The Bearskin Quiver: A Collection of Southwestern American Indian Folktales [Paperback]

Gregory Mcnamee (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2002

Once upon a time, an Apache story tells us, the trickster called Coyote killed a bear so that he could make a suitable quiver for his magical arrows. "You shouldn’t have done that," someone warned Coyote. "That skin will only bring you bad luck." And so it has been for Coyote ever since, chased by bears and humans alike. In this charming collection of folktales from long ago, we read of the creation of the world, of the ways of animals, of the beguiling Coyote, of the world in which we live and other worlds that hide just beyond our sight. Drawn from the oral literatures of some twenty Southwestern American Indian peoples, these stories teach us about the constants of those dry places: about how the clouds form in the sky, how the heat rises from the ground, how the animals move about from one shady spot to another, and how the people once lived their lives. All these stories show us – as the great anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, observed – that folktales are not mere afterthoughts of literature, just pleasant stories to tell around the campfire, but rather valuable tools for reflection upon our own lives.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

A longtime resident of the Southwest, Gregory McNamee is the author of Blue Mountains Far Away and Gila: The Life and Death of an American River, along with numerous other books; he is also the general editor of the Daimon Folklore Library.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction:

In the early days, a Maricopa Indian folktale tells us, the creator god gathered the representatives of this world's people and divided up the land among them. To the Yuma and the Chemehuevi he gave the fertile lands along the lower Colorado River, where the ocean rose to receive the sea. To the Tohono O'odham he gave the stony desert, the hillsides dotted with giant saguaro cactus. To the Apache he gave the high country, the mountains studded with fir and pine trees. To the Akimel O'odham, the people of the watercourse, and the Maricopa he gave the inner rivers of the Sonoran Desert, full in times of rain, empty in times of heat. But that was all, the story ends, for the creator god gave the rest of the world to the white people, because at that meeting they had been the ones to cry the longest and loudest, like little children.

This story, recorded late in the nineteenth century, can be read as an example of a kind of subversive humor, a knowing irony that marks many of the jokes told in Indian country today. It can also be read as a not so subtle reproach, a reminder that the meek do not necessarily inherit the earth. But it can also be read as a pointed example of what Claude Lévi-Strauss taught, many years ago: that folktales are not mere ornaments, tidbits with which to pass the long winter nights, but instead tools for thought. Folktales explain why things are the way they are, why they are often not the way they should be; they tell us why we should do certain things and not do others. Folktales, in other words, are good to think with.

Taken from their contexts, in many cases, more than a century ago, the stories gathered in this collection represent something of the ways of thinking, of the imaginative lives, of some twenty peoples of the Southwest -- roughly speaking, the area extending from what is now southern Utah and Colorado across to the coastal mountains of California, from the Rio Grande to the present border of the United States and Mexico. Those peoples made their homes along the banks of the region's few perennially flowing rivers and their tributaries -- the Chemehuevi along the Colorado, the Zia along the Rio Grande, the Akimel O'odham along the Gila; or, like the Apache and Navajo, they moved from highland to low country with the seasons, hunting and raiding; or, like the Tohono O'odham and Mojave, they found ways to survive in what to European newcomers to the region would seem to be some of the most inhospitable country on earth, but that welcomed those who knew its ways. Land of Coyote, !

Land of Turtle: as these peoples traveled through, as they lived and died in this place, they told stories, just as people do everywhere, about the weather, about the animals, about heroes and gods, about what it means to be human.

Just what these stories meant, at heart, to the people that told them must be a matter of conjecture; certainly something of the anthropologists who collected the stories went into them, and we can only guess at the deepest lessons that the stories were meant to impart to their original audiences -- can only guess that tales of weeping ghosts along riverbanks were meant to keep children away from the rushing water, that tales of an unpleasant afterlife were meant to keep people in this life from mistreating one another. We cannot use them, at least with any confidence, as vehicles by which to enter the minds of other cultures, other times, any more than we can really know, through their words alone, what was on William Shakespeare's mind when he wrote King Lear, what occupied Marcel Proust's thoughts during the making of Cities on the Plain. Certainly we cannot use them as a way to guess at what is important, what is meaningful, to Indian people today. The assumption that we! can belongs to an earlier anthropology, one more convinced than our own that it had the answers and that all that was missing were interesting questions.

Still, those who have seen the Southwest will recognize certain realities in these stories about the constants of that place: about how the clouds form in the sky, how the heat rises from the dry ground, how the animals move about from one shady spot to another. Uncertain as we are of their original contexts, we can read these stories for their own sake, take them as tools that are good to think with about our own lives, about our histories and destinies. Such is my hope in bringing together these scattered folktales, which I regard as literature of the best kind, or, in Ezra Pound's formulation, "News that stays news." May they serve you well -- and may they bring you pleasure.

Product Details

• Paperback: 139 pages
• Publisher: Daimon Verlag (September 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3856306102
• ISBN-13: 978-3856306106
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,891,779 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)