Indian Legends Retold

Eastman, Elaine Goodale, 1863-1953Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 115K words
Chapters: 12

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.Indian Legends Retold by Elaine Goodale EastmanAuthor: Eastman, Elaine Goodale, 1863-1953,Language: English, Class: E011: History: America: America, Release Date: Apr 19, 2011

Editor's review

Indian Legends Retold is Elaine Goodale Eastman's English-language retelling of Native American oral traditions. Long engaged with Native American education and cultural documentation, the author restates the stories in plain, accessible English while preserving the imaginative world of nature, animals, spirits, and tribal life found in the legends. Its value lies in presenting oral tradition in narrative form, allowing readers to enter the story world without relying on scholarly annotation; at the same time, as a retelling from the early twentieth century, it bears the imprint of its recorder's perspective, and readers may note the distance between the "retelling" and the "original oral account." It is suitable as an introductory reader for Native American folk literature and for classroom read-aloud or family shared reading. It is best treated as a story collection rather than an anthropological monograph, and unclear cultural background should be checked elsewhere.

Who it's for

A good fit for

General readers interested in Native American folktales and oral literature
English teachers and reading promoters seeking English folktale material
Families looking for stories suitable for read-aloud or shared reading
Students new to folklore who want to start with stories before going deeper

Not a good fit for

Researchers expecting rigorous anthropological field records or annotations
Readers seeking parallel texts in Native American languages
Readers who prefer long, continuous novelistic narratives

Reading tips

Read in scattered story units, one or two a day, without aiming for continuous reading.
After reading, note recurring animals, natural images, and characters.
For teaching, have students retell or rewrite stories and compare retelling with recreation.
When cultural background is unclear, consult reliable Native American cultural sources.

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.

FAQ

Are these stories suitable for children?

Most stories are short and plainly written, suitable for read-aloud or shared reading. Some content involves traditional beliefs and animal transformation; parents or teachers may preread and briefly explain according to the child's understanding.

Which Native American group or groups do the legends belong to?

The book is a collection of retold Native American legends, and the specific source groups must be judged from each piece. As a popular retelling, it does not necessarily identify the tribal source of every piece, and readers should not treat it as a complete oral record of any one tribe.

How difficult is the English in this reader?

The vocabulary is generally basic and the sentences are not long, making it a moderately easy English narrative text for readers with some English reading ability. Proper nouns or cultural terms can be understood from context.

Comments

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About the author

Eastman, Elaine Goodale, 1863-1953 Author

Elaine Goodale Eastman (1863–1953) was an American writer whose work is closely tied to Native American culture. Three of her books are represented here: Wigwam Evenings: Sioux Folk Tales Retold and Indian Legends Retold, both prepared with her husband Charles Eastman, and the novel Yellow Star: A Story of East and West. The first two retell oral traditions of the Sioux in English prose, while the novel takes the meeting of Eastern and Western cultures as its setting. Because public information is limited, details of her life cannot be given at length; her surviving works nonetheless show a sustained interest in Native legends and cross-cultural themes, written in plain and readable prose that helped bring Native American stories to a wider English-reading public.