Four Ancestors Told by Joseph Bruchac

Four Ancestors – Stories, Songs, and Poems from Native America as told by Joseph Bruchac and illustrated by S.S. Burrus, Jeffrey Chapman, Murv Jacob and Duke Sine is a good read aloud for ages six and up. I say age six because some of the stories run on the long side.

Told by Joseph Bruchac is a most apt description as the writing is such that it flows perfectly in the form of oral storytelling. This is definitely a read-aloud.

The four ancestors are: fire, earth, water and air. They are viewed as living beings within the Native American cultures, and the four elements were used in the creation of people.

There are no stories from the Shawnee in this book, as is the usual. Other than a very old book by CC Trowbridge and one picture book, I have been unable to find anthologies that include tales from the Shawnee.

Tribes represented in Four Ancestors include: Wampanoag, Mohawk, Pawnee, Seneca, Chippewa, Cheyenne, Navajo (several), Lakota, Abenaki, Cherokee, Inuit and other lesser known tribes such as Muliseet, Micmac, Cochiti Pueblo amongst others.

The stories did not stand out as much to me as in the anthology The Girl Who Married the Moon, but some of them are rather amusing and humorous. In particular, “How Saynday Tried To Marry Whirlwind Girl” and “The Bird Whose Wings Made the Wind” both in the Air section. I particularly learned from “Clay Old Woman and Clay Old Man” a Cochiti Pueblo story about how the people learned to use clay to make pots and a Pawnee tale “The Moon Basket” in which First Girl and First Boy meet Moon Woman and she teaches them important things, like how to make a lodge, how to make baskets, how to dance and sing, how to grow corn.

The poems and songs are a delight to read. From How Songs Are Made an Inuit poem:

Songs are born in that stillness

when everyone tries

to think of nothing but beautiful things.

 

Four Ancestors ends with an Abenaki tale “The Gift of Stories, The Gift of Breath” which every storyteller and writer should read. Grampa Obomsawin tells his granddaughter, “Long ago, our Creator made the world, and He filled it with stories. Those stories are a gift to us, just like the gift of breath.” Grampa goes on to teach Cecile how stories are inside of us, but we must listen for them.

JRR Tolkien author of Lord of the Rings did not see a dichotomy in the creation of his stories and his faith in God. After all, we are formed in His image and He took great pleasure in the act of creation. God created an entirely new world as does an author. It is part of us to find a story.

Four Ancestors was published in 1996 by Bridge Water Books and has 31 tales, poems and songs.