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Native Americans Influence on Literature

" He tells me those things ," (Niatum 140). Through these orators and the stories passed down orally, eventually essays and books are written. Many are created out of speeches of honored leaders and orators.
             Narratives were highly organized. They were usually divided into two kinds. One type was thought to be factual and the others considered fictional. The distinctions among Natives resemble that of the European distinction between myth and folktale. True narratives usually included a collection of religious beliefs including the tale of the origin of life. Many other narratives branched off this concept to tell of the migration of ancestors, adventurers of culture heroes, and the origin of ceremonies, customs, and rituals. Fictional narratives were usually told for entertainment purposes especially for the children. American Indians have long been able to make the distinctions between "walkan" (what is sacred) and "worak" (what is recounted) (Ruoff 5).
             Besides the translations of oral stories and legends from early Native Americans come pieces written by Indian authors about history. From the 1850s to the 1890s, most of the works written by Indian authors were histories of tribes from the East and Midwest. This history of literature goes along with the history of the white migration across the United States. These books deal with policies that forced the Indians onto reservations and the children into schools ran by whites to make them more acceptable in white society (Ruoff 7).
             During the 1870s more and more tribes were defeated in battles against white expansion. Almost every tribe was controlled by the American government towards the end of the decade. "Settlement on reservations and the extermination of the last buffalo herd in 1885 ended traditional life of these Indians" (Harvey 14). Not until the 1880s and 1890s did Indian authors from western tribes begin to write their anecdotes of these experiences (Ruoff 8).


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