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622 literature: The Americas humans The unpredictability and instability of their personalities make them outcasts in their own societies They are unsettled characters, always wandering in a rather unpredictable way In many ways, trickster stories provided good moral lessons, exemplifying the type of behavior that should not be followed in society Caves were mythical origin places for indigenous people in the Southwest, Mesoamerica, and South America Pueblo and Navajo stories usually tell of mythical origins from a hole in the earth, or a cave, where the ancestors lived for many generations, escaping floods and other natural disasters The emergence from the cave takes the shape of an epic journey through different ascending worlds, where the people face different challenges and create social institutions and order out of a primordial state of barbaric chaos In the case of the Aztec, the society that would eventually dominate central Mexico originated from Chicomoztóc, “place of the seven caves,” together with six other groups Besides historical reality (the Aztec did in fact enter the Valley of Mexico from a place to the north) the myth explains the power relation between the dominating Aztec and other culturally related, but eventually subjugated societies Similarly, in the Andes, the Inca were said to have originated from a place called Pacaritambo, “inn of dawn or origin.” They migrated northward and settled to found the city of Cuzco as the center, literally the navel, of their empire Other different Indian nations that allied with the future imperial family of the Inca also originated from Pacaritambo North American Indian Lore Despite the vastness, diversity, and long history of the North American continent, literature, almost entirely known through oral tradition, has come down only from modern times Few stories were recorded during the first European encounters of the 16th and 17th centuries, and it was only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that American ethnographers began to collect and study Native American folklore There is a general understanding among Native Americans that there are two different literary genres: the sacred stories, also referred to as “old” and “true,” contrasted with the “young,” narrated or “false” stories From the Western perspective, these two categories would be “myth” and “fiction,” respectively The former touches the deep core of community identity and history, while the latter is meant mostly for entertainment Aztec History and Literature Aztec literature is relatively well known Different genres are documented that clearly anchor this central Mexican tradition to wider Native American lore The myths about different cycles of creation and the culture hero Quetzalcoatl are Stone bust of Quetzalcoatl, a god associated with the Aztec creation myth; Mexico, ca 1325–1521 (© The Trustees of the British Museum) known as teotlahtolli (divine words) Specifically, Aztec is the story of the migration from Aztlán to the Valley of Mexico that recounts in rather epic fashion the geographical and chronological journeys that shaped the past and present cultural identity of the clan Although no pre-Hispanic document has survived the Spanish conquest, many paintings and chronicles produced after 1521 were meant to leave a testimony of the grandeur of Aztec past and empire According to these sources the Aztec had entered the basin of Mexico (where today the national capital of Mexico City is found) after leaving and wandering for some time in the northern part of Mexico The glorious history of the Aztec from a “barbaric” and nomadic lifestyle to the founding of the imperial city of Tenochtitlán centers on the myth of their patron deity, Huitzilopochtli (Hummingbird of the Left, or Hummingbird of the South) The deity’s birth at Coatepec (Hill of the Serpent) is a pivotal event in Aztec cultural and political history Huitzilopochtli was the miraculous son of the goddess Coatlicue (She of the Serpent Skirt) and had to kill his own brothers and sister, who were infuriated at their mother for her shameful pregnancy This myth probably coincides with actual historical events that led to the Aztec rule over their neighbors and former allies in the Valley of Mexico
Ngày đăng: 29/10/2022, 21:56
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