Reading Notes: Mississippi Valley/Great Lakes, Part A

This week I chose to read the Mississippi Valle/Great Lakes unit. I am fairly familiar with some of the Choctaw stories because I took Choctaw 1-3 as my foreign language. I really enjoyed learning about some of the stories from my professor, so I decided to pick this unit. I took notes over a couple of the stories from part A. I might write my story over this reading for next week instead of this week.

• The Earth Maker had a lot of cool details and analogies
• I would like to look into the different story details implemented
• I thought the tortoise was an interesting creation
• Tortoise made war and did not destroy the evil as instructed
• The advice of the grandmother is very notable
• She explains to hare that we cannot all live forever
• It was a painful realization for hare
• Death is a part of our lives and we cannot escape it
• The Creator story was really cool
• I like how the Creator is similar to many different creation stories
• He taught man how to surive
• The earth was created with water first and land later
• The crawfish created the lands by bringing mud
• The animals were foolish to ridicule man
• Creator taught man to hunt and cook
• I like the connection that the animals and man have during council
• The animals would give advice because they were much wiser

(A photo of a hare similar to the Earth Maker story. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Bibliography: Myths and Legends of the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes by Katharine Berry Judson. Source: UnTextbook