Folktales of the North American Indian

by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

For the native peoples of North America nature was deeply revered, and the spirit world was irrevocably entwined with everyday life. Henry Schoolcraft, from whose collection of Native American stories the selection in this book have been chosen, was one of the first people to study the Indian way of life. For thirty years, in the early part of the nineteenth century, he lived among Native Americans and wrote down their traditional tales which had been passed to successive generations through word of mouth.

In these tales colourful characters abound: the toad-woman who steals babies; the mischievous giant Manabozho; and the man who hops on one leg. There is the girl who weaves a net of her hair to ensnare the Sun; the twelve celestial sisters who come down to earth to dance; and the boy who prefers his guardian spirit turning him into a robin to being endowed with wisdom and strength.

Genres: History, Native Americans, Reference, Folklore, Anthropology

303 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 1916

About the author

Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (March 28, 1793 – December 10, 1864) was an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the Mississippi River. He is also noted for his major six-volume study of American Indians in the 1850s.

He served as a United States Indian agent for a period beginning in 1822 in Michigan, where he married Jane Johnston, mixed-race daughter of a prominent Scotch-Irish fur trader and Ojibwa mother, herself a daughter of Ojibwa war chief Waubojeeg. She taught him the Ojibwe language and much about her maternal culture. They had several children, two of whom survived past childhood. She is now recognized as the first Native American literary writer in the United States.

In 1846 the widower Schoolcraft was commissioned by Congress for a major study, known as Indian Tribes of the United States, which was published in six volumes from 1851 to 1857. He married again in 1847, to Mary Howard, from a slaveholding family in South Carolina. In 1860 she published the bestselling The Black Gauntlet, an anti-Uncle Tom's Cabin novel.

Reviews

[mateusz szum era · Rating 3 out of 5]

why they turn into everything but cats (6/10)

[Max Reads · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review to follow

[Kathleen A Hoyland · Rating 4 out of 5]

enchanting !