by Zitkála-Šá · 1901
Fantasy · Classics
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Dakota legends retold in English by the Yankton Dakota writer Zitkála-Šá, who gathered them from traditional storytellers. Many feature Iktomi, the spider trickster.
These legends are relics of our country’s once virgin soil. These and many others are the tales the little black-haired aborigine loved so much to hear beside the night fire.
For him the personified elements and other spirits played in a vast world right around the center fire of the wigwam.
Iktomi, the snare weaver, Iya, the Eater, and Old Double-Face are not wholly fanciful creatures.
There were other worlds of legendary folk for the young aborigine, such as “The Star-Men of the Sky,” “The Thunderbirds Blinking Zigzag Lightning,” and “The Mysterious Spirits of Trees and Flowers.”
Under an open sky, nestling close to the earth, the old Dakota storytellers have told me these legends. In both Dakotas, North and South, I have often listened to the same story told over again by a new storyteller.
While I recognized such a legend without the least difficulty, I found the renderings varying much in little incidents. Generally one helped the other in restoring some lost link in the original character of the tale. And now I have tried to transplant the native spirit of these tales—root and all—into the English language, since America in the last few centuries has acquired a second tongue.
