Written Vs. Oral History

Elias Puentes
ENGL 470
August 29, 2008

As a Christian, the only creation story I was introduced to was the Biblical story in the book of Genesis. Interestingly enough, Genesis has two creation stories, and I imagine that there are more than two. This reflects the oral traditions. The first story basically gives a chronological order of creation and time. In this story, the emphasis is on how the universe came to exist. It is more like this: God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. In other words, God is like a magician. In the second story, however, God is less magical, and there is less emphasis in the chronological order of creation and time. In this story, God does not just says, let there be vegetation and there was vegetation. It actually says that God planted a garden in Eden and out of the ground He made various trees grow. He also formed man out of clay and blew His breath into the man’s nostrils. Here we see that God does not only say something and it happens, but we see God creating man from something physical. In the second story, there is more emphasis in specific places, people, trees, and animals. For example, the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, the tree of good and evil, and the snake, plus there are themes within the creation story, and we actually see God laboring and interacting in the creation. The second story resembles more the Iroquois and Pima creation stories in the way that there are more physical elements and in that there is more interaction between the creator and the created world.

After reading Native American creation stories, I had to read the first eight chapters of the book of Genesis to encounter the richness of all these mythological stories. There are motifs and themes that overlap in all of these stories. For example, in the Iroquois creation story, we have the good mind and the evil mind. Well, in Genesis, we also have the good mind and the evil mind represented by the serpent and Eve, and soon after the creation story in Genesis, we have the story of Cain and Abel, which in some ways represent Enigorio and Enigonhahetgea. In contrast, in the creation story of Genesis, there are no animals aiding God in the creation as there are in the Iroquois and Pima stories. In these two stories, we find the turtle and the ants aiding in the creations of the earth. However, in the flood story of Genesis, we see how Noah release a raven to see if the land was dry, and as the Biblical story unfolds, we see the role that different animals played in what can be consider mythological stories.

Unfortunately, the Native Americans did not have written records of their beliefs. These were only oral traditions, so when the Christina Missionaries came, they knew nothing of their belief systems. Some of the Christian Europeans thought of the Natives as uncivilized and pagans, but as we begin to see written texts of their beliefs, we begin to understand that they believed in God and that they were civilized. The early European settlers in the Americas fail to believe that God was in the midst of the Native people. This happened because the natives did not have a written system and because the Europeans had no sense of the history and culture of the Native Americans.

But, Red Jacket, the Seneca orator, takes a very strong stand in his speech to the U.S. Senate. He makes one very strong point. He says that Christianity is not superior to the Great Spirit of the Native Americans, and that Europeans do not have any bases to make the natives think differently. I believe that Red Jacket had a very strong point. One major difference between the two belief systems in God is that one had a written system on the other one only had an oral tradition. Therefore, the Natives were more susceptible to the Europeans.

In contrast, today, we have Christina and Muslim cultures and religions that remain strong and are flourishing because they have a written history, so it is evident that one of the main difficulties with the Native Americans was their lack of written history and the ignorance of the Europeans.