LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Trickster Tales: Native American
built 213 days ago
The Trickster is a well-known and beloved figure in many myths over much of the world, but he is best known from two continents, North America and Africa. In North America he is characteristically portrayed as a being from the early mythological times when the animals appeared as human beings - human in mentality and thinking, animals in form — and the trickster himself was often zoomorphic and behaved as an impostor and cheater. No wonder therefore that the trickster is a central person in North American mythology. Indeed, in most tribal myth collections most narratives circle around this remarkable joker. At the same time he is often a serious figure, a transformer of the world, or a culture hero.
Source:
A Trickster is a mischievous or roguish figure in myth or folklore who typically makes up for physical weakness with cunning and subversive humor. The Trickster alternates between cleverness and stupidity, kindness and cruelty, deceiver and deceived, breaker of taboos and creator of culture. Tricksters play an important role in the folklore and culture of the United States. The Trickster tales in this collection come from three cultures: Native American, African American, and European American.
Source:
In the first place, van Deursen's book is a more systematic survey of the North American culture hero-trickster variations, seen from the general ideas that Breysig had presented. The Heilbringer phenomenology is mapped in the order that is suggested through the extension of different linguistic groups; the culture-area division is only partly observed. Due to the situation at the time of writing some groups like the Numic (Shoshoneans) and Canadian Athapascans are only slightly mentioned since there was little known about their mythologies. The trickster character of most culture heroes was noted, but not specifically dwelt upon. According to van Deursen it is the needs of the raconteur to catch his public with dramatic power and humour that have brought forth the trickster side in the Heilbringer: "The cunning and the shrewdness which are so admired [by the Indians] are a hero's obvious qualities in the narratives at the campfire" (ibid:370f). However what primarily caught van Deursen's attention was the Heilbringer's position as a being between God and humanity, a mediator whose role resembled that of Christ, — something that the Indians themselves pointed out to Edward Sapir and Paul Radin (ibid:379f).
Source:
Franchot Ballinger, Gerald Vizenor Sacred Reversals: Trickster in Gerald Vizenor's "Earthdivers: Tribal Narratives on Mixed Descent" American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 1, The Literary Achievements of Gerald Vizenor (Winter, 1985), pp. 55-59 doi:10.2307/1184653
Source:
[One] older author who was interested in the trickster theme was the learned Philadelphia scholar, Daniel G. Brinton. In his Myths of the New World (1868), the first comprehensive treatise on American Indian mythology, he particularly dwells on the Algonkin and Iroquois Indians (ibid:173-190). Like Schoolcraft before him he saw in the trickster a mainly religious figure:
Source:
Whatever else he may be, Trickster is ... a SURVIVOR who uses his wits and instincts to adapt to the changing times. He still appears in many guises in modern Native American literature, sometimes as the trickster outwitting the whites or as the shaman-artist in Gerald Vizenor's post-modern hybrid world of native lore and contemporary technology.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Native American