Post #1: Native American Creation Stories

     After reading and analyzing the three creation stories, one can notice many different trends in the way the stories were produced. In the time span from 1650 to 1910 a lot of things can change. Specifically in these three Native American creation stories, The Indians of the New Netherlands For the Creation, The Origins of Ottawa Society Recalled by Nicholas Perrot, and Remaking the World: A Sioux Story, changes in the status and roles of women in the society and the Anglo’s impact on the Native Americans are evidently shown. In order to understand, one has to relate certain events in history to the stories.

     The roles and status of women are very different in all three stories. In the first story even though this woman is described as “gross or corpulent,” one can speculate from the story that women were considered nurturing and God’s loving partner, (The Indians of the New Netherlands For the Creation). Women were highly respected in 1650, in the New Netherlands society. In the second story women were not portrayed as highly respected as in the first story. Women were like servants to their husbands. They made shoes, cleaned, sewed, cooked, and even skinned the hunted animals. In the third story women are not even mentioned. This shows that the status of women in the Native American culture and society had went from respect to lack there of from 1650-1910. Along with the status of women changing, evidence of influence from the Anglo’s is shown.

    There is some evidence especially in the last story, written in 1935, that shows that the Christians had a great impact on the Native American society. Resemblances of bible stories are evident as well. “When he sang the fourth song and stamped on the earth, it split open in many places like a shattered gourd, and water flowed from the cracks until it  covered everything,” (Remaking the World: A Sioux Story). This quote from the last story is symbolic and resembles The Great Flood and the Noah’s Arc stories from the bible. Also the use of the words “Creating power” shows how Native Americans started using different speech in their oral creation stories. By saying that the creating power created the world and man instead of an animal, as shown in earlier creation stories, it shows how Native Americans have adapted different ways of thinking, influenced by the Christian converts.

    There are many events in history that has helped many people understand the Native American creation stories more. From 1650 to 1910 the three different creation stories have changed dramatically, especially evident is the status of women in Native American society and the influence of Christianity in the language and way of thinking of many Native Americans. The greatest change observed after reading the three creation stories was how the language and thought processes of the Native Americans was influenced by the Anglo’s, who were trying to convert them to Christianity.

Comments

[Ashley C./Group 9]

This is a great summary of all the things which we discussed in class relating to the Creation Stories. You provide good evidence on the subject in order to support your thesis. I think your blog was good because you gave just enough information in order to interest the reader without going overboard on the details of the Creation Stories. I do believe that your thesis statement could have been much stronger. This could have easily been done by eliminating the word 'evidently' from your statement. This makes your thesis look weak, and therefore, your post discrediting. Also, even though you did a great job not going into too much detail on the stories themselves, you could have easily provided more concrete evidence from the stories to support your thesis. I think that both body paragraphs regarding the role of women and the Christian influence could have been a little longer in length to allow for more examples to support your thesis. Overall, I enjoyed your post and I think with a little more practice, everything will fall into place for you! : )

[DynamiteBunnyForce]

This is a really strong post. It flows smoothly and easily from the beginning to end, summing up each part with fairly good explanations. I would only suggest providing a bit more detail on certain things, but I'm pretty bad with this, too.