In eight pages the evolution of Blackfoot mythology from an oral to written phenomenon is examined. Eight sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: AM2_PPnaBlkF.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
of the fascinatingly diverse cultures of Native Americans. Each of these cultures share a number of similarities, however. One of the most obvious of these similarities is that
information was passed on from generation to generation in the form of the spoken word. These peoples had, after all, no provision for written language prior to the arrival
of the European invaders of their shorelines. With the arrival of the Europeans to the Americas Native stories began to be
recorded in a written format. This changed the stories at least to some degree but it also introduced a number of interesting concerns. Europeans, of course, viewed Native
stories as fabrications of their imaginations. The Native Americans viewed them as fact. The first task in examining the particulars of Blackfoot oral history, therefore, becomes distinguishing between
the terms "legend", "myth", and "folklore". Properly used, the term "folklore" is applied to stories which are assumed to be false
(Peardon, 2001). The term "myth", on the other hand, is reserved by anthropologists and folklorists for those stories which deal with the creation of the world (Peardon, 2001).
The term "legend" is applied to accounts which are told as true (Peardon, 2001). The term "legend" it seems would be more appropriately applied to Blackfoot stories, after all
the peoples from which these stories originated considered them very much a reality (Peardon, 2001). In practice, however, most authors continue to refer to Native American stories as myths.
For the purpose of conformity in approaches, so too will this paper. Another concern which was introduced with the arrival of the