurok core, as far south as the Pomo
Pomo people
The Pomo people are an indigenous peoples of California. The historic Pomo territory in northern California was large, bordered by the Pacific Coast to the west, extending inland to Clear Lake, and mainly between Cleone and Duncans Point...

and as far east as the Achomawi
Achomawi
The Achomawi are one of eleven bands of the Pit River tribe of Native Americans who lived in northeastern California, USA....

.
Links with the Plateau region extended throughout northernmost California, from Kroeber's Northwest region to the Yana
Yana people
The Yana people were a group of Native Americans indigenous to Northern California in the central Sierra Nevada Mountains, on the western side of the range. The Yana-speaking people comprised four groups: the Northern Yana, the Central Yana, the Southern Yana, and the Yahi...

and Achomawi
Achomawi
The Achomawi are one of eleven bands of the Pit River tribe of Native Americans who lived in northeastern California, USA....

in the east.
Links with the Great Basin were pronounced not only east of the Sierra Nevada but also in the western foothills of that range and in upper Sacramento Valley and the Mojave Desert, from the Shasta
Shasta (tribe)
The Shasta are an indigenous people of Northern California and Southern Oregon in the United States. They spoke one of the Shastan languages....

to the Serrano
Serrano (people)
The Serrano are a Native American tribe of present day California, United States. They use the autonyms of Taaqtam, meaning "people"; Maarenga'yam, "people from Morongo"; and Yuhaviatam, "people of the pines." The Serrano historically populated the San Bernardino Mountains and extended east into...

.
Southern California was strongly tied to the Yuman-speaking area of western Arizona.
In central California Gayton discerned a relatively discrete nucleus of groups lacking such strong external influences. These included the Miwok
Miwok
Miwok can refer to any one of four linguistically related groups of Native Americans, native to Northern California, who spoke one of the Miwokan languages in the Utian family...

, Yokuts, Salinan
Salinan
The Salinan Native Americans lived in what is now the Central Coast of California, in the Salinas Valley. Said to have gone extinct by the Census of 1930, the Salinan Native Americans survived and are now in the process of applying for tribal recognition from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.There...

, Ohlone
Ohlone
The Ohlone people, also known as the Costanoan, are a Native American people of the central California coast. When Spanish explorers and missionaries arrived in the late 18th century, the Ohlone inhabited the area along the coast from San Francisco Bay through Monterey Bay to the lower Salinas Valley...

, and Patwin
Patwin
The Patwin are a Wintun people native to the area of Northern California. The Patwin were a southern branch of the Wintun group and native inhabitants of California from 1,000 up to 4,000 years....

.

Multi-ethnic Collections

Bright, William. 1978. Coyote Stories. International Journal of American Linguistics Native American Texts Series No. 1. University of Chicago Press.
Bright, William. 1993. A Coyote Reader. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Brandon, William
William Brandon (author)
William Brandon was an American writer and historian.Brandon was born in Kokomo, Indiana, but spent his childhood in various locales, including the Yucatán and New Mexico...

The Magic World: American Indian Songs and Poems (1971) ISBN 0-8214-0991-3
Curtis, Edward S. 1907-1930. The North American Indian. 20 vols. Plimpton Press, Norwood, Massachusetts.
Erdoes, Richard, and Alfonso Ortiz. 1984. American Indian Myths and Legends. Pantheon Books, New York.
Gifford, Edward Winslow, and Gwendoline Harris Block. 1930. California Indian Nights. Arthur H. Clark, Glendale, California.
Hinton, Leanne, and Lucille J. Watahomigie. 1984. Spirit Mountain: An Anthology of Yuman Story and Song. University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Judson, Katharine Berry. 1912. Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest. A. C. McClurg, Chicago.
Kroeber, A. L. 1907. "Indian Myths of South Central California". University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 4:167-250. Berkeley.
Kroeber, Theodora 1959. The Inland Whale. University of California Press.
Luthin, Herbert W. 2002. Surviving through the Days: A California Indian Reader. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Margolin, Malcolm. 1993. The Way We Lived: California Indian Stories, Songs, and Reminiscences. First edition 1981. Heyday Books, Berkeley, California.
Powers, Stephen. 1877. Tribes of California. Contributions to North American Ethnology, vol. 3. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. Reprinted with an introduction by Robert F. Heizer in 1976, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Swann, Brian. 1994. Coming to Light: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America. Random House, New York.
Thompson, Stith. 1929. Tales of the North American Indians. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Comparative Studies and Discussions

Applegate, Richard. 1977. "Native California Concepts of the Afterlife". In Flowers of the Wind: Papers on Ritual, Myth and Symbolism in California and the Southwest, edited by Thomas C. Blackburn, pp. 105–119. Ballena Press, Socorro, New Mexico.
Bierhorst, John. 1985. The Mythology of North America. Quill, New York.
Bright, William. 1996. "Oral Literature of California and the Intermountain Region". In Handbook of Native American Literature, edited by Andrew Wiget, pp. 47–52. Garland Publishing, New York.
Demetracopoulou, Dorothy. 1933. "The Loon Woman Myth: A Study in Synthesis". Journal of American Folklore 46:375-500.
Gayton, Anna H. 1935. "The Orpheus Myth in North America". Journal of American Folklore 48:263-293.
Gayton, Anna H. 1935. "Areal Affiliations of California Folktales". American Anthropologist 37:582-599.
Gifford, Edward Winslow, and Gwendoline Harris Block. 1930. California Indian Nights. Arthur H. Clark, Glendale, California.
Heizer, Robert F. 1978. "Mythology: Regional Patterns and History of Research". In California, edited by Robert F. Heizer, pp. 654–657. Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, Vol. 8. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
Kroeber, A. L. 1904. "Types of Indian Culture in California". University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 2:81-103. Berkeley.
Kroeber, A. L. 1907. "The Religion of the Indians of California". University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 4:319-356. Berkeley.
Laylander, Don. 2005. "Myths about Myths: Clues to the Time Depth of California's Ethnographic Record". Proceedings of the Society for California Archaeology 18:65-69.
Lowie, Robert H. 1908. "The Test-Theme in North American Mythology". Journal of American Folklore 21:97-148.
Reichard, Gladys A. 1921. "Literary Types and Dissemination of Myths". Journal of American Folklore 34:269-307.
Rooth, Anna Birgitta Rooth. 1957. "The Creation Myths of the North American Indians". Anthropos 1957:497-508. Reprinted in Sacred Narrative: Readings in the Theory of Myth, edited by Alan Dundes, 1984, University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 166–181.
Schmerler, Henrietta. 1931. "Trickster Married His Daughter". Journal of American Folklore 44:196-207.
Sutton, Mark Q. 1993. "The Numic Expansion in Great Basin Oral Tradition". Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 15:111-128.
Thompson, Stith. 1929. Tales of the North American Indians. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Thompson, Stith. 1946. The Folktale. Holt, Reinhart and Winston, New York.
Wallace, William J. 1978. "Comparative Literature". In California, edited by Robert F. Heizer, pp. 658–661. Handbook of North American Indians, William C. Sturtevant, general editor, Vol. 8. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.