NA Mythology

Native American mythology focuses a lot on nature and the enviornment. Throughout the myths and legends of Native Americans that we read, there was a lot of references to the nature. Some examples, would be in "SOng of Sky Loom," there is references to the Earth, SKy, rain green grass, and rainbow. THe NA society has respect towards nature and other people, and even towards animals. In our society today, we think that we dominate animals, however, in the NA society, animals and humans were equal. THe Native AMericans didn't look down on the animals. The animals in the legends and myths were very close to the humans, and had humanlike qualitites. THe animals also displayed self sacrifice. For example, in the Raven myths, the owl carries the burning stick in his beak. In response to this, his own beak gets burned and becomes smaller. This shows the sacrifice that he made for the raven. Land was also important for the Native Americans. They believed that Earth was their mother. Since according to them, God created them and their land, God was very wise. He made sure that the humans and the animals were well suited for their enviormnent that they were in. This is seen in "The Blackfoot Legend." The Old Man puts the mountain goat who has one horn on the mountains and the deer on the plains. At first he made a mistake, but he went back to fix what he had done wrong, so the animals were well suited for their enviornment.