anyone know Native American legends (a story that explains something in life)?
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there are many,which nation?/south or east.someone ask me to talk in indian,there are over 500 hundred nations,all with their own language,all with their stories.but one that may be helpful is why possom has no fur on his tail...a long time ago possom had a long bushy tail and he went around showing it to everyone,all the other anilmals became pretty tired of his bragging so fox who had no tail decided to make a plan.as he begain to walk to possom,s home he met barber criket,soon he knew just what to do and ask barber criket for his help,after arriving to possoms home , he told of a council meeting and dance but convinced possom that his tail should be wrapped in ribon so to keep it from kinking,as barber criket wrapped the tail he chewed the hair off it and possom was non the wiser,later that night,after the council meeting ,the dance begain.possom got up to dance,slowly he begain to unravel the ribon to show his beautful tail,as the ribon came off the women begain to giggle,as possoms tail was bare and to this very day when you come upon a possom , he faints from embarassment.
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As a child the chandelier used to swing from side to side, and the radio would turn on by itself in the middle of the night.\n\nOne time on a camping trip I was walking back from the bathrooms at that moment right between day and night and I saw someone walk across the front of the site and stop behind a tree. So I figure one of the people is going to jump out and try to surprise me, so I pull out my flashlight, walk up to the tree, turn on the light, and there's no one there.\n\nOne time I was alone in a house, and I felt a presence. I looked at a mobile hanging motionless, and said, "If there is anyone else here, make the mobile spin." The next moment, the mobile began to spin.\n\nOne time I was driving into Ponca State Park to set up a large camping gathering, and the sides of the road were lined with spirits. All standing there, clearly visible to everyone, calmly welcoming us back.\n\nOn another camping trip, we felt a spirit near the bon-fire. We had a ring of 40 tiki-torches around the bonfire. It was a still and windless night, but all the tiki flames near the spirit bent in. One of the people in the circle had a fancy camera. After the campout she went to get the film developed, and all the photos from before the visitor turned out, but after that all the film was blank. She took the camera in to be repaired. The repairman asked if she'd been in a nuclear power plant. All the innards were fried from electromagnetism\n\nMy grandmother died while my niece was in utero. After my niece was born, she would look up at areas where no one was standing, and laugh and giggle. We all knew that she was looking at gramma, so we never showed her any pictures. Finally, at about a year old, she could speak, and my sister showed her the family photo album. My niece picked out her photo and said, "That's Old Gramma."\n\nI do spiritual healing with singing bowls. I play the bowl in someone's hand, and feel the vibrations as they extend through the person, and can tell them where the vibrations are and what they're doing.\n\nI used to work with a Reiki master who could tell people many details about their lives while we were doing our energy work. Very specific things\n\nOne time on a camping trip, we created a psychic link which allowed us to keep tabs on each other without needing those family band radios.\n\nOne time, while engaging in on-line activities, a witch and I played a game of "where am I touching you" and we were able to correctly identify where and how the other person was touching from thousands of miles apart over IM\n\nFor a while, a friend and I maintained a karmic connection, and sometimes I would smell something, and call her up, and it was exactly what she was smelling.\n"Did you just make cookies?"\n"Was the dog just breathing in your face?"\n"Did you just disinfect something?"\n\nOften times when I'm driving, I'll see someone walking who doesn't look as several cars go past, and I'll look at the person, and they'll turn to look as I approach. Whereas people with the person (the ones I wasn't looking at) don't turn.
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A phenomena swept the American west in 1888 by Paiute holy man Wovoka from Nevada.. Wovoka, son of the mystic Tavibo, drew on his father's teachings and his own vision during an eclipse of the sun. He began spreading the "gospel" that came to be known as the Ghost Dance Religion. He claimed that the earth would soon perish and then come alive again in a pure, aboriginal state, to be inherited by the Indians, including the dead, for an eternal existence free from suffering.  \n    To earn this new reality, however, Indians had to live harmoniously and honestly, cleanse themselves often, and shun the ways of the whites, especially alcohol, the destroyer. Wovoka also discouraged the practice of mourning, because the dead would soon be resurrected, demanding instead the performance of prayers, meditation, chanting, and especially dancing through which one might briefly die and catch a glimpse of the paradise-to-come, replete with lush green prairie grass, large buffalo herds and Indian ancestors.Kicking Bear, a Miniconjou Teton Lakota, made a pilgrimage to Nevada to learn about this new "religion". \nTogether with Short Bull, another Miniconjou mystic, they gave another interpretation, choosing to disregard Wovoka's anti-violence and emphasizing the possible elimination of the whites. Special Ghost Dance Shirts, they claimed, would protect them against the white man's bullets.\nWhite officials became alarmed at the religious fervor and activism and in December 1890 banned the Ghost Dance on Lakota reservations. When the rites continued, officials called in troops to Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations in South Dakota. The military, led by veteran General Nelson Miles, geared itself for another campaign.  \n\nThe presence of the troops exacerbated the situation. Short Bull and Kicking Bear led their followers to the northwest corner of the Pine Ridge reservation, to a sheltered escarpment known as the Stronghold. The dancers sent word to Sitting Bull of the Hunkpapas to join them. Before he could set out from the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, however, he was arrested by Indian police. A scuffle ensued in which Sitting Bull and seven of his warriors were slain. Six of the policemen were killed. \n\nGeneral Miles had also ordered the arrest of Big Foot, who had been known to live along the Cheyenne River in South Dakota. But, Big Foot and his followers had already departed south to Pine Ridge, asked there by Red Cloud and other supporters of the whites, in an effort to bring tranquility. Miles sent out the infamous Seventh Calvary led by Major Whitside to locate the renegades. They scoured the Badlands and finally found the Miniconjou dancers on Porcupine Creek, 30 miles east of Pine Ridge. The Indians offered no resistance. Big Foot, ill with pneumonia, rode in a wagon. The soldiers ordered the Indians to set up camp five miles westward, at Wounded Knee Creek. Colonel James Forsyth arrived to take command and ordered his guards to place four Hotchkiss cannons in position around the camp. The soldiers now numbered around 500; the Indians 350, all but 120 of these women and children. \n\nThe following morning, December 29, 1890, the soldiers entered the camp demanding the all Indian firearms be relinquished. A medicine man named Yellow Bird advocated resistance, claiming the Ghost Shirts would protect them. One of the soldiers tried to disarm a deaf Indian named Black Coyote. A scuffle ensued and the firearm discharged. The silence of the morning was broken and soon other guns echoed in the river bed. At first, the struggle was fought at close quarters, but when the Indians ran to take cover, the Hotchkiss artillery opened up on them, cutting down men, women, children alike, the sick Big Foot among them. By the end of this brutal, unnecessary violence, which lasted less than an hour, at least 150 Indians had been killed and 50 wounded. In comparison, army casualties were 25 killed and 39 wo
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Duh????\n\nRead the title, you'll find the answer, or better yet read the story...
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Here you go.  I love this picture, there is something about it that pulls you!\nhttp://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/100best/storyA_story.html\nThis is her a couple years ago...\nhttp://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0311_020312_sharbat.html
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STAR LEGEND\nThe group of stars known to us as the Pleiades gave food for much thought to the aborigines. There are several legends surrounding these heavenly bodies. One is that the Kamilaroys of the North Coast were at enmity with those of the mountains, and a messenger had been sent from group to group with the message-stick calling a council to discuss measures for the protection of the camps. But the messenger had become enamoured of a young woman of one of the groups he had visited, and his affection was returned. However, she proved to be of the same totem, and a marriage was forbidden. Both the young people were very sad, and the man pleaded with the head-man, but all for nothing. He was advised to return to his own people.\n\nThen, like so many other disappointed lovers, he grew resentful, and at last determined to be revenged, and even then, if possible, to secure the lady of his choice.\n\nSo he went away to the enemies of the group, and conspired with them to show them the "pukkan" by which they might steal unseen to the camps of the coast lands. This track belonged to the priest, and led to a sacred spot where the Great Spirit could be communed with by the priest.\n\nNow, the first thing was to drive the people together, or by some subtle means persuade them to congregate on the one place. This was not an easy thing to do. The people were widely separated during the day, for some were in the bush engaged in hunting there or in obtaining those things from it that were needed to fashion all the implements incidental to camp life, others were still in the camp; many were down on the beach either playing there or searching for food, and the whereabouts of still more were always uncertain, for they were roamers.\n\nMany consultations were held; many plans were formulated; many tricks were explained; but at last it was decided that the messenger return to that group and pretend to have given up all thought of marrying the coveted girl.\n\nWhen he was back he sought the confidence of the headman and soon was received without suspicion. Then one day, having prepared and found a chance, he set fire to the bush. He had laid good plans for he knew just where to find the girl. He had seen to it that she was persuaded to go out of the way to get something that she wanted. It was to the pukkan that led to the sacred place. When the fire raged towards them they ran right on to the holy of holies. The only other people who saw them were women who were led by the guardians of young girls. These guardians were watching the girl wanted by the messenger. Now they were all frightened and they all rushed to the clearing. This invasion by women into such a place was against all commandments, and evil was bound to follow.\n\nHeaps of clay left by the priest were seen, and all commenced to smear themselves with it without knowing how to do it properly. They thought it would surely preserve them.\n\nThey were changed into witchetty grubs. They found holes in a moist and rotten log into which, as is the habit of witchetty grubs, they crept. They were shrunken into very small beings compared with the beings they once were.\n\nThe fire came on and on. People ran in all directions and many were destroyed.\n\nThen by the treachery of the messenger the men of the hills came down and they fell upon the rest and the beach group were nearly all killed. Only the denseness of the smoke prevented more of the mountain people from coming down, and those that did come were glad to hasten away to escape it.\n\nOf those that were not killed there was a priest who went to the sacred spot as soon as he could. He sat on the moist and rotten log and mourned for a long time. Then growing hungry he searched for witchetty grubs, for he knew that the log was a favourite place for them. He found first the woman who was the first one to change. He knew that group to be different from those he had seen before and he suspected witchery. He uttered an incanta
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Hi.  This is a very interesting question and one that is close to home for me. I am a home educator and when I first began home schooling my children, like the year before, I brushed up on history.  So many things were difficult to tell my children, namely, the beginning when so many lives were lost during the Europeans taking over the land. I think what we walked away with year after year (now 10 years of teaching this topic) is that the native americans at first were quite puzzled as to why anyone would want to fight over this land, as they did not even view it as their own. The land didn't belong to them any more than the white man. If I am correct, they believe the land was there by \nGod(s) and we are to replenish it and respect it. White believed what ever they could take by force, should be theirs. Now I do not set around blaming Europeans any more than I hold present Native Americans responsible for the killings that some of tribes attributed to. But I do believe that lack of compassion is taught in our school books, when introducing America to our children. There are many Christian history books that I have bought and read and taught from however, that do teach this compassion to the original people, the Native Americans.  Interesing also is that some folks do not believe "native Americans" were the native people, but that vikings such as Leif Ericson were the first in North America.  Or maybe the Asians, who came across the Bering St. before the ocean covered it...and that is where native americans come from?  Sorry to be so lengthy. I just love history of America and this topic is near my heart.  God bless!
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the phoenix in native american mythology rose from it's own ashes.  I don't know if that counts or not.
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I am not Native American but would like to share with you the texts that helped me to better understand the Native American culture and my understanding of the atrocities that occurred. Many Native Americans were killed, raped, starved, displaced and betrayed by the settlers to America. The quote from Chief Red Cloud above is probably the simplest and most accurate way to portray the betrayal of his people. \n\nMany tribes were reduced to a minisclule fraction of thier numbers in mass masacres (in which only the white men had rifles) - the most famous of these was the massacre at Wounded Knee. Eventually the tribes in thier dwindling numbers were resigned to reservations and virtually starved because of the fact that they now had only limited hunting lands and the settlers had slaughtered (almost to extinction) the buffalo - which was the Native Americans staple food source. A very similar thing happened here in Australia to our Aboriginal tribes.\n\nThere is so much to know on this topic and I would advise looking into these:\n\n"Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" by Dee Brown (book)\n\n"Savagery and the American Indian" by Ken Kirby (film documentary)\n\nand checking out this web site for any more documentaries on your Native People.\n\nhttp://shenandoahfilms.com\n\nYou will not only learn of the atrocious behaviour of an ignorant government through this but will hopefully discover a culture which is rich in warmth, respect and mysticism.
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True story told to me by my Grandmother. Her Grandfather was snatched off the streets of Lublin Poland by a press gang from the Polish army and the family didn't see him again for years. It turned out that he was a pretty good soldier and he rose through the ranks quite quickly so they sent him to a school and made him an Officer. He was a calveryman. He was killed in a battle with the Russians before my Grandmother was born.\n\nOne night, he came to my Grandmother in a dream and was trying to tell her something but she couldn't understand what he was trying to say because he was speaking to her in Polish and she left Poland for America at a very young age. She said that he kept repeating himself and what he was saying seemed urgent but she couldn't understand him. She said he became angry and he pinched her on the arm.\n\nThe next day she discovered a fresh bruise on her arm right where he pinched her. It scared her so she called her brother to tell him about it. My Uncle told her that he had the same dream, and he found the same bruise on his arm, in the same place.
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I like horror stories, so here are some...\n\n***\n\nAbout six or seven years ago, my family lived along Teays Valley Rd. before the big "industrial boom" of Putnam County. Seems like it went from a farming community to a city right before my eyes. Well anyway, We rented land off of a fellow by the name of Jim Umberger. On this land was an extravagant pre-civil war almost Victorian house. It was simply beautiful. Off to the side of this massive antique sat our trailer. Now I was awful young through all of this and kids will have thier fabled ghost stories, but there was something quite odd about this house. Something was down right sour. \n\nThe story had it (and I know nothing of the truth in this) a family was brutally butchered in the house. Back then, there wasa whole lot of nothing for miles around, so no one even found these folks for a good long time. As a youngster, I had the "creeps" about anything just about, but I've never been quite as frightened of a place as I was here. The place had an eerie air to it. To make things even more insane, my stepgrandmother, Evelyn, died of brain cancer there (in our trailer, of course). My other Grandmothers' entire cancer eaten body siezed up and shut down on her, yet she died oficially in a hospital. Strange things went on at this trailer. Pockets of not cool, but cold air in the middle of July, for example. Once in the winter my mother was out on the town. My younger brother and I were watching some TV when there was a knock on the door. There, on the freshly fallen snow, was nothing. No footprints, no tire tracks, nothing. Needless to say I spent the rest of that night with my head buried under the covers. Speaking of doors, once I heard the doorbell ring, seemed innocent enough, but WE DIDN'T HAVE A DOORBELL!! Pictures falling off the wall, creaky floors and long sleepless nights were only minor nuisences we had to deal with everyday. The most disturbing incidences, however, and the most annoying were when the smoke detectors, located in various parts of the trailer, would take turns going off one at a time. \n\nAfter that, they'd go off simultaneously, quite a ruckus. For a long time, I thought I was the only one who felt a presence, then one night, my mother went completely irate screaming "Show yourself, Evelyn! I'm tired of these f*ck*ng games! Show yourself!" We never saw anything. Things continued as they were until we moved. Mr. Umberger sold the land to someone and it became South Brooke, a ritzy subdivision with $500,000+ houses that wouldn't hear of our humble trailer depriciating thier property. However, I believe they'll get theirs, Although they tore the house down for the project, there was a well and a system of underground streams and springs which probably rendered the whole operation illegal. The thing about the springs and wells may not sound important, but in my own personal research I have found negative forces and spirits can channeol themselves through waterways. I'd like to see how South Brooke likes it's neighbors! \n\nI believe I have some pictures of that house somewhere in the mess that is my apartment.\n\n***\n\nThe story I would like to tell is about an apartment building in Spokane, WA. This building is only about seven years old, if y'all are anything like me you expect a haunted house to be all scary and falling down, not clean with nice landscaping. It really started the day after we moved in, my hubby came in from the deck (I am a cigarette nazi - no smoking in ze house!) scared as heck. I have never seen my ex-marine hubby look so scared. He absolutely would not talk about it! hmmmm. \n\nNot two days later my little year and some odd daughter was supposed to be asleep for the night but instead was talking to someone. Of corse, no one was there when I checked, but I swore I could hear an old lady talking to her. I figured it was my dead grandma, she comes to visit now and t
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try the following sites.\n\nmembers.cox.net/folklore/\nwww.indianfolklore.org/publications_journal.htm
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Many scientists and pediatricians say that Native Americans from Asia were first, crossing the Bering Land Bridge during the most recent Ice Age, but a new report shows shocking new evidence.\nA boy named Chrissy (Columbus)lived in a small civilization on an island in the Northern Atlantic, called the King civilization.  Chrissy was not what you would call a "ladies man," and therefore did not have many friends. His mother suggested plastic (or in his age bronze) surgery to approve his appearance.  However, this plan backfired and he was so hideous that the other kids would not even let him join in any reindeer games.  He realized his life was not worth living, so he followed his abnormally red nose through the water and swam to the nearest land he came to. Also, because of the gurgling noises he made during his grueling and record-setting swim, he inadvertently created an onomatopoeia that is now our word "swimming."\nWhen he arrived on shore and after he checked in through the customs as Ellis Island, he realized he was, in fact, the FIRST PERSON to arrive.  This was quite exciting for him.\nAs the first person in the USA, he had multitudinous opportunities to rob the unmanned toystores and corndog stands, but, as we so very well know, our founding FATHER (not FATHERS) was a man of impeccable integrity and a devout scientologist (that's how the country go to be so darn rich, duh). He stole no jawbreakers or Furbies, however he did purchase a fully functional DDR set at a self-checkout and partied it up with a big screen in the vacant streets.  It was a rockin time.\nHowever, as we well know, losers can never have a happy life.  One of his archrivals, Georgie (Washington), who only wanted to torture Chrissy a little more, inadvertantly followed him to this new land, and being the jerk he was, he claimed the land as his own and named it after his stupid, girly little dog "Miss America" leaving off the "Miss" and keeping the "America."\nChrissy, in dismay, dance danced himself to the brink of death and then hung himself from the nearest tree, which happened to be a cherry tree.  Georgie was appalled (not at what he saw, but at the attention Chrissy might gain at this desperate act for attention).  So he promptly chopped it down and built the first log cabin with it and cremated Chrissy's body while heating up some good old-fashioned popping corn over the blaze. When other jerks arrived and asked of Chrissy's whereabouts, Georgie said he did not know, and therefore told the truth.  However, even recenter studies now point out the obvious flaw in the story: no one really cared about Chrissy and therefore would not have asked about his whereabouts.\nSo there you have it. No bridges of land or nomadic peoples, and that nonsense.  Just a simple, harmless case of hazing and childhood fun.  \nWhat a rich heritage we all have.  It's a shame more of us don't know about it. Sad.
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Joaquin Murrieta: Literary Fiction or Historical Fact?\nBy William Mero\n\nThe popular legend of Joaquin Murrieta is that of a peace loving man driven to seek revenge when he and his brother were falsely accused of stealing a mule. His brother was hung and Joaquin horsewhipped. His young wife was gang raped and in one version she died in Joaquin’s arms. Swearing revenge, Joaquin hunted down all who had violated his sweetheart. He embarked on a short but violent career that brought death to his Anglo tormentors. The state of California then offered a reward of up to $5000 for Joaquin "dead or alive." In the end Joaquin was hunted down, killed and mutilated by a drunken brute of a man, Harry Love. \n\nThis is the tale that a sometimes newspaperman and poet, John Rollin Ridge, wrote in 1854, a year after Joaquin’s death. John Ridge was a part Cherokee Indian who fled to California after killing a man in Arkansas. Borrowing from newspaper reports from the gold camps, he created a romantic story of lust and revenge starring the recently dead bandit, Joaquin Murrieta, as the victim of biased society. \n\nAfter Ridge’s book was published, it was rumored that Joaquin had not been killed but returned to Mexico. Even more fantastic was the story that he returned mortally wounded to Niles Canyon (part of Contra Costa County in 1853) where he died and was buried beneath the family adobe. In 1986 the adobe floor was even excavated in an unsuccessful attempt to find Murrieta’s bones. \n\nOn one hand we have the popular belief exemplified by the famous histories of Hubert Howe Bancroft who legitimized the Ridge version of Joaquin as a daring Mexican Robin Hood. We also have modern historians who charge that the real Murrieta was a vicious killer and thug. \n\nWhat can we make of all this? Can we find a general consensus after examining the known facts? Joseph Henry Jackson in his book, Bad Company (1949), carefully traced the evolution and growth of the Joaquin Murrieta legend around the world. Later researchers including Frank Latta, William B. Secrest, Remi Nadeau, James F. Varley and John Boessenecker uncovered original source materials that clarified this violent chapter in California history. \n\n\nThe Known Historical Record\nInteresting historical parallels exist between the Murrieta – Feliz family and the James – Younger gang. In both cases close relatives formed the core of the outlaw gangs. Both bands were spawned in the economic and political upheaval of a society disrupted by war. The gangs were sheltered and protected by citizens who were threatened by the new economic and social order. Strangely, in both cases, it was also newspapermen who built these outlaws into sympathic victims of an unjust society. \n\nWhat are the generally accepted and verified historical facts about Joaquin Murrieta? We know from Church records that Joaquin was born in the southern part of the Mexican state of Sonora in 1830 to Joaquin and Rosalia Murrieta. His mother had been previously married to a man named Carrillo. In later years Joaquin sometimes called himself Joaquin Carrillo, which led to much confusion and helped create the "many Joaquins" theory. The young Joaquin eventually married Rosa Feliz of Vayoreca. They, along with Jesus Murrieta and Rosa’s three brothers, went to California upon news of the gold strike. Rosa’s brother, Claudio Feliz, began gold mining with Anglo partners near Sonora while Joaquin and his bride eventually moved to Niles Canyon, then part of Contra Costa County. In these early years there is evidence that Joaquin worked as a vaquero near Oakley and Brentwood in 1850 and as a mestenero (mustang catcher). \n\nFrom court records and newspaper accounts, the first we hear of the Murrieta - Feliz clan’s brush with the law was in 1849 when Claudio was arrested for stealing another miner’s gold. The evidence of his guilt proved overwhelming. However Claudio was able to escape from the St
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Start here: http://www.native-languages.org/blackfoot_culture.htm\n\nAmerican Indians relied on oral traditions, so you will have to identify your particular tribe and see if anyone knows its oral history. You will not find much useful help on Yahoo Answers about your particular family history.
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You should be able to find a lot of indigenous peoples myths from the various hubs of human civilisation at this site:\nhttp://yahooligans.yahoo.com/School_Bell/Social_Studies/Mythology_and_Folklore/Mythology/
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actually I found out a lot\n\ncome to find out I was both a Sioux and a Cherokee.  I was also a Mayan. (Thought that was interesting, but explained my desire to go to Central America)\n\nAlso, I lived in France. My best friends mother one time called me some name and I responded without even knowing she didnt say my real name.  She looked into it (she was a psychic) and told me that she was my mother and thats why we met this time around.\n\nUm..oh yea, I was a pirate I was told.  Guess that explains my love for boats and the ocean.\n\nPretty cool...if you believe in this stuff.  I do and I was very interested and excited.\n\nNow, if you really want to see what you believe in, I was also told that I once lived at Atlantis and I was a leader, however because I wasnt very patient and got angry quickly, I wasnt a leader for long.  Eh well.