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About Me
- Johnny Panic
- I'm just a guy... pretty boring over all. Nothing all that special. Frustrated and growing older (I've hit 30, but i think i'm in denial). I work a job, middle management I guess. We are always broke though. Got a wife, and a daughter, love them both more than i've ever found the words to express. I go to church, sometimes. I bike to work, if i get up on time. I like the rain, always. But I have this nagging feeling that there should be more to life than this...
1 comment:
"Myths and Tales of the White Mountain Apache by Grenville Goodwin"
It took me a long time to finish this book. I started in early December 2006, and I finished this last weekend (April 2007). I didn't really push it though, and I rarely read more than one tale at a sitting.
I loved the rawness of these tales. They were violent, honest, and often vulgar. They were in no way sanitized. And they felt more current than other myth collections that I've read. It's be like if the Bible included not just a creation myth and a flood myth, but a myth about the industrial revolution as well. Tales typically start with "Long ago they say," and nearly always end with the phrase "My yucca fruit lies piled up."
The Ga'n were one of the parts I found the most interesting. From the introduction:
"The ga'n are a class of supernaturals living inside the mountains and certain caves and who may be equated with the Pueblo Kachinas. THere were a people living on this earth long ago, but went away never to return. If invoked properly, thier help may be obtained, or if slightly trespassed upon, they may do harm." (xxiii)
There are a few things that seem to pop up in seemingly unrelated mythologies over and over. The flood for instance. -It's mentioned in this book, but sadly the white mountain apache flood myth itself is missing form this collection- The concept of a people here before, and have since gone away somewhere. Very often some sort of intermediary between the gods and man. Nearly always supernaturally powerful. And they have all gone away somewhere, for some reason or another. The Ga'n fit this category pretty well. The broad category I've started referring to in my own mind as "the ones who were here before". They were not intermediaries to the gods, but they were powerful. They had knowledge and powers beyond that of most apache. And they went away. The Ga'n in particular retreated in to the earth. Closed the door, and pulled the rug in after them.
Morality is blurred in these myths. There are plenty that serve as examples of right action. But they don't draw a very distinct line between good and evil - even when they try.
There is, for instance, the story of how dawn is won. There is a gambling game between the creatures of darkness (led by Bear) who we are told are evil, and the creatures of light (led by slim coyote in one version, but in the other version slim coyote plays a more interesting role. In the other version he goes back and forth, helping whichever side is currently loosing) who we are told are good. The side of light wins - in the version with gopher they win by cheating. And once they win they hunt down and mercilessly kill the creatures from the other side. Their hunt is relentless. Snake crawls down into a crack in the ground trying to get away, and the "good animals" fill the fissure with arrows killing snake where he hides. It smacks a bit of the "we're the good guys because we're us" mentality. But that's me being exceedingly ethnocentric.
This echoes through other myths as well. The idea of morality set forth in these myths is interesting. It brings to mind a quote I heard somewhere that went something like "morality is an issue for the warm and well fed to ponder."
The myths seemed to fall in to two different categories (claims the expert who took months to read a single book on the topic). There are the old ones, the ones I would think of as myths. The ones about creation. The ones that explained the meaning of the directions and their powers
North = white
South = blue
West = Yellow
East = Black
The ones where Sun lived in a house to the west and his sons were gods who faught monsters.
And then there were the more current ones. The ones that included the White Men. They felt more like urban legends than myths. Like something you'd hear from a friends cousins neighbor and mutated abit with each talling. Rather than the old myths that felt like they were carefully handed down and often came with warning that they might be too powerful for some people.
For the most part, I didn't like the newer legends as much (I've got no proof that they were realyl "newer" they just dealt with more recent events, and came at the end of the book). There was one exception. Slim Coyote.
Another character you can find in most mythologies is the trickster. He's usually a character that isn't bound by normal moral values. He can be liked, even admired, even though he commits acts that society would otherwise consider evil. That's slim coyote. Sometimes the witty trickster, sometimes the bumbling fool. Sometimes the hero, sometimes a murderer. Many times there are annotations in the tales that say something like "here the teller pauses as the audience laughs at Slim Coyote's stupidity." Those are usualy pretty vulgur scenes. And there are times that Slim Coyote comes off as having saved the apache people if not the entire world. He leads the good animals to win dawn, steals tobacco from Sun and introduces to the Apache people, he cross dressed, he kills his children, he lusts after his own daughter and tricks her in to committing incest, and he traps the spirit of Wind in his ass. What do you do with a character like that? But that's the Trickster isn't it? The anti-hero. But where as most have redeeming qualities that out-weigh their failings, I'm not so sure you could say that with Slim Coyote.
Over all....
It's a good book of myths. Not always easy, or pleasant to read. But if you like reading myths, and you want to be introduced to something different and a little obscure, see if you can get your hands on this collection.a
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