Myths and Legends of the Sioux

by Marie L. McLaughlin

Marie L. McLaughlin, in writing Myths and Legends of the Sioux, aimed to create a written account of the many oral myths and legends that have been passed down by the Sioux people for hundreds of years, in order to guard against their loss to history.

Containing nearly 40 tales, McLaughlin has assembled a robust collection of Sioux legends. Most of these stories are quite brief, with some chalking in at less than two pages. As with all good fables, the majority of these stories contain a fairly simple message. There is the story The Rabbit and the Elk, a brief tale about an elk tricking a rabbit into thinking it had been caught, which is a classic "don't count your chickens until they've hatched" story. There is also the tale The Artichoke and the Muskrat, a story which carries the message of respecting the differences between people. The legends included in this collection all proceed in a similar fashion and carry similarly simple yet important messages about how best to live life and treat others.

The myths and legends included in this collection do not serve only to teach life lessons, but also offer valuable insight into the beliefs and priorities of the Sioux people. A profound respect for nature and its creatures is apparent throughout McLaughlin's book, and one cannot help but admire this aspect of the Sioux.

Whether being read to children as bedtime stories, or being examined by a scholar for insight into the Sioux people, Myths and Legends of the Sioux is a valuable collection. McLaughlin's book is enjoyable on a number of levels, and is thus highly recommended to all fans of myths, legends and fairy tales.

Genres: Native American, Mythology, Ebooks, Fiction, Short Stories, Classics, American

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1913

Reviews

[ArwendeLuhtiene · Rating 3 out of 5]

La autora de esta recopilación de leyendas de los nativos americanos Sioux de principios del siglo XX, Marie L. McLaughlin, era nieta de una nativa Sioux y creció entre ellos hasta los 14 años, además de vivir la mayor parte de su vida en contacto con ellos al casarse con el agente de una agencia Sioux. Dominaba la lengua Sioux y recopiló todas estas historias hablando con ancianas y ancianos de la nación. El libro está muy bien presentado e incluye una serie de dibujo originales (¿dibujados por la autora?).

La pena es que la mayor parte de las historias tiene como protagonistas a hombres, y la participación femenina está muy limitada, como solemos ver en tantas partes :S, a los roles de género tradicionales de labores de la casa, belleza física, y ser pedidas en matrimonio (para lo que los hombres tienen que demostrar su valía, como sucede en toda sociedad guerrera :S, matando a enemigos y/o trayendo botín). Sólo a veces aparece alguna bruja (generalmente vista de forma negativa) o mujer medicina/médica para romper este patrón. La interacción entre mujeres también tiene muy poca relevancia en esta recopilación, aunque a veces aparecen buenas relaciones entre madres e hijas, por ejemplo (eso sí, generalmente centradas en el duelo tras la muerte de las segundas :S).

[Julie Sommer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of Native American legends is so fun! It was so interesting to compare these stories with the fairytales that I grew up with. So many interesting connections and differences in between this folklore and western fairytales. I especially loved a lot of the characterizations of animals and nature throughout the collection! It made me want to illustrate every story! If only I knew how to draw...

[Katy Lovejoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went through a native American phase when I was little

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent stories! I was especially fond of the 'Legend of Standing Rock' since I've read up on Standing Rock and the Dakota Access Pipeline so to read that story was pretty fascinating. This book makes me want to read more Indigenous mythology which I haven't done as my main focus is in Indigenous nonfiction.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is an interesting collection of parables and morals of a Native American culture. There are a lot of similarities with those of the Greeks and probably most world cultures.

[Liz Unze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found these short stories full of animals and magic and interesting explanations for thinking about why we act in certain ways. I enjoyed this book.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book

This book gave me a glimpse of the type of stories Sioux people share among themselves, an insight of what this people values, and a bit how they view their world.

[André Filip · Rating 4 out of 5]

ich habe mir indianische Geschichten immer anders vorgestellt. vor allem nicht so simpel. trotzdem interessant.

[T.D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a solid entry into Sioux folklore and mythology. (However, as a Native American myself, I found the book Forward a bit condescending.) With that said, some of the Native American tales in this book can be a hard read because many of the traditional tales don't follow the same three act structure of traditional Western stories.

In his own book, Karl Kroeber, the author of "Native American storytelling : a reader of myths and legends", summed up the unique otherness of Native American tales by highlighting the differences between traditional Native stories and the classical Western style of stories that we are most accustomed to. I will quote his book summary here: "He notes stories in which suspense is insignificant, metaphors hardly used, protagonists are often unnamed and ambiguity of motives is stressed. He reveals the highly practical functions of myths and legends in Native American societies, demonstrating how they helped listeners to explore the efficacy of social practices and cultural institutions, and how they reinforced American Indians' profound spiritual engagement with their natural environment."

Unfortunately these are concepts that the author of this book, Marie L. McLaughlin, did not understand. Otherwise her book Forward would have explained that these stories aren't to be read as juvenile literature. Nor are these tales to be read solely as entertainment. Many of the stories she recorded in her book hold esoteric significance to members of the Sioux nation that we as non-Sioux won't quite get.

All in all "Myths and Legends of the Sioux" was a solid read. I would recommend that readers of Native American folklore and mythology read Karl Kroeber's book forward first before trying to read this book though. Otherwise these tales won't make as much sense.

[Mike Ogilvie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1913, this book chronicles a series of stories that Marie McLaughlin preserved for posterity. They were all kept in an oral tradition and were given to her directly from older men and women of the Sioux. I was fascinated by the idea of being able to read the exact stories and legends that were told from person to person among Native American people.

I enjoyed the stories, but the reality fell short for me. While they were interesting and mostly engaging, most of them were at least a little bizarre and disjointed. There was usually a mystical aspect - sometimes related to an anthropomorphic animal: elk, deer, rabbit, and for some reason the spider (Unktomi) was always portrayed as sinister. Usually the story would start out normally enough, but it would end bizarrely or have unusual twists that just didn't add up. I'm all for it normally, but I just couldn't see the purpose most of the time. My guess is that they are very comparable to the original Grimm fairy tales and Aesop's fables.

The stories themselves were very short, ranging from 2 pages to 10-12. I read them all together, one after the other. In hindsight that was probably a mistake. It would be much more enjoyable to read the individual stories one at a time, letting them each stand alone.

If you like myths and fairy tales or Native American studies, you should definitely pick up Myths and Legends of the Sioux. It's in the public domain, so at minimum it's worth loading on your e-reader to have on hand in case.

[Flash Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oral traditions and myths have long been an integral part of Native American cosmology. Not only have they been – and continue to be – an essential part of handing down Native American customs, norms, beliefs, and cultural histories, but they also form a communal mythic discourse. This discourse is not a “fixed text,” but rather a dynamic process of interactive relations that are developed over generations of experience, and passed from relation to relation and generation to generation. In this sense, the traditional structures of mythic discourse serve an integrative function: to form a coherent basis for communal identity in terms of a shared set of fundamental ideas and beliefs expressed in multiple forms.

The oral traditions and myths recorded in this book are part of the communal mythic discourse of the Lakota Sioux people. Originally collected and recorded at the close of the nineteenth century by two Native language speakers – Marie L. McLaughlin and Zitkala Sa – these oral traditions provide some of the least distorted or colonially disrupted examples of the Lakota Sioux communal mythic discourse. Containing over 40 oral traditions, Lakota Sioux Legends and Myths brings together into a single volume these remarkable myths and legends.

Edited and with a forward by Peter N. Jones, Ph.D., Lakota Sioux Legends and Myths is a welcome and refreshing addition to the literature. Once again the beauty, depth, and knowledge contained within the Lakota Sioux oral traditions can speak for themselves.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

To understand, this book is true to the form of the fairy tale. Fairy tales don't always make perfect sense and often have unusual twists and turns that are, at best, implausible. Think on Lewis Caroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Fairy tales are *supposed* to have delightful silliness in them.

Fairy tales also often have lessons, teaching that is not presumptive because it is not preachy. The child may quietly take this or that from the story and live their lives accordingly. Unktomi (the spider) is like that in some of these stories, functioning in the role that a trickster or even ogre might fulfill in European fairy tales.

In short, it is a book worth reading. However, a thing must be appreciated according to its nature. Some who have not developed a fondness for the odd quirks of fairy tale may not find it so enjoyable.

[Corvidianus · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm glad someone took the time to transcribe the oral tradition, glad Sioux culture is being preserved, but these all read a bit like Rumi - predictable, didactic and not terribly thoughtful, for the most part. Maybe something was lost in translation, but I found most of these stories exhaustingly obvious & plodding. Quintessential "okay boomer" stories. Not at all a good read, mostly just relevant for anthropological purposes? But even that seems to sell the Sioux short - like if the whole of our regional culture was summed up by Aunt Wanda's wives tales.

[Benjamin Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

these tales express a very different mindset that was interesting to see. Some of them are explanatory about different events and phenomena, and a couple show the results of foolish or brave behavior, but many of them don't express the kind of morals or lessons that many folk tales do.

[A.R. Jarvis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would have been more stars, but that last story really ruined my enjoyment of the whole book.

[N Lopez · Rating 2 out of 5]

kinda interesting. i kept expecting these myths and legends to have some type of point…no dice. mostly weird.