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Nebraska
Press Series 2
| Myths
and Tales of the Jicarilla Apache Indians
Scott Rushforth, Morris Edward Opler, Paper:
1994,xxxviii,407,CIP.LC 94-27548,0-8032-8603-1
Sources of American Indian Oral Literature
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University
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The publication of Myths and Tales
of the Jicarilla Apache Indians by the American Folk-Lore
Society in 1938 illustrated the richness of the material
on the tribes of the Southwest. Still a treasure-house
of information, it appears with a new introduction and
for the first time in paperback. Morris Edward Opler
based his pioneering work on the accounts of Jicarilla
men and women born in the nineteenth century. In a preface
he explains that the stories, sacred and profane, were
meant to be told on winter nights. The book takes up
the creation of the universe, the birth of Killer-of-Enemies
and Child-of-the-Water, the slaying of monsters, and
the Hactcin ceremony. Other myths center on games and
artifacts, hunting rituals and encounters with supernatural
animals, and the trickster Coyote. There are also vivid,
earthy stories of foolishness, unfaithfulness, and perversion;
mon-strous enemies; and Dirty Boy's winning of a wife.
A professor emeritus of anthropology at the University
of Oklahoma, Morris Edward Opler is an authority on
the Apaches. In his introduction Scott Rushforth considers
Opler's work as well as the history of the tribe.
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