Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians

John Wesley PowellProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
113K words
Chapters
12

Tags

English Originals Folk and Supernatural Tales Anthropological StudyNature WorshipCreation StoriesAcademic StudyNative North AmericansOral TraditionCultural ChangeFolk CustomsFolk LegendCross-Cultural View

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians by John Wesley PowellAuthor: Powell, John Wesley, 1834-1902,Language: English, Class: E011: History: America: America, Release Date: Apr 11, 2007

Editor's review

This Sketch of the Mythology of the North American Indians is John Wesley Powell's overview of North American Indian mythology, an early ethnographic document in the American history category. Its value lies not in narrative but in offering a window into how a nineteenth-century researcher observed and recorded Indigenous oral traditions: its organization of mythological motifs, group classifications, and story structures lets readers see what early anthropological writing looked like and makes it easy to compare with later, more systematic ethnographic studies. As a free Project Gutenberg eBook, it is easily accessible and suits use as reference material rather than as a book to read straight through. Readers are advised to approach it with a sense of it as a historical source, noting the author's classificatory framework and period limitations, and to treat it as one piece in the history of North American Indigenous cultural research rather than as a complete, authoritative collection of myths.

Who it's for

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Reading tips

  1. Read the preface and table of contents first to grasp the author's classificatory framework, then dip into chapters on groups of interest.
  2. Keep notes on mythological motifs that can be compared with later research.
  3. Treat it as a historical source rather than a story collection, and consult an ethnographic dictionary for terminology.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12

FAQ

Is this book a complete collection of myths? No. It is an overview and record, closer to an early research document; its length and format cannot cover the full mythological systems of North America's peoples, and it is best used as a source of leads.
How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for non-native readers? The text is nineteenth-century academic English with long sentences and considerable terminology, posing some difficulty for non-native readers. College-level English reading ability, along with a dictionary and background materials, is recommended.
Why recommend treating it as a historical source rather than a storybook? Because the author wrote at an early stage of ethnography, and his classifications and phrasing carry period limitations. Its value lies more in understanding how Indigenous traditions were recorded at the time than in providing complete mythological texts for direct citation.

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About the author

John Wesley Powell Author · American · 1834–1902

John Wesley Powell (1834–1902) was an American explorer, geologist and ethnologist. He served as the second director of the United States Geological Survey (1881–1894) and as the first director of the Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnology. In 1869 he led the first party to complete a full descent of the Colorado River, surveying the Grand Canyon; his account appeared in works such as Canyons of the Colorado. In 1877 he published Indian Linguistic Families of America, North of Mexico, a foundational work on the classification of North American Indian languages. He also wrote studies on North American Indian mythology, the evolution of language, and tribal society, including Wyandot Government. Combining fieldwork with theoretical inquiry, his writings deeply influenced American policies on Western development.