The Indigenous People of the Americas' Mythology

to some the Americas is often considered a place with little history but it holds many Secrets like a pathora of buried time capsules as behind there you razzled Dazzle the promises of riches with the American dream there is a huge diverse landscape of ancient myths culture and religion shaped from stories of snow and ice and thousands of miles of mountains the plains deserts forests and jungles and across warm seas and cold oceans it's a landscape where people have roamed for many thousands of years and today I'm going to give an overview of the history of the indigenous people of America touching on key cultures their beliefs rituals and I'll tell you some of their oldest myths and most interesting stories that helped shape the earliest cultures that first arrived there there but all Is Not What It Seems for hidden within some of these cultures behind some of these myths lies a secret and so if you want to learn about this and more then grab yourself a cup of tea and welcome to kenold academic consensus has humans first migrated into the Americas during the last glacial Maxim this was between 16 and 26,000 years ago where the sea froze between Siberia and Alaska a location we know as the bearing straight land Crossing or peringia and this allowed humans to cross from Siberia into America by foot or as some hypotheses suggest allowed Coastal sailing or possibly there was a combination of both but people didn't make this journey just once we have evidence that at least three separate cultures ethnically diverse made this journey in the time frame now whilst it is currently unlikely it seems unlikely that there are any permanent human cultures in America before 26,000 years ago much consensus suggest this date could almost be moved forward a few thousand years to near 20,000 years ago we do see the occasional piece of arch iCal news suggesting discoveries of evidence for a date older than this but I want to add that there is nothing conclusive in this evidence as of yet and then to add to this and unfortunately so most archaeological evidence of human activity in America is from around 12,000 years ago although occasionally older material is found and it is from this evidence such as flints and far pits found in those archaeological digs alongside the occasional burial that we find clues of where these people's ancestors came from there's similarities in how flints are made fars are made and how burials were performed and one such example of this is a connection we see between the Siberian Paleolithic site of Malta and the child burials at anzik which not only show a genetic relationship but also cultural similarities suggesting a direct cultural connection between these people evidence suggests that these first people who came to the Americas were hunter gatherers and they had turned up before farming had been established in the near east and their hunting skills were good enough that it allowed them to hunt what we call megap forner the mammoths and Master Don and John slos they alive during this time but just as climate allowed the populating of the Americas its significant change after this migration also allows for theories that it was a contributing factor in The Disappearance of the megap fora which then may have helped accelerate the migration of people across the Americas which in turn hunted what was left of these beasts and these influences in turn then changed the environment of the American forever and so the first question you may want to answer is who were these people who migrated into the Americas and if as we have a basic understanding of where they came from we will be able to spot any cultural heritage from Siberia and Asia in the First Nation American culture and if so can we identify any of their oldest myths or stories now as I mentioned earlier much archaeological evidence is is from around 12,000 years ago or forwards and the main culture of this period in the Americans is known as the Clovis culture and it is recognized in archaeological finds because of how flints were shaped and the first time these flints were formerly identified was in the Clovis area of New Mexico and now over time we have now gathered evidence of similarly worked Flint from montverde in South America dated to 14,8 100 years ago to medof Pennsylvania 16,000 years ago plus many in between and around these dates and there is one particular site that stands out amongst these and that is blue fish caves in the Yukon region of Canada where some Flint artifacts have been discovered in deposits thought to be 24,000 years old and if we get more confirmation of this evidence we could probably say that these would have come from some of the the first humans to inhabit North America but this information for now should really be treated with some caution until as I say there is more academic confirmation however I have to admit that I'm also not an archaeologist and so someone wants to ask a fellow YouTuber like Stephan Milo about this specific find then I'm sure he'll give you his views but back to us and as as we imagine time passing in this migration event and the cultures diversify and disperse there are many examples of maps showing these dispersals such as this one I'll put on the screen now at which weely on archaeological evidence for their dating but I would reason that our current understanding showing that it took 8,000 years to travel from Alaska to the east coast of North America and yet only 2,000 years to get from Alaska to the tip of South America suggests that our picture is probably not as complete as we would like it to be but one of the challenges that have been faced is that there was a huge amount of ice and Glaciers on the western side of North America and so any evidence of settlements before it thought out have probably all been but literally washed away and then on the East there is a lake which was formed around 14 and a half thousand years ago Lake aases and this was probably one of the largest lakes ever to form in North America it was around 700 miles long and 250 miles wide and when this eventually emptied it probably raised any archaeological evidence that was in its way and so what can we use to understand if the myths and Stories being told by the cultures today or in the more recent past have traces back to these first settlers well within mythology we use a process called phenetics which looks at a number of pieces of evidence to understand the probability of these links in mythology and we use DNA language Evolution archaeology as well as the contents of myths and how we categorize them and comparing these myth themes and motifs within them and by combining all this within a probabilistic model which is a phenetics part of this we can see the likelihood of myths following particular path of migration within their evolution and we have done this with data on what is like to be one of the oldest stories we know and this allowed us to understand the probable outcome of how this story developed and from this we can say with significant confidence that there were at least well four migrations from Eurasia into North America before Europe discovered America we can also detect using data from the same study that there was one migration from Eurasia back into Africa now I will tell you more about the story we found that that meets this in a minute but first I want to explain a little more about myths which is especially relevant if you think a myth is just a story because myths are so much more than that myths have an academic definition although there is no complete consensus on that definition but they're all quite similar but most academics would agree that myths are stories that have a deity or Divine being within them and which takes place on a different Earth to our own albeit one that is geographically similar but it also contains figures animals and other beings that aren't found in our world and because these myths have deities or Divine being in them they hold sacred truths they are religious stories explaining how the world is why things happen and so they are very important to those who believe in the religion or who are telling the myth for example to those that do not believe in the god of the Bible or the Quran well they consider the biblical stories or the Quran myth but saying this to those who believe the biblical stories of the Quran may upset them because they believe it they treat these stories as sacred well the same can be said of any myth told by anybody who believes that myth by those who have the religious ideology that is portrayed in that myth and this means that myths when told by their Believers are taken very seriously they aren't subject to Idol changes despite often being oral in their source and so they generally maintain their plot and key motives throughout their life even if that life is thousands and thousands of years old and this is one of the foundations that allow us academics and researchers to study mythology and also knowing this it allows us to have confidence that the Native American Oil tradition and with this the many of the literary sources that were then recorded directly from it and some cultures such as the mayor also recorded their myths so we see them have some form of literary record and so we do see preservation of this cultural Legacy and tradition from long before our present time and if you're still doubtful that myths can last a test of time then also consider that myths weren't just spoken someone just telling Pros verbatim is prone to error and so myths were often performed with music and think to yourself how many songs you can sing along to and you're not religious about them but you remember them and then apply that to the process of my myth telling where you are religious about them then you should be able to understand that the performance of myths is a critical aspect of why some have been maintained longer than others in effect the myths we still have today are the greatest hits a myth and so considering this and observing Native Americans and this is true of many other cultures as well when they tell their myth their words are spoken with great care they mean something to those listening and they are remembered by everyone listening the words of the Storyteller have great power and doubly so when performed rather than just spoken but despite this one of the challenges we have with the indigenous population of the Americas is that they have not produced a complete copy you a complete record of their myth there is no single body of myth and so we are still piecing together all the myth methods and the stories to get a landscape of of what's told and the culture and this makes sense because there were multiple migrations into the Americas but still despite this certain themes certain plots certain motifs are consistent and it is where we see changes in these features of myths alongside the use of phenetics which allows us to see how and where myths developed the cosmic Hunt is probably the oldest complete story we know that was told in America we have older myths and motifs but these are more peac Mill but the cosmic Hunt is a consistent story about a hunt for an animal which often steals the Sun what is most interesting about this story though is that it's told based on a constellation in the night sky with a majority of the stories using the exact same stars of the same constellation to tell the story and so this suggests evidence that the story is being passed from culture to culture across time and not only that not only the same constellation been used but the Stars within that constellation all often have the same role in the story again suggesting the story is being told again and again through culture rather than just being made up and this story is told from Europe through Asia and into the Americas we some examples been found in South America and North Africa but such is the specific nature of the Stars used in the telling of the story to say that it is independently being created by different cultures is next to imp possible and instead we see evidence using the tracing of dispersal Roots archaeology linguistic Evolution and DNA analysis this process of phenetics to show that this story comes from inside uraia and travel to the Americans but then you may ask how old is this story well let me tell you a brief version of this story as it will allow me to explain its age to you one morning man is walking through the forest and carries with him a spear and a pot for he is hunting and hungry and he hasn't eaten a substantial meal for many days and as he walks along a trail by the foot of the mountains he sees by a stream a deer drinking from it it's a mother deer the man thinks he can hunt the deer and so he gets close and throws his spear but the deer has heard him and is startled and she jumps up and runs up into the mountains high high up into the mountains and as she does this she catches the sun in her antlers and then she's so scared she continues to run across the mountain tops running away as fast as she can taking the son with her the man picks up his pot and his Spear and chases after the deer up the mountains and all the time the deer is moving the sun making the days shorter the man knows he must stop the deer for the sun can't be lost for there would be no more daytime eventually the hunter gets close enough to the deer to throw his Spear and his aim is good the mother deer becomes aware of the Hunter and jumps High into the sky to avoid that spear throw and the sun falls from the aners and falls behind the mountains and day turns to night as the sun disappears but the mother deer did not jump fast enough and was hit by the spear and it releases the magic of the sun which still lingers around the deer and As She lays on the ground dying she turns into the Stars in the night sky and the magic of the Stars consumes the man and turns him also into a star chasing a pot to his side and spear a mid throw and if you look today you will see throughout the year the man chasing the deer in the night sky until the winter that is when the deer lays on the ground having been killed but the mother de is a special creature and she has given birth to a calf during the days of that a calf will no doubt be seen wandering by the mountains when the days get longer again and the sun gets back into the sky and so with this it allows the hunt to carry on we see this story this plot repeated across many cultures and many places and although some details change many remain the same but for those trying to understand its age what is most interesting is how the animal dies or sometimes sleeps over winter on the ground because the constellation most associated with this story is Ursa Major or the Big Dipper the plow and if we look in the night sky we see this constellation high up even in winter but if we turn the clock back 30,000 years and take into account the wobble of the earth its precession then if we look for this constellation in the wintertime we find it on the horizon a representation of a dying or sleeping animal and so this on its own would suggest a story is well over 30,000 years old but not only that we see the type of animal being hunted changing alongside the culture telling it for example there are traces of the story being told with a mammoth which had called the sun between its tusks and in north of America the most popular version has a bear which is hunted and when caught by the spear bleeds over the trees making them red zling the onset of fall or what we would call Autumn and if you want to know more about this then I do have a video on the cosmic hunt you can watch but there are other old myths so let me tell you another alongside the cosmic hunt story do see another myth told amongst IND American tribes about going to the other world in what we classify as versions of the orus myth the Greek version of The Myth has orus his wife dying to a snake bite and he follows her into the other world and gets through all of the other world to agree to let her come back to the land to live in but only if he completes one task and he fails at his task and doesn't get his beloved wife back and we see very similar simar stories to this in North America stories that aren't just connected by a plot outline but often have many of the details shared between them and again using phenetics we can have significant confidence that these myths come from the same Source a source in Eurasia before people cross the bearing straight now these myths followed a format of a much loved person dying and their lover who remains alive is discouraged from making a Journey to the West to follow them to follow the deceased into the other world and this journey has obstacles and most often there is a river which needs to be crossed this is often crossed by a bridge or sometimes a boat and when the person arrives in the other world it is a world without needs there is no hunger or sleep or sadness however the living person encounters as the chief or guardian of this realm and fails at the task required to bring their deceased person back to the world of the living and on their return after failing they perform a ritual and the other world is explained in more detail with commentary on why the dead cannot come back to the world of the living now knowing this let me tell you a version of this myth told by a tribe in the Americas and the similarities should be clear to you and at the end I'll explain some interesting aspects about it that link it to other myths which are many thousands of years old and after this I can then explain more about the history of some of the key American cultures the Land of the Dead is to the west or Northwest and its name is tipic nits to get there a large river must be crossed and over this River lies a bridge but this Bridge moves up and down whilst you cross but stops when you get off there was once a man who had a lovely wife skilled in all her household tasks she died unexpectedly and was buried her husband deep with grief decided to follow her to the other world to see if he could get her back he knew that she would stay in her grave two nights and two days before she would get up and start her journey to tipit and so he went to her grave and waited and watched watching for when she would start her journey he hollowed out a place in the ground with a view of a grave and lay down in it and just Before Sunrise after the second night his wife arose and arranged her clothing spending time on her hair arranging the beads on her headband and as her husband watched this made he miss her so much that he cried and then she started to walk off to the West staggering as if she were drunk and her husband followed she looked back and saw him but she ignored him until after one day and one night of walking she spoke what are you doing here you are alive you cannot cross the bridge you'll fall in and become a great fish They carried on a journey and soon came to the bridge and in the river was a bird named kill deer and it is this bird who tries to scare those who crossed the bridge by swooping down and crying cat cat cat if a person loses their balance and falls into the water then they become a fish forever the woman went on the bridge and crossed safely and the man cried but remembered that he was wearing a Talisman of great p Tower called The Eagle down rope and this he threw across the river and used it to get across safely on the other side of the river were many people and amongst them his wife they were dancing the round dance a ghost dance and All in This Dance noticed the man because the living smell unpleasant to the dead this made the chief aware of the living man's presence and so laid out a tel mat for the man to sit on within his home then the chief called for food and all types of food was served duck and GE and seeds anything you could imagine the man was hungry after waiting so long and traveling so much and so he ate a lot but he couldn't finish the food it never seemed to get less but after the man was full of food the chief asked him what he was doing there and the man said he was from Tumi and that he wanted to be with his wife or wanted to take her back home again the chief said there was a way to take his wife back home but the man would have to stay awake all night and he thought this was impossible in the other world the man said he would try but the chief warned him that if the man fell asleep even for a second he would fail the task and so the chief asked for a m to be laid in the sight of the dancing and the man sat there watching his wife dance he was very tired and the chief said the man should swim to clean himself up after morning in the shallow pit for two days and after this the chief brought the wife to the husband and they were allowed to lay down together and they talked all night well until almost Dawn because Just Before Dawn the man fell asleep he awoke holding a rotten wooden log in his arms he went swimming again and then spoke to the chief who decided to give him one more chance and even recommended that the man sleep all day warning him that failure meant the man would have to die in order to see his wife again the evening came and the wife danced The Ghost Dance and afterwards the chief brought the wife to the husband saying they were allowed to lay down together but the wife wasn't Keen they played games and talked all night well almost all night because Just Before Dawn the man fell asleep the man awoke holding a rotten wooden log in his arms and realized that he would have to return he felt so sad and upset that he had failed but before he left the chief gave him a bowl of seeds to eat on his journey home and told him that that he must not let his tribe know where he had been until six days had passed otherwise he would die he returned in the same manner as he arrived using his Talisman to cross the river and after a day and a night he found himself standing outside his parents home he pulled back the door and awakened his parents asking them to make him a bed hidden from the view of others for he must not let people know where he had been until six days had passed because if people found out before the sixth day he would die but people had heard him talking to his parents in the home during the night and they came around and wanted to know what had happened who had arrived during the night at first a man's father and mother denied everything but they eventually told people what had happened their son overheard them and knowing that he would now die he decided to he would come out of their home and tell all what had happened so he could join his wife he told his mother to fix up all the food in the house for in 3 days he would assemble all the people and tell them what had happened to him he sent a messenger around to tell everyone to come to eat on the day people came and stayed all day and after supper the man got up and told them all what he had seen and heard in the other world he awoke the next morning and left his tent and as he left his tent outside there was a vetal snake waiting for him it bit him and he called to his mother and said I've been bitten by a snake and now I will die his mother cut off her hair and mourned and that is the story this is quite an emotional tale with love lost and the death and hidden within it is a motif that isn't obvious at first hearing but which we see in many other myths as well as variations of this myth and it is hinted at with a bird called kild dear who is the guardian of the bridge over the river this Guardian is often seen as a representation of the figure who is also known as the fairy man of the dead and I've made a video about this if you want to know more about this figure and and where it comes from but we also see this figure being represented by dogs thought to be part of the same family ofit within the Indo European black and white dogs of the other world which I've also talked about more in this video if you want to understand this and dogs are interesting as they are animals who are believed to be able to travel between the other world and this world the world of liveing not only in Indo European myth but now also in American Myth and so this motif of dogs guard in the other world seems as old a story as the fan of the dead and again is probably at least 30,000 years old and for those wanting academic sources about all this then there is much more information in the descriptions of all my videos and so we see that myths have come from the Eurasia and into the Americas but once in the Americas cultures developed and evolved in different ways to their EUR Asian cousins and perhaps the earliest tangible demonstration of this starts around 8,000 years ago when much of America is now populated and in certain parts of the land we start seeing significant Earthworks start appearing the most well-known of these are those which are close to 5 a half thousand years old in Louisiana and follow the Mississippi River and Through archaeological evidence we see that some of these mounts were used for ritual and ceremony and the presence of ceremony and ceremonial sites implies that there is a form of religious practice going on and with religious practice this means there are almost certainly myths being told alongside so let's now look at some of the key cultures across the Americas now before I do this there are literally hundreds of cultures I could have talked about and I will do my best to cover as many of them as I can in the future but for now going to touch on a few I consider important for different reasons and these can act as a introduction to how religion and ritual evolved in the Americas I'll start with MES America a region that runs from the south of central Mexico to Northern Costa Rica and before about 3 and a half thousand years ago many of the cultures here were hunter gatherers and this includes evidence of the Clovis culture but at around 3 and a half thousand years ago we start seeing evidence of settlements which then grew into cities over time and the first city we see in this region belongs to a culture we called the alch which means proper people this culture built the first city of Mexico called tenan or specifically sanzo to and so is often regarded as the mother culture of meso America now whilst we don't see their civilization in the archaeological record till around 1600 BCE we do see some commonality between them and the farming cultures of Tabasco which around 7,000 years old and one of the reasons for their success is probably down to it they a trade network of obsidian Jade and rubber now the elic culture is known for the 17 large head carvings they left behind and by large I mean these weigh tens of tons and we believe these are representative of their rulers but they are dressed as ball players a game which was probably invented by alch and we still find courts today in archaological digs where they have played this ball game but they also carved many smaller figures blade mosaics and so had a really rich artistic culture and whil we have no specific records of their religious beliefs we do know that they considered the Jaguar as being a very important animal because it appears in much of their artwork and they also performed religious rituals to feed gods and there was much blood sacrifice and as part of this there was much Human Sacrifice something that wasn't unique to the alch as we will see it becoming common practice amongst other cultures in the Americas now what would be interesting is why this ritual act developed and it suggests significant conflict or struggles in society and many of the sacrificed people would probably have been enemy Warriors caught in battle but the other mystery we have is why this civilization declined around 400 BCE because we don't really know for sure which probably means it is a combination of Events maybe climate maybe geological or possibly other external cultural pressures now we see the AIC Empire forming around 1428 a merger between three regions Teno chitan tet coko and taccoen but the seeds of this empire were being created somewhat before that by marriages between what were the Rival leaders children in 1372 and this marriage paved the way for the third culture to join this Alliance all somewhat exalted from the con Wars that have been breaking out between each other and the City of Teno chitan not to be confused with the omic too chitan which was in a different place became the capital of them and this was founded in 1325 and it was considered a engineering Marvel at the time with floating gardens for farming it was built on an island in Lake texo and was connected to the mainland by callways and an intricate system of canals and at its height this was one of the largest cities in the world at the time with a population estimated to be around 2 200 possibly even [Music] 300,000 now the ruler of this Empire was considered Divine by its people and so when war did break out with other cultures the Aztecs would capture rather than kill the opposing forces and then often use them as sacrifices in honor of their ruler however we also see other deities such as the worship of the son God who poly within the atic culture and many sacrifices were also made in honor of this God as well a ritual that aimed to keep the sun shining and prevent the end of the world and this ideology was captured within the hesc calendar now we also see the sacrifices take place high up and we see this in evidence on top of the pyramids that we find with altars and wash Bas on top of the structures allowing the rituals to be performed there and there is various information about the amount of sacrifices made and when and although most of this information has come through the Spanish sources the Spanish that conquered those lands they will probably have a bias in understanding the Aztec religion and the significance of sacrifice but even if we use this material as a a rough reference we see in one place that 60 victims were being sacrificed 18 times a year and we he have an indication that in 1487 as many as 880,000 people were thought to have been sacrificed at the Great Pyramid in Teno Chan but this is almost certainly erroneous with the number probably well still significantly more than you want it to be but far lower than 80,000 people there were also other Divine beings too there was a rain God talok and the dragon qu cotal and judging by the architecture and other records poetry and all mythology was very important to these people however unlike Indo-European myths there aren't any stories of the estic serpent being fought by the rain God in fact quac Cottle shows more of a benevolent property providing knowledge to the people which is more than old view of dragons and if you want to know more about dragons I'll talk about it in this video The atic Empire eventually fell to the Spanish conquistadors led by Hern and CZ in 1521 his success in conquering the atic empire was as much to do with diseases B by the Europeans as it was by using native alliances with other groups and his own military technology the Mayans were east of where the AIC Empire would eventually be founded and we see their settlements in the ucatan peninsula and this was around 3 and a half thousand years ago these settlements would eventually grow and become major cultural hubs and then cities including the famous chitan itsa and being close to where the Aztec would eventually be we see much Mayan influence within the Aztec culture especially in art these people farmed bunch of their food with maze being their key crop and like the S they needed deities that needed pleasing to help their crops including a corn God but they also had Gods representing rain CH the cardinal directions ex canil and perhaps one of their key gods for agriculture was yam Kaz a lord of the forest type figure and this God was very much revered by Farmers their society was very patriarchal the rulers passing their power to their eldest son keeping power within the family and this helped established them being a well semi Divine and being linked to the health of the crops the Mayans like other cultures of them had a calendar and this was quite a complex calendar it consisted of 20 periods of 13 days and so had a 260-day cycle of rituals and ceremonies but they're aware that there were 36 5 days in a solar year meaning that they had a cycle of 18,990 days in all to repeat everything to come back to the beginning and this excellent familiarity with the lunar cycle showed that they were really competent mathematicians in terms of ritual human sacrifice was a game practice and this probably influenced the atic rituals later on and luckily for us the Mayans had developed a kind of writing system icon y based that allows us to understand some of these rituals we see that during and after War captives of the highest states were sacrificed and others were used for labor and the blood of the sacrificed victims was used to feed the gods and well this would seem rather horrific to us today but parts of the sacrifice victim's body were then used within a ceremony some were worn some presented still showing signs of life now this civilization eventually collapsed with a again no one really knowing the reason why but it was gain a probably a combination of climate with droughts being suspected as has been a significant cause as well as deforestation of the areas due to farming however the culture lived on due to its many settlements and extensive trade routs allowing the influence of the Aztecs and we can still find descendants of this culture today in Central America the Inca Empire at its peak was huge stretching down the west coast of South America it started in what is now kusco Peru and expanded by negotiating alliances or conquering those who didn't want to negotiate the alliances and existence came from many cultures Who were settled in the Andes that were before this and it came to be from the many cultures that were settled in the Andes before this point and some of the influences from these cultures then fed into the Incan culture now architecturally they are well known with amazing skills at building walls from stoneage pieces seem to fit well near perfectly together but they are less well known for their Road system which was amazing A system that total around 40,000 km or 25,000 Mi of road and it is this that helped establish excellent trade routes and deliver military mobilization were necessary their culture was very much focused on oral tradition there was no writing system used by them although they did have a knotted rope system that allowed them to remember numeric information as well as some important narratives and they had many gods with their sun god inti at the head of their Pantheon and as such the ruler of the empire was known as the son of Indie and so he was considered Divine then their culture also had a few Simple Rules do not steal do not lie do not be lazy which seems a decent set of core values to me now the Inca Empire was effectively ended by the 1530s with the last Revolt by the Incas in 1572 which was defeated by the Spanish Francisco pizaro the iri or the iroy a name given to them by French Colonials based on a mistranslation of another tribes derogatory name for them actually prefer to be known by the name of the hudos meaning people of the l housee a reflection of their large wooden structured homes which were a central place for their settlements this culture was originally a combination of five tribes the Mohawk Onida onoda kuga and Sena before becoming a six Nations when Tuscarora joined later they created the Great Law of Peace which influenced their social structure and had two key councils a grand Council and the mothers of the Nations the latter being a reflection of the matrilineal nature of society with inheritance Trace through the mother's side of the family and all this helped them to create a very mature social system as well as allowing them to be well resourced in war and some believe that this longlasting confederation of Nations helped influence the United States Constitution now despite significant bias against the indigenous peoples of America in the past the hudi still continue to maintain communities in the current Day in the United States and Canada actively preserving their culture and Heritage and whilst oral Traditions are very important they used bumping belts made from different colored shell beads to record stories as well as treaties and important events and these records mean that we do have access to some of their myths myths that are sacred to them and so some are not told publicly and this is a sort of an interesting point there are still secrets of this culture that we do not know but one myth we do know is called the skyw woman so let me tell you this above us above the clouds above the sky there once floated a Celestial Island a place of beauty and Tranquility this was the home of the sky people spirits who lived Untouched by the sorrows of life and death and amongst them was one known as the skyw woman she was radiant and graceful a spirit who carried the light of the stars in her eyes and a breath of the heavens in her every step Sky Woman's World was a boundless garden flowers bloomed with the colors of the sunset and the air shimmered with a song of invisible choirs however beneath this floating island was another realm a vast endless SE of gentle Waters where no land could be seen and a great sea turtle swam in a deep blue one fateful day driven by an insatable curiosity that often visits the hearts of those who dwell in Perfection Sky found herself drawn to the great tree at the center of the island some say this was the tree of life and which should not be taken from but she felt a desire to eat from it this tree bore fruits of unparalleled Splendor and held the secrets of life from the Realms within its roots and branches and in a moment of Destiny as a skyw woman was at the tree a cataclysm shook the celestial Garden the tree the anchor of the heavens was uprooted creating a gaping void beneath it and the skyw woman fell fell into the void her form cascading like a comet trailing a Celestial light behind her as she descended towards the wry abyss and as she fell a flock of birds caught her but her weight was far too much for them to carry and they could not lift her back up to the island above the sky and so they placed her down on a sea turtle she knew she could not survive on the back of the turtle without help and so asked the birds to find her some Earth and they dived to the bottom bottom of the sea and brought back a little mud she spread it out onto the turtle's back and her magical powers made the turtle grow and the Earth spread and then she planted seeds from the fruit she had managed to take from the great tree of life before she fell and then she danced and over time this place became a paradise with crops of Maze and beans and squash and strawberries and tobacco and after this she found out she was pregnant and gave birth to a girl but she warned the girl not to go west but when the girl grew up she went West and saw a figure in the distance and then she passed out she awoke with two arrows across her chest she had been made the Bride of the spirit of the West Wind and was pregnant with twin boys the boys were born one normally but the other was birthed through her armpit and this killed her she was buried in the Earth but there she continued to look after her children ensuring the crops would continue to grow and she is known to us today as Mother Earth and supports us all her children the boys made Rivers flowers and humans and w became the keeper of the day and the other The Keeper of the night and when after many years the skyw woman died the boys threw her head into the sky and she's now known as the grandmother Moon looking over us and providing light at night and allows us to keep time this story is not just about creation but it allows us to understand the connection between nature and the Earth between us and the Earth Us in the sky and even us in the night sky it also contains an interesting Motif when the birds get mud From the Bottom of the Sea for this is called the Earth diving Motif and it is based on one of the oldest motifs we know of in mythology originating in the earliest creation from probably over 100,000 years old and I've made a video about this if you're interested in understanding more about this myth which again is is incredibly interesting to how it developed the great ples around Minnesota in North America are now home to the Dakota laota and nakota tribes the meaning is the same they're just different pronunciations from different groups Each of which has a unique tradition and history but who are often collectively known as sue the Sue were originally hunted gathers leading a nomadic lifestyle and the introduction of horses and pressure on their Lifestyle by Colonials from Europe meant that they had to change their ways and by the 18th century they were pushed to live in the plains and became really adapt at buffalo hunting and scouting but before this it seems there was much conflict between the groups including many many wars they have religious beliefs which involved having animals associated with the four cardinal points the bear representing North the Buffalo or sometimes an eagle represents the East the coyote or wolf represents the South and the elk or sometimes the horse represents the west and even just looking at this we can start seeing that there is influence in European colonialist imput into their midst with the horse and the Buffalo starting to become part of their thoughts their ways there they their myths which you know is a direct result of the environment changing now these people have rituals including singing and dancing to celebrate and remember their myths and their most important dance is called the sun dance or we W wikipe now this dance is about renewal and involves much drumming and sometimes a personal sacrifice although not to be confused with a human sacrifice you give something you own up they are also known for having what we would consider to be shamis type rituals and this makes sense as there are Shaman type positions within the tribe structure who represent the healers and the storytellers and one of these rituals is a vision quest which is a right of passage for men a state achieved through fasting and isolation they also have sweat lodges where the participant would enter a hot room and sweat and during this time they would pray and sing and well they would believe this would purify them they also use a sacred pipe in sermon the chanunpa believing the smoke carries their prayers to the Creator for those who have read Old North stories some of these rituals would also seem similar to some traditions we know of Nordic people of the first Millennium and whil it is sometimes really easy for us to create these connections these these patterns these similarities if you're looking for them you know the commonality May wellem from having common ancestors from around 30,000 years ago but we need far more evidence you know to prove this but with the myths we've talked about such as the cosmic hunt and the journey to the other world it really suggests that you know there is a connection here but before I leave the Sue let me tell you a brief version of one of their most well-known myths touching with a few of the things I've already said and this is the story of The White Buffalo cfom a story about the importance of ritual and respect of the natural world it was a time of great need the Sue tribes were suffering from a severe famine and so their people were in in despair but a message of Hope and abundance came to them when The White Buffalo cfom appeared to them it happened when two Scouts were out searching for food and saw a figure approaching in the distance this was a woman beautiful and radiant a woman dressed in white one of the scouts was filled with impure thoughts at seen her and approached her with desire in mind but the other Scout was more respectful and tried to restrain him but the disrespectful Scout carried on and walked up to the woman before a cloud suddenly covered them and when it lifted a few moments later nothing remained of the Scout but a pile of bones this woman was a holy being and thought that those who sought to harm sacred things would face dire consequences The White Buffalo cfom walk past the other Scouts and went to the Sue camp and with her she had a sacred bundle she spent her time teaching the sue people about the things that would be important to them such as how to conduct the sacred buffalo hunt the importance of family and the Seven sacred rights which included the suance a key ritual of renewal and spiritual connection within Her Sacred bundle she brought gifts one of which was the chanun the sacred pipe which when used symbolized the unity of all things the bowl of the pipe represented the earth and the stem represented all living things that would Ascend to the heavens and when the pipe was smoked the smoke was believed to carry prayers up to the creator after spending time with the tribe The White Buffalo calom left promising to return one day she rolled upon the Earth and she transformed herself into a white buffalo Cal and this ured everyone would know she was a holy being and so now when The White Buffalo is seen it is a symbol of Hope of abundance and of spiritual Harmony the Apache of H ga in tribe represented by several cultures that are joined by speak in a similar language called aab basan but each has their own traditions and history and this group includes tribes such as the Navajo they are known for their creative art including pottery and baskets and they originated in the North American Northwest but eventually migrated to the south in the first half of the second Millennium the actually have a reputation for being experts at gorilla Warfare due to their exceptional tracking skills and their ability to use the terrain to their advantage in battles and they also quickly adopted the use of horses and firearms from the Spanish and one of the most famous Apache was geranimo a chirik caha aache leader who became famous for resisting the Mexican and the United States efforts to subjugate the Apache and even today he remains a symbol of Apache resistance and the Native American struggle in modern day America like other First Nation cultures the Apache spirituality is deeply connected to the land and includes a belief in a number of spirits and they have a Creator they have dancing and singing as part of their rituals and are known for a Coming of Age ceremony such as the Sunrise ceremony for young women a ceremony that has over 100 dances each with between 500 and 1200 steps and in this ceremony the female becomes changing woman considered the first woman and the mother of her people before she emerges having come of age America has a rich and diverse history driven by diverse climate and landscape and thankfully for us delay home to some of the old these stories and myths that we know today but there there are secrets here we don't know all the myths the First Nation tribes tell and that is because much of their population is skeptical about the Europeans who came to colonize the Americas because until relatively recently laws were still being passed in America that actively reduced the ability of these indigenous cultures to hold on to their past their heritage and so their myths and culture we also see that the indigenous American population was significantly impacted by diseases that were B over by the Europeans because they hadn't developed any immunity for them and they also succumbed to drugs particularly in form of alcohol which was brought over and as an aside this isn't a problem unique to first nation Americans we see a similar story in Australia but also even in medieval Europe where the likes of charlam M spread his beliefs by false literally faling genocide onto non-believers of the Christian faith now these are all tragic events and one ones I wish we'd learn from the other interesting observation is that whilst many myths are unique to these people it seems clear that some and certainly some motifs almost certainly migrated from Siberia and Asia in into America along with the First Peoples over 20,000 years ago which suggest my are probably nearer 30,000 years old but we must have some balance here you know there are other theories about how these myths came to be such as archetypal thoughts amongst the population and in terms of myth there is much more I could talk about there are so many cultures that I haven't mentioned and I love to mention and hundreds of stories I'm aware of that I would like to tell you so you I really wish to continue this journey through North America through Central America and into South America and as well as touching on cultures that came into Americas later on such as those with African Heritage because the folk La there and and the stories there again give us a tantalizing glimpse into history now I hope this video is received well and please comment below if I've made mistakes in pronunciation if there's myth you want to know more about if there particular cultures in North Central or South America You' like to know about let me know and I can start understanding what you want to hear most about and I will look at producing videos on these as soon as I can and if you can't wait for my next video then you can find more material about what I do on patreon I do have a free tier to join if you want to see certain information which you just will not get on YouTube uh when and there's a link in the description if you want to join if you do join you get access to all the features of the mythology database and early access to some videos and I want to thank them all for their support questions and and comments it really has made a a huge immeasurable difference to my ability to do research now for those of you who want to understand more about what I've talked about in this video then I can suggest you could watch a video on the fair man of the Dead which explains more about the motif of kild deer the bird in their journey into the other world as for the rest of you please stay safe and well and this was C andf

Channel: Crecganford

Views: 46,403

Keywords: mythology, myth, folklore, folk lore, folktale, north america, united states, south america, mesoamerica, inca, apache, sioux, aztec, olmec, mayan, iroquoi, haudenosaunee, native american, first nation, indigenous, indigenous americans, first nation americans

Id: MWlkLWTHTJA

Length: 62min 42sec (3762 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 13 2024