Indian Why Stories (Dover Children's Classics) - Softcover

Linderman, Frank B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0486288005 ISBN 13: 9780486288000

Publisher: Dover Publications, 1995

Synopsis

The Native American was a true lover of nature and close observer of the sights and sounds about him. He delighted in composing tales that offered imaginative explanations for everything--from simple stories about creation to fanciful accounts of how animals acquired certain physical characteristics.
This entertaining collection of 22 stories, compiled nearly a century ago by a devotee of Indian lore who considered them "well-worth saving," recounts many of the legends told to him by members of the Blackfeet, Chippewa and Cree tribes. Here are intriguing explanations of "How the Ducks Got Their Fine Feathers," "Why the Kingfisher Always Wears a War-Bonnet," "Why the Chipmunk's Back Is Striped," "Why Blackfeet Never Kill Mice," "How the Otter Skin Became Great 'Medicine,'" "Why the Mountain-Lion Is Long and Lean," "How the Man Found His Mate," "Why the Birch-Tree Wears the Slashes in Its Bark" and many other tales rich in fanciful characters.
Told in simple, direct language and enhanced with 32 illustrations by famed "cowboy artist" Charles M. Russell, these fables will delight children, lovers of tall tales and students of Native American culture.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Old-man, or Napa, as he was called by the Blackfeet, is an extraordinary character in Indian stories. Both powerful and fallible, he appears in different guises: god or creator, fool, thief, clown. The world he made is marvelous but filled with mistakes. As a result, tensions between the haves and have-nots explode with cosmic consequences in Indian Why Stories.

Elders of the Blackfeet, Cree, and Chippewa (Ojibwa) people shared these wonderful tales with Frank B. Linderman in the late nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth century. War Eagle (the fictional name of Linderman’s friend and Chippewa medicine man Pah-nah-to, or Full-of-dew), tells these stories to attentive youngsters after the first frost in the fall. He speaks of animal people, including a deer and an antelope in a footrace, a dancing fox who convulses a buffalo with laughter, a white beaver and ghost people, a huge snake in love with the moon, a sparrow hawk of conscience, and many others. These sparkling tales reveal a reverence for life, honesty, and the unity of creation.

This expanded edition features thirteen previously unpublished verse stories along with an introduction to those stories by Sarah Waller Hatfield, granddaughter of Linderman.

Frank B. Linderman (1869–1938) spent his adult life in Montana, first as a trapper and then as an author, politician, and businessman. He lived closely with the Salish, Blackfeet, Crows, and other Native peoples in the region and is the author of Plenty-coups: Chief of the Crows and Pretty-shield: Medicine Woman of the Crows, both available in Bison Books edition.

About the Author:

Frank Bird Linderman (1869-1938) was a Montana writer, politician, Native American ally and ethnographer. Linderman was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the child of James Bird Linderman and Mary Ann Brannan Linderman. He attended schools in Ohio and Illinois, including Oberlin College, before moving to Montana Territory in 1885 at the age of sixteen. Frank Linderman went to the shores of Flathead Lake, there he learned Indian ways and lived as they lived. To know them better he mastered the sign language, a feat which gained him the name Sign-talker, or, sometimes Great Sign-talker. From 1893 to 1897, he worked in Butte, Montana, then moved to Brandon, Montana. Around 1900, he moved to Sheridan, Montana, where he worked several jobs, as an assayer, furniture salesman, and at a newspaper. Linderman served in the state Legislature as the representative from Madison County, Montana in 1903 and 1905. He served as Assistant Secretary of State from 1905-07, after moving to the new state capital of Helena in 1905. Through his work, the Rocky Boys Indian Reservation was established by law in 1916.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0486288005
• ISBN 13: 9780486288000
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96
• Illustrator: Russell Charles M.