Tunkashila: From the Birth of Turtle Island to the Blood of Wounded Knee [Paperback]

Gerald Hausman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1994

Tunkashila, which means "grandfather" in Lakota, is the epic tale of Native America as told through Indian eyes. The Southwest storyteller, Gerald Hausman, using mythological works like Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Biblical epics like Genesis as his inspiration, has constructed a sweeping narrative that tells the saga of Native American heritage - from creation, to the formation of Turtle Island, or earth, to the battle at Wounded Knee, where the tale ends. Retelling over eighty Indian stories that have been handed down to us from antiquity, Hausman has assembled a great pageant of mythological characters into a circle of highly anecdotal myths: the myths of creation; the myths of love, loss, and leaving; the myths of power; the myths of war; and the myths of two worlds, one white and one red. Tunkashila's creation begins with our original parents, Sun Father and Mother Earth; their rebellious twins - known as the Monster Slayers; the holy people of earth, air, water, and fire; and a spectacular carnival of animal and insect people, who act in a cosmology of co-creation. From these central figures, their children and sacred relations, come the stories themselves, all based on oral tale: we read of the Abalone Girl who fell in love with a whale; of the story of Mountain Singing, where a mortal pursues a goddess and discovers the consequences; of Tall Man, who followed Red Shell down to the underworld only to see her shade disappear; of Blue Elk, the mute boy, who was given the gift of voice through the antlers of an elk; and of an all-male clan of the River Crows that was destroyed by a white man's plague. Mythologizing actual events, Hausman finally chronicles the decline of Turtle Island,guiding the reader on a haunting journey through the ruined, wraith-like terrain of late nineteenth-century Native America. Tunkashila is a noble work that can be read from start to finish, but also can be dipped into, for each story is complete in its own right. The singular be

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nearly 70 tales from such diverse tribes as Creek, Navajo, Roanoke, Hopi, Lakota and Seminole are loosely strung together into a single epic in this disappointing effort by this popularizer of Indian culture. While not Native American himself, Hausman ( Turtle Island Alphabet ) traces his interest to the '30s when his mother, then an anthropology student, collected some of the tales used here. The bulk of them, however, Hausman culled from oral and more familiar published sources. Taken individually, some of the stories are well told. Particularly effective is "The Story of the Second Animal Council," in which beasts decide how to combat human encroachment, and "The Story of the White Deer Named Virginia Dare," an account from the Indian perspective of the first white child born in North America. The biggest flaw is at the very heart of Hausman's enterprise: his decision to synthesize myths from different traditions into a putatively linear narrative with little indication of each story's original context. Though the volume purports to give readers the history of North America through the eyes of its original inhabitants, it only provides a stereotyped, romanticized image. Line drawings.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Hausman ( Turtle Island Alphabet , LJ 3/15/92) calls Tunkashila a "cultural translation" of Native American legends. He gathered these stories from many U.S. tribes and here ambitiously attempts to reinterpret them and create a sort of American Indian epic. The book begins with creation myths and ends with tales of Geronimo, The Ghost Dance, and Black Elk. The 70 stories are short and are recounted in a simplistic and stereotypically "Indian" style. Many may prefer to read these stories as originally told or written; it is not clear in Tunkashila which parts are Hausman's and which are traditional. While this book may be enjoyable for those interested in American Indian culture, others will be offended by Hausman's appropriation of this unique culture.
- Gwen Gregory, U.S. Courts Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (December 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312113455
• ISBN-13: 978-0312113452
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,568,575 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am an inveterate storyteller, which is to say: I love to do it, am helpless not to do it, and I do it all the time, even when I am by myself there is an inner monologue going on in my head. This habit of privately roving around in the land of legends is something I've done for as long as I can remember. My mom worried about me when she saw that I spent too much time by myself. I would creep into a closet and close the door and in the silence of the darkness I would spin tales of all kinds. I was never lonely as a kid because I had the imagination of a wild thing, and I was content to play in the fields and valleys and secret caves of that imaginary world.