The 15 th Century

1. The 15th Century • BEFORE our ancestors arrived in this beautiful country, American Literature had ALREADY begun. • The Native Americans had been living here for THOUSANDS of years. • The Europeans were not the first “writers” of American stories.

2. It All Started Here . . . Native American literature is rooted in oral tradition.Storytellers were highly valued members of Native American communities. They passed down myths that answered questions about the origins of the world and the place of humans and animals within it. Oral traditions captured the history of specific Native American groups, detailing their migrations and the challenges they faced after the arrival of Europeans.

3. An archetypeis an old imaginative pattern that appears across cultures andis repeated through the ages. An archetype can be a character, a plot, oran image. Examples: trickster, wise old man, shadow, hero, magician, earth mother, maiden, etc.

4. Trickster Archetype: The Coyote

5. IN YOUR TEXT: • TURN TO PAGE 24 • Read Coyote Finishes His Work retold by Barry Lopez

6. The trickster is an archetype that is especially important in the Native American storytelling tradition. • Sometimes the trickster is naughty— • tricksters can be masters at lying, and they often rebel against authority. • Sometimes the trickster is creative and even helpful to a group of people. • In Native American stories, the trickster is often a coyote, but can also be a • fox, badger, raven, or rabbit.

7. Examples of Popular Tricksters • Bugs Bunny - a rabbit trickster, in some respects similar to Brer Rabbit. • The Joker - A murderous clown and archenemy of Batman in comics and movies. • Bart Simpson - from the animated TV series The Simpsons. • Wile E. Coyote - featured in the Road Runner cartoons and based on a traditional Native American trickster figure, Old Man Coyote. • Road Runner himself, is also at least as great a trickster as Wile E. himself. • Peter Pan - The boy who wouldn't grow up from J.M. Barrie's famous play and books.

8. “I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down.”