Sample Solution

. What is “geomythology,” and how can it be used to learn about the ancient North American past? Answer this question while describing more broadly “how we know what we know” about Native North America prior to European contact.

Geomythology is a term that means the study of legends that strive to explain geological phenomenon such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and the like. These legends allow mythologists and historians to explore the deeper meaning behind Native American stories and to get a first-hand account on how Indians saw the world that they inhabited. Often times historians “do not know quite what to make of stories and consequently dismiss them as myths, not appropriate or useful as historical evidence,” however, “oral transmission of stories is common to all human societies and ‘is probably the oldest form of history making,’” (Calloway, “A Navajo Emergence Story and an Iroquois Creation Story,” p.44). In stories like the Navajo, where the First Man and First Woman emerge from several lower worlds in order to eventually find the present world, or the different Iroquois tribes, which all tell slightly different tales, a historian can learn about how a Native American society viewed life. For example, the Iroquois story conveyed “the importance of women in Iroquois society, the duality of good and evil, and the need for balance,” (Calloway, “A Navajo Emergence Story and an Iroquois Creation Story,” p.48). Geomythology is not only important because it conveys stories from different Indian groups, but it is one of the few remnants to a pre-contact Native America.