Introduction

 

Lessons:

 

Links:

Unit 2: Cherokee Story-telling Traditions

Introduction

These lesson plans, for students in grades 9-12, explore the story-telling traditions of Cherokee people. This aspect of tribal “oral traditions” is central to the development of cultural identities, and serves as an important means of answering questions of ultimate concern such as “Who are we?” “Why are we here?” “Where do we come from?” “What is our purpose here?” “How should we live?”

Subject Areas

Art and Culture

Anthropology
Folklore

Literature and Language Arts

American Literature – Native American
World Literature – Native American

History and Social Studies

U.S. History – Native American

 

Time Required

Three to six class periods

 

Skills

  • Reading Comprehension
  • Listening Comprehension
  • Primary Document Analysis
  • Critical Thinking – Appraisal, Summarization, Identification, Comparison/Contrast, Inference, Interpretation, Discernment
  • Internet Use

Guiding Questions

What is an oral tradition? How have oral traditions in Cherokee culture remained the same over time? How have oral traditions changed in Cherokee culture? Why are oral traditions significant within Cherokee culture? What lessons may be learned from the oral traditions within Cherokee culture?

Learning Objectives

  • To appraise the importance of story-telling within Cherokee culture;
  • To summarize or discuss the stories presented from Cherokee oral traditions;
  • To identify the significance of the characters within the stories;
  • To infer the purposes of the story-teller within the stories;
  • To interpret the possible meanings of the stories presented;
  • To discern the similarities and differences between Cherokee culture and non-Cherokee culture.

Preparing To Teach These Lessons

  1. Read the introductory essay, “Cherokee Story-telling Traditions: Forming Identity, Building Community.” Depending upon the grade level of students, instructors may elect to assign this brief essay to students (see Lesson 1), or they may use the essay as background information (see Lessons 2 and 3).
  2. Read the Cherokee stories to be explored by the students. Please note that phonetic translations of Cherokee words are used frequently. Instructors should acquaint themselves with these terms and prepare accordingly.
  3. Perform the tasks to be undertaken by students in each of the lesson plans, thereby becoming familiar with how students themselves may perform.
  4. In response to any questions that arise during steps 1 through 3, consult the various works cited in the introductory essay. General information about Cherokee history and culture may be found at the following websites:

    Encyclopedia of North American Indians –
    http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/na_006500_cherokee.htm
    This site, provided by Houghton Mifflin, has numerous articles on a variety of topics related to Native American culture, many of which are written by Native American scholars.

    Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma – http://www.cherokee.org
    This site is the official site for the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. The “Culture” section has many short articles on topics related to these lessons. Of particular interest in teaching these lessons will be the “History” and “Traditional Stories” sections.

    United Keetoowah Band – http://unitedkeetoowahband.org
    This site is the official site for the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokees in Oklahoma. The “History” section has short article regarding this federally recognized tribe; the “Language” section has a few basic linguistic activities.

    Eastern Band of Cherokees – http://www.cherokee-nc.com
    This site is the official site for the Eastern Band of Cherokee of North Carolina. The “Legends” section has many short articles on topics related to these lessons.

    Internet Sacred Text Archive
    (http://www.sacred-texts.com/nam/cher/motc/index.htm) – This site offers the complete set of Myths of the Cherokee as recorded by James Mooney in the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 1897-98 Part I. [1900]. This site also contains complete texts from the world’s many major religions and ancient classical works.

  5. If internet access is not available to students, print texts to be studied in the lesson(s).
  6. If possible, acquire audio recordings of the stories covered in these lessons. As these lessons pertain to oral traditions, listening rather than reading the stories is preferable. As Gerald Vizenor has noted, “the original communal context of performance and other circumstances of oral expression are seldom understood in translation” or transcription (Native American Literature: A Brief Introduction and Anthology 6-7). For a list of available audio recordings, see the introductory essay, “Cherokee Story-telling Traditions: Forming Identity, Building Community” or contact Steven Woods, swoods@tulsacc.edu
  7. Teach the lesson(s).

 

Suggested Lessons

Lesson 1 – Cherokee Story-telling Traditions: Forming Identity, Building Community

  1. Read the essay, “Cherokee Story-telling Traditions: Forming Identity, Building Community.”
  2. Have students appraise the importance of story-telling within Cherokee culture.
    • How do Cherokee stories serve as a basis for the formation of Cherokee identities?
    • How do Cherokee stories serve as a basis for building Cherokee communities?
  3. Have students consider the importance of story-telling in their own lives.
    • How are their stories “told”? Orally (from person to person), texts, radio, TV, film?
    • How do their stories serve as a basis for the development of cultural identity?
    • How do their stories serve as a basis for building community?

Lesson 2 – Cherokee “First-Fire” Stories

  1. Read the selection of Cherokee “First Fire Stories.” For Kathi Littlejohn’s “Getting Fire” in R. Duncan Living Stories of the Cherokee, permission is granted by the publisher, University of North Carolina Press, copyright (c) 1998. www.uncpress.unc.edu

    For a First Fire Story, the Fire and the Spider, as told by Hastings Shade, see either:
    http://www.manteno.k12.il.us/webquest/elementary/LanguageArts/Anasi/fireandspider.html or
    http://courses.ttu.edu/thomas/classPet/1999/Tarantula/art.htm
  2. Have students summarize or discuss the basic plot common to each version of the story.
    • What is (are) the common event(s)?
  3. Have students identify the roles played by each of the characters in each version of the story.
    • Who are the characters involved?
    • What traits distinguish each character?
    • What roles do the characters play? Protagonist? Antagonist? Hero? Villain? Other Roles?
  4. Have students infer the purpose of the story-teller.
    • Is the purpose to teach a value or relationship?
    • Is the purpose to explain how something or someone came to be a certain way?
    Note that these questions are variations on questions of ultimate concern: “Who are we?” “Why are we here?” “Where do we come from?” “What is our purpose here?” “How should we live?”
  5. Have students interpret possible meanings derived from the “First-Fire” stories.
    • What is the practical importance of fire to human life?
    • What is the symbolic importance of fire in human existence or being?
    Note that his task is intimately related to the previous task.
  6. Optional: If students have read the essay “Cherokee Story-telling Traditions: Forming Identity, Building Community,” have them explain the connection between “First-Fire” stories and other aspects of Cherokee culture, particularly stomp-dancing.

Lesson 3 – Cherokee “Origin” Stories

Background note: Origin stories explain how the world and its inhabitants came to be. Native American “origin” stories may be divided generally into two types: Creation and Migration.

Creation stories may be typed according to creative agency. On the one hand are stories in which the creative agent emerges from the material of the earth. This type may be called “earth-emerging” stories. An example of this type may be drawn from Hopi oral tradition (see an abbreviated version of the Hopi creation story, “How the Hopi Indians Reached Their World,” in the “Stories” section of the Indigenous Peoples Literature website, http://www.indigenouspeople.net/ipl_final.html. On the other hand are stories in which the creative agent enters into the unformed material of the earth. This type may be called “earth-diving” stories. The paraphrased Yuchi origin story, “In the Beginning,” is an example of this second type (see again the Indigenous Peoples Literature website).
In addition to accounts of creation, “origin’ stories also include tales of migration. These stories account, perhaps obviously, for the movement of a people from place to place.

  1. Read the excerpt, “Theories and Legends,” from Robert J. Conley’s The Cherokee Nation: A History. Permission is granted by the University of New Mexico Press. www.upress.unm.edu.
  2. Read the story “Journey of the Cherokees” recounted by Hastings Shade.
  3. Have students identify the type of origin stories presented in the excerpt “Theories and Legends” and the story “Journey of the Cherokees.”
    • What types of Cherokee origin stories are presented? Earth-emerging, Earth-diving, Migration?
  4. Have students summarize or discuss the Cherokee creation story included in the excerpt “Theories and Legends.”
    • What is the basic plot?
  5. Have students identify the roles played by each of the characters in the Cherokee creation story.
    • Who are the characters involved?
    • What traits distinguish each character?
    • What roles do the characters play? Protagonist? Antagonist? Hero? Villain? Other Roles?
  6. Have students draw or otherwise illustrate the world described in the Cherokee creation story included in the excerpt “Theories and Legends.”
  7. OPTIONAL: Have students watch “The Beginning They Told,” an animated video recounting in both Cherokee and English the Cherokee creation story, available from the Cherokee Heritage Center, info@cherokeeheritage.org.
    • Compare the story from “The Beginning They Told” with the story included in the excerpt “Theories and Legends.”
    • Compare the story from “The Beginning They Told” with the student illustrations of the world described in the Cherokee creation story included in the excerpt “Theories and Legends.”
  8. OPTIONAL: Have students summarize or discuss the Bering Strait Theory of Native American origins, included in the excerpt “Theories and Legends.”
    • Compare the anthropological perspective of Native American origins to Cherokee perspectives. What similarities and/or differences may be discerned?

SUPPLEMENTAL READINGS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Jack and Anna Kilpatrick edited a collection of Cherokee stories, Friends of Thunder (used by permission of University of Oklahoma Press.) Friends of Thunder is a printed transcript of tape-recorded tale-telling and the Kilpatricks strove to either transcribe or translate word for word. The collection has a number of origin stories, some told by Tsiwon, Yan'sa, and Siquanid, Cherokee who had retained the tradition of receiving and passing on stories of the Cherokee. The three are listed among 17 contributors to the collections as: "Siquanid--age, about 50, male, married, Baptist minister, English, fair; Tsiwon--age, 68, female, married, housewife, Christian, Baptist, English, fair; Yan'sa--age, 81, male, married, farmer, Christian, Baptist, English, almost none." One collection of these stories centers on Uk'ten, a monster comparable to a dragon, and what may counter this monster. The following link is made of fragments and fuller stories of the fight between Uk'ten and Thunder Friends of Thunder. Permission is granted University of Oklahoma Press, www.oupress.com.

Students: Read the Uk'ten stories through the link, above. Now, re-read Professor Woods' six questions in Unit 2. Formulate your own questions for these Uk'ten stories. Answer them either in discussion groups or in short papers.


Possible Connections between Lessons:

Lesson 1 section 2, concludes with materials on imagining the use of stories and speeches within a Cherokee Village. Using the materials you have read on Cherokee Origin myths and other story-telling by the Cherokee, how do you imagine a Cherokee clan or, particularly, a village to use its story-telling traditions when it faces a decision?
Lesson 1 section 1 describes the slow but steady growth of large political units that organized Cherokee life from villages to a nation with a newspaper and a constitution. Think about stories in the Bible or about the American revolution or the freeing of slaves. Do you think that as the political units become larger the stories grow in importance or fade in importance? Are the stories used for the same purposes or different purposes? Why?

For either question, be sure to intepret and cite texts from the readings to help you argue your point.

In Unit 3, Blue Clark speaks of the dual view or double vision that Cherokees maintain in view of both their historical identity as Cherokee and their participation in the wider American culture. Conversely, he shows that a person who identifies with "white" culture might view a landscape and object within the landscape quite differently from a Cherokee. (For further information read or review Unit 5.) Unit 7, composed by Robert Conley, is concerned with modern Cherokee novels and poems and the incorporation of history and legendary stories into those novels and poems. Reconsider Professor Woods' questions of Unit 2, Lesson 1:
Have students appraise the importance of story-telling within Cherokee culture -- particularly in both the same and different ways that traditional stories are viewed by Cherokees and modern-written stories are viewed by Cherokees, or the larger American culture as a whole.

  • How do Cherokee stories serve as a basis for the formation of Cherokee identities?
  • How do Cherokee stories serve as a basis for building Cherokee communities?
  • How might the wider American culture view these stories?

Apply these questions to the materials in Unit 7, to either the poems quoted from Echoes of our Being or the passages Excerpted from Mountain Windsong.

EXTENDING THE LESSON: