In Native American Literature, they seem to personify animals a lot. In "How the World was Made", the mountains and valleys were formed from the Great Buzzard when he flapped his wings. This Buzzard must have been of amazing size to have created mountains and valleys, so I think that the Native Americans used a lot of exaggeration.
The story also represents how often women can have babies. The woman starts off having a baby every week, but they realized that the world would become too crowded. The two people are also brother and sister; therefore I can conclude that the Native American culture might be okay with inbreeding. The man even hits his sister with a fish telling her to mltiply. I think that this signifies that the Native Americans might not respect women very much.
The cherokee have a significant relationship with animals because they mention animals all throughout the story. The water beetle needed a place to rest, so he created the earth. This could give support for some hospitality that the Native Americans used by saying that they always made sure that a fellow member of their tribe had a place to sleep. Praying to their medicine is important to their culture also because special power was given to the owls and panthers who stayed awake for seven nights praying to their medicines.
interesting conclusions in your second paragraph. Check out Drew's blog - he checked out what fish symbolize and came up with a pretty good analysis of the meaning of the fish slapping.
ReplyDeleteRemember, the brother and sister were the first inhabitants of Earth. Their relations with each other wouldn't be much different from Cain and Abel of the Bible marrying their sisters - there was no one else to marry at the time.