American Indian Myths and Legends

At the very beginning of the article the editors, Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, discuss how

American Indian Legend is literally everywhere. He takes the time to mention that Indian mythology

is unlike many other mythologies because it doesn't follow certain norms we would expect when

 hearing (or reading) a story. My interest reached its peek when the author wrote about the Sioux

doctor or medicine man. This "doctor" explains that if Indian tales die out than this will cause the old

language to die out as well. When the language dies the legends soon follow. Another important

aspect of Indian Mythology and language is explained in this article.  The editors explain that

language is a tool for ones thoughts to get across and myths is the soul or essence of thought.

The editors later show us that geography also plays a great role in the types of stories told. Depending

on where the storyteller lives he/ or her will tell the stories pertaining to their geography. For

example if someone lives near a river they can tell stories of sea-monsters while people living in the

forest would more likely tell stories of animals like grizzlies.Because Indians lived in tribes the

the stories varied depending on the tribe you were in. When tribes intermingled culture and stories

overlapped creating new stories from previous ones. I enjoyed reading all the stories even though I

wasn't understanding the point or moral all the time. The one story I really had trouble understanding

was the very last one, The snake brothers. I was confused about its ending, did the older brothers at

the end help him? Did they even know that there younger brother was in front of them? And why did

the other snakes come out? Were they going to hurt the brother?