An Overview of Native American Oral Literature::

Songs and Prayers

Songs and prayers come in all shapes and guises. Certain ones will be performed at fertility rituals; others will appear during ceremonies celebrating birth, puberty and death, each prayer and song shaping itself to the particular context. Others will have a more social flavour, being sung or recited at feasts and giveaways, for example, or during gatherings to celebrate the return of warriors from battle. Each one will vary not only according to social or ceremonial ritual, but to family, band and tribe also. Prayers, songs and myths can be both tribal/communal or personal. Tribal oral narratives can help maintain the tribe's history, customs and sacred lore; personal narratives are unique to the individual composer.

One writer observes that among the Hopi, for example, some of the ceremonial songs are personal, having been freely composed by an individual. Yet they are not purely personal expressions because they embody and articulate the personal experience within a cultural, tribal perspective, employing shared tribal metaphors and exhibiting shared tribal values and beliefs (Sevillano 1986).¹

Amongst the Sioux, the writers Black Bear Jr and Theisz comment that Sioux songs allow for a certain degree of personal individuality so long as the core cultural traits are maintained. However, less toleration of individual creativity is tolerated in religious songs (Black Bear and Theisz 1976).²

There were also pan-Indian songs and prayers, such as those of the Ghost Dance in the late nineteenth century as recorded in the book by James Mooney, and of the Native American Church (Mooney 1892-1893).³

Notes::

• 1 - Mando Sevillano. 1986. "Interpreting Native American Literature: An Archetypal Approach." American Indian Culture and Research Journal 10.1: 1-12.
• 2 - Ben Black Bear, Sr. & Ron D. Theisz, eds. 1976. Songs and Dances of the Lakota Sioux. Rosebud: Sinte Gleska College Press.
• 3 - James Mooney. 1892-93. "The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890." Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 14.2.