Topics: Brainstorming for Ideas

Topic: Cherokee Folklore
Comments: I really enjoy the different folklore stories that are told by Native Americans and their different beliefs on why different aspects of the world are what we see them as. I would like to look more into these readings because of my family's heritage in the Cherokee Nation.
Possible Stories: In the Un-textbook there is an entire section just on Cherokee Myths that I have found to be very interesting to read. There are also many Cherokee website that have myths that have been passed down.
Sample Story Comments: When searching for material to use for the myths of the Cherokee people I found that many of the websites that post myths are actually created and maintained by the Cherokee Nations.
Bibliography Information: 
Sample Story: How The World Was Made
Book Title: Myths of the Cherokees
Book Author: James Mooney
Year: 1900

Topic: Apache History
Comments: The Apache Indians were some of the most feared Native Americans because of their fierce tactics in battle and how well trained they were on horseback.
Possible Stories: Again the Un-textbook holds an entire unit on Apache Indians and their stories of greatness. When searching on Wikipedia I found a detailed history of conflicts between the Apache and various tribes along with the U.S. and Mexico.
Sample Story Comment: In the Un-textbook there is a story about the beginning of the Apache people and their fortunes that they were given.
Bibliography Information: 
Sample Story: The Emergence
Book Title: Jicarilla Apache Texts
Book Author: Pliny Earle Goddard
Year: 1911

Topic: Odysseus's Adventures
Comments: This subject has intrigues me ever since I studied the Odyssey in high school.
Possible Stories: One possible story that is one of my favorites is the story of the Odysseus's interaction with the Sirens.
Sample Story Comments:
Bibliography Information: 
Sample Story: The Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis
Book Title: Homer's Odyssey
Book Author: Translated by Tony Kline
Year: 2004

Odysseus and the Sirens

Topics: Grimm Stories
Comments: I really like the Grimm Tales because they are the original version of all the modern day fairy tales that we all know except they usual have a dark ending to them that isn't so happily ever after
Possible Stories: One possible story to use would be one of the most well know of Snow white
Sample Story Comments: The story of my choosing has a few small differences where the queen tries three different times to kill Snow White but never is able to. The queen ends up dying from her own anger and rage.
Bibliography Information:
Sample Story: Snow-White
Book Title: Household Stories by The Brothers Grimm
Book Author: Translated by Lucy Crane
Year: 1886

Essay: The First Justice for Crime

The stories of Noah were some of the first known stories about laws that were placed among the human race and the justice that followed the disobedience of those laws. The first story was about the flood. God had told the people to behave and to stop their wicked ways but no one would listen to these warnings. God brought down the floods that wiped the Earth clean of people and of the sin that was brought by the wicked ways of humans. The later stories tell of the restructuring of the human population and how the evil began to arrive again. One of the stories began with Noah being tricked into drinking the "poisoned" wine from the serpent, better known as satan. The drinking of this wine caused Noah to behave like a monkey and behave abnormally. Not much justice came form this story though. Another later story was about the tower of Babel. The people of Shinar tried to build a tower to heaven to see what it was like. God didn't like what they were doing so in order to stop the construction of this great tower he scrambled their languages and scattered them across the Earth. The final story began with a few of God's angels asking for permission to walk among the people on Earth. After long thought and argument he agreed to left them rome within the human population. After countless acts of temptation the angels ultimately gave into the submissiveness of the women. Their punishment for this action was that their children would be known as the giants and the would be forced to live among the people and not return to heaven. This unit was primarily filled with stories and crimes of characters and God's punishment for those crimes based on what he sees fit.

Scales of Justice

Storytelling for Week 2: The Babbling City

A long time ago in a land much different from today there lived two brothers of very old age but still in good health. The oldest brother's name was Bill and the second brother's name was Joe. Bill was seen as the more mature older brother that everyone looked up to. Joe was the younger brother that did anything Bill said to do but was still looked highly upon by the community. These two men lived in a great palace of a house on the highest hill that overlooked the city. This community was filled with curious citizens that questioned many things that God did when creating the Earth. They met in many town meetings to discuss these things that they wanted answers to and went to God periodically to question the thoughts behind the creation.

One day Bill went to Joe and asked him the most curious question. Bill asked "what do you think is beyond the clouds?" Joe answered back "I don't know, brother. I've never put much thought into it but now that you ask I am quite curious as well." Bill responded, " Do you think that the great heavens of our god lie beyond the clouds"? After spending much time conversing over the subject the two men decided to get opinions from the townsmen. The men went amongst the remaining townsmen and questioned them as to what is behind the clouds and if they would be willing to build a tower to explore. After all of this interrogating the two brothers went to the town meeting that was being held and asked if the townspeople would help them build a tower on top of their house to explore the further reaches of the sky beyond the clouds. A strong majority of the people agreed to the task and began collecting material to build the tower with. To build the tower the people used brick that was burned to harden it and slime was used as a mortar to weld the bricks together.

After a few months the tower was built nearly a mile high. God then came down to check on his people and saw the partially built tower and decided that there was no way they would see his home without his admittance through the front gates. On one of the best days of construction Bill and Joe stepped back to view the tower being built and decided it was a beautiful creation. As the two were talking, God was sitting on top of the tower and threw tiny rocks off the top but only hard enough to get his point across. The rocks struck both of the men, as they were working, on top of the head and they began talking a strange language to one another. One by one God threw rocks at each worker until he had hit each and every worker. Now there were hundreds of languages being spoken and no one spoke the same language. Construction of the tower came to a halt and everyone was very confused and decided to move to various places around the world and begin their own countries.

Tower of Babel

Author's Note

I chose this story because I thought I could tell a new story from a completely different vantage point to create an interesting post. My goal was to create a new reasoning for why there are different languages in the world and why they are scattered throughout the world. Also my goal is to add more personalization to the story by adding in characters with attributes closer to today's type of people and how they would talk and act. The reading this story came from was "The Tower of Babel." In the original story, God confused the people of Babylon so that they would not be capable of working together to make the great tower to reach the heavens. In creating this story, I thought it would be better to create some type of reasoning for why everyone could not speak the same and also why they ventured off into different parts of the country. Most people know that origin of the original story but do not question its accuracy. Many of these stories were passed along by word of mouth and had variations in their accuracy. Knowing that this story is most likely completely inaccurate I felt like it would be a fun variation the original to explain some happenings early in our history. 

Bibliography

The King James Bible, Book of Genesis 10-11

Extra Reading Diary: Great Plains

In "The Creation the Osage explain about how the Earth was found and that the water was cleared of it by the winds which revealed the exposure of the rocks and soil. It then goes to tell how the elk's fur was shed then turned to corn, beans, potatoes, and turnips. In "A Tradition of the Calumet" the story of the peace pipe is told. The people of the land were dancing to scalp the Lenni-Lenapi but a great white bird flew in to tel them not to an offer a peace to them in the form of a pipe. In "The Buffalo and the Grizzly Bear" A story is told about how the grizzly bear repeatedly attacked the buffalo bull because he had heard the buffalo had been bad mouthing him. The grizzly attacked the buffalo three different times before the buffalo attacked the grizzly and made him crawl away before deciding to be friends with one another. In "The Eagle's Revenge" the Cherokee tell a story of how a hunter killed an eagle one night because the eagle had been eating his kill. The next day the hunter takes the eagle back to the village where they dance over the killed eagle. A strange man walks to the middle and tells seven different people they would die. These seven people happened to be the rattlers for the dancing of the kill and the man that killed the eagle. In "The Tradition of the Finding of Horses" the Ponce tell about how they had went into a battle with the Comanche and lost very badly. The Ponca then later friended the Comanche. The Ponca later killed the Comanche and took there horses after being taught how to use them and how to kill more efficiently.

Peace Pipe Used by the Lakota