Myths of Origin

Continuing our class discussion of Story and Song and working towards this group's group post I've decided to put up some thoughts on origin myths, something I hope our whole group will relate to in each of the civilizations they research for this unit.

Valley of the Gods from Nature's Images'

Warning: This isn't a complete post, just a short description of some of the origin myths I've discovered while researching, and some of the thought's I've had while  reading them. I plan to look for some primary, or more primary, sources on this topic to make a more complete post that will help relate these origin myths and other folk lore from the Navajo to our general discussion on these topics.

If you'd like to help me develop these thoughts, read and comment below!

Note: When first researching these I simply clipped all of the pages to my Evernote notebook. See this post for more on Evernote.

1. I started from Dr. Burton's post on Story and Song and his link to this syllabus on folklore. I then clicked on the lecture notes for origin myths. (I thought it a good starting point) I found this point particularly interesting, because it gave me a way to study the myths I would read.

"EMERGENCE MYTHS (esp. in the Southwest)

Motifs: Previous worlds that are unsatisfactory, destruction of previous world, emergence (through hole in sky), series of world; often we are now in the 4th world." 

2. Next because the focus for this unit is oral knowledge I wanted to look at what personalities had to say. Therefore I turned to Icerocket, a search engine that looks through blogs. There I found these posts:
   
1. Beauty of the Swan
2. Navajo Fry Bread
3. Guess What I'm Reading
4. Endings and Beginnings
3. The post "Guess What I'm Reading" gave me an actual story reference "The Woman that Fell from the Sky" that I was eager to look up. Going back to Google I straight searched and found the following:
1. A book entitled the Woman who fell from the sky. Although not what I originally intended it still might be a good read!
2. This website indicating that this myth may not in fact belong to the Navajo, but rather the Seneca. This fits with what I learned from the lecture notes above about SW Native American myths having the motif, or theme, of emergence.
3. This myth index also indicates that the myth I looked up probably doesn't come from the Navajo.
4. Not satisfied with those results I asked the myth index for the myths it had, none of which seemed to be the origin myth. I then asked Google Books what it thought that Navajo origin myth should be. This what it told me:
1. Navajo Origin Legend
2. In the Beginning
3. Navajo Creation Myth
5. I finally satisfied my self that the general myth told in the above books is correct because it correlates nicely with the rough break down given here, on one of the official pages about the Navajo Nation.

That concludes my preliminary research into the origin myth, and others of the Navajo Nation. I'm excited to continue learning and sharing about the Navajo Nation because I have a friend who is Navajo. Maybe I will work on getting him to share?

Stay tuned!