Reading Diary Part A Week 9

The Hummingbird

Cherokee Myths Unit

I love Native folklore. My favorite has always been the Cherokee stories. These stories have multiple purposes. Most of them seem to focus around a reason for something to have existed or way in which a problem was solved. One of my favorites so far has been the tobacco story. This story reminded me so much of the origin of fire story. This is not a story about the origin of tobacco so it doesn’t resemble the story of fire in that way. Instead this story is like the origin of fire story because it is about not overlooking the ability of the least likely character to accomplish a deed that others have failed at, so this story second purpose is about overcoming obstacles. When all the other animals failed to get the tobacco the hummingbird steps up to try, but the other animals do not think it has a chance so they at first disregard it. After convincing them that it is possible the animals allow the hummingbird to go after the tobacco and the humming bird succeeds. I think this is one of the reasons I love these stories so much because they really seem to focus on the power of the individual regardless of physical appearance and assumed strength.

Picture Attribution

By User:Mdf (Image:Archilochus-alexandri-002.jpg) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons