Mythology of the American Indians by Evelyn Wolfson

Author:Evelyn Wolfson [Wolfson, Evelyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780766061644
Publisher: Enslow Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2015-04-14T04:00:00+00:00

EXPERT COMMENTARY

In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell, a noted scholar of mythology, author, and lecturer, talked with Bill Moyers, a television journalist, about the need for hunting rituals among Native Americans and other early hunters:

Man lives by killing and there is a sense of guilt connected with that. . . .You see, the basic hunting myth is of a kind of covenant [agreement] between the animal world and the human world. The animal gives its life willingly, with the understanding that its life transcends its physical entity and will be returned to the soil or to the mother through some ritual of restoration.3

. . . You find among hunting people all over the world a very intimate, appreciative relationship to the principal food animal. Now when we sit down to a meal, we thank God for giving us the food. These people thanked the animal.4

. . . And sometimes the animal becomes the giver of a ritual, as in the legends of the origins of the buffalo. For example, you can see this equality in the basic legend of the Blackfoot tribe, which is the origin legend of their buffalo dance rituals by which they invoke the cooperation of the animals in this play of life.5

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