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This year I have started splitting my reading interests between fiction and non-fiction, as much in an attempt to improve my writing skills as for the love of reading itself. Especially as I move into working on my re-imagined Olandris Legacies series, a world meant to be rich and diverse in culture and environment, I have been looking into expanding my knowledge and understanding of different cultures, languages, and ways of thinking.

I grew up in rural Texas. Not surprisingly, many of my friends were Mexican. My step-father is Ecuadorian, but he spent time teaching in Korea, so that also offered me a unique perspective on world culture early on in my life. Then as a pre-teen, I became an obsessive anime fan, a hobby that started with the anime Rurouni Kenshin and my introduction to Japanese culture through an interest in the Japanese revolution, the fall of the Shogunate, and the rise of the Meiji era. But one culture that I had little exposure to (and I use culture in the broadest sense here, considering the sheer diversity involved) was that of Native Americans.

Growing up, my parents liked to take me to the Powows held in Austin, but my understanding of what that yearly event was could easily be summarized into feather costumes and loud drums. It was fun to see all the costumes and browse the merchandise stalls, and yet to me it was little more than another festival. The significance of the event, and its cultural impact, were completely lost on me.

In the Olandris Legacies series, one of the people groups that can be found on the “starting continent” of Aurora are known as the Sinti, a largely nomadic cultural group that is strongly in tune with the natural world and worships a collection of nature spirits generally referred to as the Drom. The concept of this fictional culture started in college with a collective project my writing group put together. The Sinti were one of my contributions, originally inspired by the Romani people. (I have no idea if anyone in the group still writes in that world, but we all have permission to use the ideas as we see fit, so it’s fair game.) I fell in love with the concept of a nomadic people spiritually attuned to the natural world, but I didn’t want my depiction of them to come across as stereotyped or cliche. And that, I knew, was going to require a fair amount of research. Because while none of the people groups in my stories are ever meant to intentionally or accurately represent real-life people, I have never known stereotypes and cliches to make for an interesting story.

Though my original concept of the Sinti was focused mostly on the Romani, my attention did eventually turn to the native peoples of North America as well. As I’ve been writing, I have increasingly found that elements from the myriad cultures of the North American indigenous peoples have worked well for the kind of culture I am attempting to form in the Sinti. And that led me to look for books about the real-life cultures themselves.

It could just be because of where I live, but I haven’t found many books that seem to truly, fairly, accurately represent any of the natives of North America. Of the selection I had available to me at the time, Native American Myths & Legends by Lewis Spence seemed the closest to what I was going for. To say that my opinion of the book is mixed would be the understatement of the day.

Book Overview

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17172386-native-american-myths-and-legends-by-lewis-spence

My Rating: 3/5 stars

Native American Myths and Legends is a reprint of a book originally published in 1914. The writing endeavors to record the stories and religious practices of a variety of cultural groups found across indigenous North America. One of the things the book quite clearly points out is that the term “Native American” is about as broad as you can get. With hundreds (if not thousands) of languages and dialects and a huge assortment of religious and social practices, it is practically impossible to assign a particular description to what constitutes a “Native American.”

Historically speaking, some were nomadic and clan-based, some more urban and sedentary; some were matriarchal, some were patriarchal; some held great respect for life, and some practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism (more on that later). That the book was written in the early 20th century is not lost on the reader, and anyone who reads it should approach it with that mindset.

Yet despite the innate bias of the writer, it does endeavor to approach the topic of indigenous culture fairly, and the commentary at the end notes that its original purpose was both to preserve cultures that were quickly dying out thanks to the rapid expansion of white European colonizers and to argue for the dignity and importance of the indigenous people within society at that time. I imagine that for the time in which the original book was published, it was quite progressive. There are also additions by a more modern writer that help smooth over some of the older understandings and concepts that are represented in the original manuscript.

What I Liked

I have always been fascinated by anthropology, what makes people groups what they are and where cultural and religious behaviors stem from. Understanding a culture group’s mythology is a major key to understanding who they are as people, and there are plenty of stories in this collection that caught my attention both from the perspective of a storyteller and from the perspective of a person who really, truly does want to understand and appreciate the diversity that makes the world and its people so beautiful.

The writing is, on the whole, accessible and understandable for the average reader despite being over 100 years old, and there are elements within many of the stories that struck me as familiar from the perspective of a fantasy writer. I found many characters and stories in this book to be interesting potential source material for ideas I might use in my fantasy writing later down the road.

What I Did Not Like

The first thing that made this book a bit difficult to get through for me was the verbiage that makes it clear early on that this is a manuscript written during a time when racism and white superiority were the norm. Every time I read words like “heathen,” “barbarian,” and “savage,” I very physically could do nothing but cringe and wonder why I was continuing to read the book. And while there are several stories that are well-written and interesting, the vast majority of the writing is dry and academic. Unless you’re committed to reading to the end, it is one of those books that quickly becomes an example of how not to write about myth and legend.

Also, there should be a clear trigger warning on this book, as there is a segment toward the end that goes into detail about a ritual in which a young girl is kidnapped, manipulated, and brutally murdered as a part of a regular religious ceremony. That was the one part of the book I could not read in its entirety. So…yeah. If you’re into Criminal Minds, you’d probably be fine. I am not that person. I have very clear limits on the amount of cruelty and violence I can stomach reading about.

My Take-Away

From the perspective of someone who acknowledges that ideas and understandings of the world change, and believes that it is only in understanding the past that we can build a better future, I don’t regret reading this book. I did learn quite a bit about the indigenous cultures of North America, something that extends far beyond feather headdresses and flint arrowheads. I appreciated, too, that in the end of the book it’s made clear that the author’s intent was to earn understanding and respect for the indigenous people who were, at that time in particular, very poorly treated.

Do I think it could have been done better? Absolutely. And I’m still looking for something along this vein that maybe has a more accurate (and more interesting), less biased approach to portraying the content. Still, it did what I intended for it to do. It gave me a better appreciation for (and understanding of) a way of thinking I am trying to understand and fairly portray in my writing. So in that, it was a book worth reading.