Photograph by F.A. Rinehart, 1889

Part I

     The Dartmoor area of England, where I make my home, is a landscape rich with ancient magic: standing stones, castles, bronze age ruins, and all the legends that go along with them. It is an easy task to write about mythology in a place where old tales linger in the land, where the fires of winter solstice are still lit in the old stone circles on the moor -- a ritual that is as old as time, marking the passing of the Seasonal King, invoking the sun's return.

     But as the nights grow long and the days grow cold, each winter I pack up my old stone cottage, entrust my cat to the care of friends, and return to a little house in the desert in my own native land. An English friend asked me if it is difficult to write about mythology during the portion of the year when I live in the United States, "in a land so new, and with no myths of its own." The opinion that ours is a land without a folklore tradition is not an uncommon one in Europe, or even among some Americans. This impression might be supported by a quick perusal of the books popular in the fantasy field, written by American authors yet set in Celtic or pseudo-Celtic lands. But a more careful study of current mythic literature reveals that there is also a body of works drawing upon distinctly American folk traditions: the myths, tales and lore of "Turtle Island" -- as various tribal peoples have called our continent.

     As I ponder my English friend's question, and its assumptions about American culture, I am sitting in the desert house where I've spent winters for the last decade: a quiet spot on the outskirts of Tucson, just north of the Mexico border. Coyotes howl in the surrounding hills -- the star of local Trickster legends in which Coyote plays the Hero or the Fool, both wise and dangerous all at once. The saguaro cactus outside the window remind me of the Indian belief that these enormous cactus contain the peaceable souls of the dead. If you live a good and righteous life, you come back to earth as one of these cactus, growing tall over hundreds of years; if you are not among the righteous, you must come back again as a human being. Just north of here are Anasazi ruins as ancient as any to be found in England. To the west, the Hohokam's petroglyphs are etched onto the mountain rocks, images as mysterious as that vanished tribe themselves. In the Yaqui pueblos close to town, the Deer Dancers prepare for the spring ceremonies, extraordinary rituals mixing Indian, Spanish and Christian myth. South of town is "The White Dove of the Desert", the mission church of San Xavier del Bac, built in the 1780s. Inside the mission, the statues of the saints are decorated with photographs, gifts and tin milagros left by people seeking miracles. Downtown just yesterday, at one of the local intertribal powwows, the old Native American songs, the drums, the costumes, the prayers reflected a mix of cultural traditions -- a mythology that is neither dead nor locked away in dusty academic books, but still a vital part of daily life for many people.

     The very idea of "the American West" has a whole folklore tradition of its own: cowboys and Indians, banditos, pioneers and the stories that surrounded them. In the West, Anglo, Hispanic and Native American folkways have collided and merged. In Arizona, with its shrines and sacred mountains, its tall tales and tribal creation myths, the oral folk tradition is still very much alive. This land, like England, is steeped in legends -- and so, no, it's not hard to write about mythology here. Yet the myths of this landscape, this desert, are only one small part of the lore of Turtle Island.

     Ours is a huge country, compared to those of Europe. Its most salient characteristic (both its greatest strength and weakness) is the sheer diversity that comes of a largely immigrant population. The American folk tradition is thus equally diverse, encompassing not only the ancient stories of the original native peoples, but the stories that have come to this land along with three centuries of immigration. The American Folklore Society, founded in 1888, separated this large body of folk material into four basic parts: the relics of British folklore; the lore of unacculturated immigrant groups (the French, the Spanish, etc.); African American folklore; and Native American folklore. In Part I of this column, we'll look at the first three categories, as well as modern mythic novels that were inspired by them; in Part II, we'll look at the various mythologies that fall under the Native American heading.

     "Relics of British folklore" make up the largest part of the American folk tradition -- by which I mean oral storytelling, ballads, folk beliefs, folk dramas, and the like. We are an English-speaking culture; this common language gives us all a grounding in the British tradition, no matter what our ethnic background or color of skin. But British lore brought to the United States has been changed by the nature of this land and its peoples. The early Anglo settlers of the eastern seaboard were largely a hard-working, plain-speaking and pious group (leaving aside all of the Englishmen and women who came as criminals banished to the Colonies). The Americanized tales and songs reflect this plain-speaking attitude, and are stripped of all but the vestiges of the paganism that suffuses old British lore. You will find few fairies in the Americanized tales; often the Devil has taken their place, and the heroes are simple, clever folk who find ways to outwit him. My Tucson house-mate Ellen Steiber was researching local folklore for a story collection recently, and what she noticed was that much of American folklore consists of tall tales. She notes, "I began to wonder if our propensity for tall tales didn't have something to do with settlers coming over from the smaller European countries. They found themselves in this this vast, expansive land, and perhaps the land itself shaped heroes and deeds to match its almost incomprehensible scale . . . ."

     In the eastern United States, the huge Appalachian mountain range is one of the places where the oral folk tradition still remains the strongest. The celebrated English folklore collector Cecil Sharp made a famous excursion into the mountains of North Carolina in 1916-1917, and published the massive, classic volume of English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. It was not until 1925, however, with the publication of Isabel Gordon Carter's Tales from the Southern Blue Ridge, that folklorists realized that a whole body of magical tales which were no longer extant in Britain had taken root in the New World. These are the "Jack" tales, a cycle of stories about an engaging young hero who (according to folklorist Richard Chase) "has acquired the easy-going, unpretentious rural American manners that make him so different from his English cousin, the cocksure, dashing young hero of English fairy tales." Chase's collection, The Jack Tales, is an excellent resource for anyone interested in this lively material, as well as Buying the Wind: Regional Folklore in the United States, the classic text on American regional folklore by Richard M. Dorson.

     Orson Scott Card has echoed the homespun magic of these eastern mountain tales in Seventh Son and the subsequent books of his "Alvin Maker" series. These books tell the story of the pioneers who crossed the Appalachians and headed west in a magical America where charms, hexes, beseechings, potions, dowsers, and Second Sight are all part of daily life. Card has skillfully blended the rich magic of the white, black and red cultures of the early 1800s into a uniquely American fantasy. The late Manly Wade Wellman was a gifted writer from the pulp magazine era, as well as a historian whose works on southern American history once earned him a Pulitzer nomination. Wellman blended American history and myth in his "Silver John" stories (collected in Who Fears the Devil) about a minstrel with a silver-stringed guitar, wandering the Appalachian mountains having supernatural adventures. Reminicent of Wellman's work, William F. Wu has written stories published in many genre magazines chronicling the ghostly adventures of one Jack Hong in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri. What makes Wu's work distinctive is his beautiful rendering of the Asian magic brought to America by Chinese immigrants. Also of note, Sharyn McCrumb's gripping novel The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, a magical, musical mystery set in the mountains of Tennessee.

     Several writers use "the relics of British lore" in contemporary stories so deeply rooted in North American landscapes that they can truly be called American mythic fiction. Alice Hoffman does this with Turtle Moon, a book of subtle magic set in the tropical heat of Florida, and in Practical Magic, a tale of witches in a small New England town. (Ignore the silly movie of the same title; it bears only slight resemblance to this wonderful book.) John Crowley does this in Little, Big, a modern classic of mythic fiction set in rural New York State and the streets of Manhattan. The stories in Jack Cady's The Sons of Noah invests the Midwest and Northwest with a distinctly American enchantment, as does Nina Kiriki Hoffman's novel The Silent Strength of Stones. Reginal McKnight casts magic onto The Kind of Light That Shines on Texas; other excellent Texan tales are Lunatics by Bradley Denton and Mockingbird by Sean Stewart, as well as Mr. Death and the Redheaded Woman, a delightful children's book by Helen Eustis.

     While English folklore may be the largest immigrant influence on the American folk tradition, the stories and beliefs of other nations have permeated our culture. In fact, the most popular fairy tales known to generations of American children (Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, etc.) are not English but German, French, or by Denmark's Hans Christian Andersen. Richard Dorson (in Buying the Wind) has collected the stories, "noodle tales" and proverbs of the Pennsylvania Deutch (more commonly known as the Pennsylvania Dutch), whose German language turned into a rich, strange dialect here in America. I grew up with these tales from my mother's people: whimsical stories of devils and hexes, wizards (called brauchers), and a prankish simpleton (or "noodle" character) called Tyl Eulenspiegel. These stories, like the Anglo-Appalachian tales, have a folksy, plain-speaking American flavor very different from the European German tales (called marchen) collected by the Brothers Grimm. Nancy Springer's The Hex Witch of Seldom is a gorgeous and under-rated book based on Pennsylvania Deutch folklore; Springer, who is a Pennsylvania native, does an excellent job of using this material to create a fresh and moving adult novel.

     Mr. Dorson devotes another section of Buying the Wind to the colorful lore of the Louisiana Cajuns, who have turned the French language, culture, and music into something uniquely their own. One of the best books on the subject is Louisiana Folktales, retold in both French dialect and English by Alcee Fortier and published by the American Folklore Society, 1895. The book is divided into animal tales, in which the tricky Compair Lapin (rabbit) is always getting in and out of trouble; and wonderful, magical fairy tales with an unusual Cajun flavor. For modern works with a cajun flavor, try Dakota Lane's romantic young adult novel Johnny Voodoo, or Jewell Parker Rhodes's first novel, Voodoo Dreams, based on the real-life story of "Voodoo Queen" Marie Laveau. I also highly recommend the magical film Eve's Bayou.

     Voodoo magic was a part of the folklore tradition found all across the South. In the 1890s, African American writer Charles W. Chesnutt published a collection of stories called The Conjure Woman, based on oral tales from the South in the years before the Civil War. Originally written in a thick dialect, the stories have been retold in a more accessible form by Ray Anthony Shepard in Conjure Tales. "Conjuring," writes Shepard, "was the belief that certain people, called conjure doctors, had supernatural powers. They exercised these powers with the aid of roots, herbs and many other kinds of ingredients. The conjure woman worked the roots by rubbing them in her hands, or moving the root between her fingers." Unlike Chesnutt's white contemporaries (such as Joel Chandler Harris, author of the better known "Uncle Remus" tales) who penned hearty, folksy stories drawing upon the southern black folk tradition, Chesnutt's tales do not hide the painful realities of lives lived in slavery.

     More recently, the skilled science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler has written a powerful American time-travel fantasy, Kindred, that also draws upon the history and lore of black slaves in the south. Toni Morrison's unforgettable novel, Beloved, which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize, is a haunting, heartbreaking ghost story, using fantasy to explore rural American history just after the Civil War. Charlotte Watson Sherman is one of the best of the modern writers drawing upon the African American folkloric tradition to tell contemporary magical realist stories in her entertaining collection Killing Color. Randall Kenan, who was raised in North Carolina, has been hailed by critics as "our 'black' Marquez." This master storyteller's extraordinary work can be found in Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. Bob Shacochis is another writer who has worked with the ghostly magic of southeastern states (as well as with Caribbean myths) in the stories that make up his collection The Next New World.

     Spanish-speaking Americans have one of the most vivid folkloric traditions in this country. While this can be found throughout the United States, it is most evident among the Spanish Americans of northern New Mexico and the Mexican Americans in the border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. A typical and ubiquitious example is the legend of the Weeping Woman, La Llorona -- a story that has existed since Aztec times (and may be connected to the Aztec goddess Civacoatl). The tale has been attached to various historical personages, but the basic motif remains the same: a highborn man makes love to a beautiful peasant girl who bears him three children. When he abandons her to marry a woman of his own class (or own race, in the versions where the man is Spanish and the woman Indian), the girl kills her children, and then wanders the hills forevermore, wailing and shrieking her loss. Her ghost now appears as a woman in white with long black hair, fingernails of tin, and the face of a bat, a horse, or a skeleton. She is often found in dry river beds, and encountering her can be fatal. Once again, Dorson's Buying the Wind provides an introduction to these legends and myths, but for a more extensive exploration, I recommend John O. West's Mexican-American Folklore.

     Lately there has been a renaissance of fiction by Spanish-speaking Americans. In Other Words, edited by Roberta Fernandez, is a terrific, fat recent collection of literature by Latinas of the United States, and includes lovely magic realist works. Sandra Cisneros is a talented writer who mixes realism and magical realism in story collections such as Woman Hollering Creek; as does Ana Castillo in charming novels such as So Far From God. Kathleen Alcala is a writer whose work spans the Mexican American border region in the novel Spirits of the Ordinary and the story collection Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist. George Szantos is a Canadian author who lives part of each year in Mexico. His witty and magical cycle of stories collected in The Underside of Stones is highly recommended. Also recommended is Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate (a novel complete with recipes!), as well as the luminous film of the same title that was made from it.

     It is this skillful mix of cultural traditions that is the hallmark of American mythic fiction. We find it in Karen Joy Fowler's brilliant Sarah Canary, set in the Washington Territory of 1873, the story of a Chinese railway worker and a mysterious woman in black. We find it in Midori Synder's The Flight of Michael McBride, an enchanting novel of the American southwest. Also set in the late 1800s, it is the story of a young Irishman from New York City whose Old World traditions collide with the various immigrant and native folklore traditions on the Texas frontier. "What I found interesting in working with so many different cultural expressions of fantasy," Snyder says, "was the change in the images from Europe to the U.S., and then from the east coast cities to the bleached geography of the Southwest. In European stories, the fantastic had faces resembling ours; their houses and tools, their horses, their arts were not so different from those of humans. In cities like New York, the fairies came whole cloth along with the immigrants, moving into tenements and parks, beautiful homes and back alleys. But in the Southwest, where human beings stand dwarfed by the hugeness of the sky, by the vast distances, the fantastic thinned, becoming vaporous like Dust Devils and mirages. The fantastic took its form entirely out of nature. To live on the southwest frontier was to live close to both the beauty and the dangerous chaos of nature, and of the fantastic.

     "Yet once I probbed beneath the differences in the surface images I discovered that the 'function' of the magical images in the different narratives was the same: to provoke the transformation of a boy into a man and a hero. To this all cultures speak; and whether the fairie ride magic horses [as they do in Irish myths] or have a heart of thorns hidden within a tree trunk [as they do in Mexican-American myths], they give the hero the same challenges. I relished the differences, the richness of expression whether one found it in European village life or in the huge spaces of the American High Plains."

     The basic themes of myth and legend do not change in cultures around the globe, but each land has its distinctive voice, including Turtle Island. The voice of this land is a chorus made up of many disparate voices. It is a song that is always changing as new peoples come and make their home here; as generations live and die here; and as their ways become a part of the American folk culture. Underlying all these voices are the older stories of this land -- the tales of the first Americans, the numerous nations of indigenous peoples . . . .

Part II

     The legends of Native America are rich, complex, and diverse, varying among the many tribal peoples who make their home across the huge land mass of North America: the Crow, the Cree, the Blackfoot, the Sioux, the Oneida, the Ojibway, the Hopi, the Shoshone, the Cheyenne, and hundreds of others. Yet common themes can be found throughout the stories of many different tribes. Native American legends are often about the land itself; about sacred mountains, salmon-filled rivers, the Great Plains, and the myth-haunted deserts of the West. Animals are prevalent in the tales; they often have human characteristics, intermarry with human beings, or provide the hero with a special power, blessing, or "medicine." Father Sky, Mother Earth, and the Grandfather spirits of the four cardinal directions are an important part of the old myths, as well as of pan-tribal religions. Certain basic characters appear over and over again: the Hero, the Trickster, Grandmother Spider and her grandsons, the Twin Gods of War. While magic is usually invested in the landscape itself or in animal figures like Coyote, one can also find stories similar to the magical fairy tales of Europe, such as Cherokee legends of little people who live under the hills.

     For those interested in reading the myths themselves, there are many good collections to chose from these days -- far too many to name but a handful of favorites here. The Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library's American Indian Myths and Legends, edited by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz, is one of the best introductions to this material that I know of; I also recommend the new Erdoes & Ortiz collection, American Indian Trickster Tales. Mourning Dove's Coyote Stories is a lively, classic source of Trickster myths; The Nez Perce Coyote Tales have been collected by Deward E. Walker Jr. and Daniel N. Matthews; and Lewis Hyde's excellent study Trickster Makes This World is highly recommended. The Mythology of Native North America by David Leeming and Jake Page provides a good overview of this material; while The Dictionary of Native American Mythology (edited by Sam D. Gill and Irene F. Sullivan) and The Encyclopedia of Native American Shamanism (edited by William S. Lyon) are two good reference sources. William Brandon's The Magic World is a collection of magical songs, chants and poems culled from many different tribes. Life With the Little People edited by Robert Johnson Perry collects the little-known magical tales of the Muskogeans.

     Malcolm Margolin's The Way We Lived is a terrific collection of stories, songs and reminiscences from tribal peoples of the Pacific coast, as is Grandmother, Grandfather, and Old Wolf edited by Clifford E. Trafzer. Anne Cameron's Daughters of Copper Woman, from the Vancouver Islands in Canada, is a fascinating source for women's legends. I also recommend Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping With His Daughter, by naturalist writer Barry Lopez. In addition, you can find hundreds of collections specific to individual tribes through your local library or under the Native American heading on the Amazon.com Web site.

     When we look at Native American myths, it is important to remember that these tales are not the remnants of cultures long buried in the past. They come from living cultures, and a Traditional way of life still lived by many people in America today, particularly in the western states. Although some of the stories were created as simple entertainments, the majority of them are teaching stories and religious myths -- comparable, in their own context, to the stories of the Judeo-Christian Bible. It is a startling, little-known fact that until recently there were federal and state laws that forbid the practice of Native American religions. The widespread government policy of taking children away from their own families and shipping them to distant white-run boarding schools, where they were not allowed to speak their own languages, has caused many tales and ceremonies to be lost over the years. Fortunately, these repressive laws have been challenged and are slowly changing. A cultural renaissance is in progress as young Native Americans reclaim their own rich heritage (quite similar to the renaissance in Celtic myth, language and music that happened in Ireland in the 1970s, challenging the English domination of the culture and sparking the folklore/music/Irish language revival that flourishes today). Elderly tribal Traditionalists who have been the caretakers of ancient tales and practices are finding many young people eager now to keep this oral tradition alive.

     The dry text of a printed page cannot convey the power of a mythic story told in its proper context. We can only imagine the response of the ancient Greeks or Romans to the legends told in their day; but it is still possible to hear a Lakota legend such as that of White Buffalo Calf Woman just as people may have heard the same tale many generations ago: in the darkness of a sweat lodge, seated cross-legged on the dirt of Mother Earth, hunched beneath the lodge's circular frame of bent willow boughs. In the center of the lodge is a round pit, where the rocks (the Stone People) are brought when they've been heated by a fire. Water is poured on them, and steam fills the small, dark lodge with heat. There are prayers, songs, the sound of drums, the spicey scents of cedar and sage. In between one round of prayers and the next, the door is opened, the chanupa (pipe) brought in. And the tale is told of the mysterious woman who brought the first medicine pipe to mankind:

     It was a hard winter. Game was scarce, and the People were slowly starving. Two warriors walked out onto the plains, and saw a beautiful woman there, wearing a robe of white buffalo skin embroidered with beads. Seeing this woman walking alone, one man had a bad thought about her. "We can have our way with her," he said to the other, "and no one will know." The other warrior disagreed. "We will treat this woman with respect." But the first warrior approached the woman, and put out his hand to touch her. As he did so, dust swirled up around him, and when it was gone, nothing remained of the warrior but his bones, picked clean. The woman looked at the other man and said, "Do not be afraid. You have good thoughts and a good heart. You will be a messenger for your People. Tell them I will come in four days, and bring them a gift from Creator."

     In four days, the People gathered together in the largest tipi. The woman in white appeared among them, carrying a bundle. It was a chanupa made of pipestone and wood, with twelve eagle feathers hanging from the stem. She gave it to the People, and she explained, "The smoke of this pipe will carry your prayers directly to Creator. When you hold this pipe, you must speak nothing but the truth, for it is very powerful." She taught them seven sacred ceremonies they would practice with the chanupa, of which the inipi, the sweat lodge, is one. And then she took her leave of the People, saying "Toksha ake wacinyanktin ktelo" -- I will see you again.

     They all gathered to watch her go, and they saw as she lay down on the ground, rolled, and then stood up again in the shape of a black buffalo calf. She walked a little way and lay down, and this time she was a yellow buffalo calf. She walked a little way and lay down, and this time she was a red buffalo calf. She walked a little way and lay down, and this time she was a white buffalo calf. In this form she trotted over the plains and disappeared.

     "Her pipe is still with the Lakota people today," the storyteller will conclude, "up in Green Grass, North Dakota. It is very old, very wakan, and only brought out in times of great need. But every time we smoke a pipe, the prayers of the first pipe and all the pipes that have ever been smoked mix with our prayers and are carried up to Creator." Then he will pass the pipe around, and everyone in the circle will partake, adding their own prayers and becoming part of an ancient story . . . .

     Across this country, such stories are being told and retold, passed from mouth to mouth: at Sundances, in Vision Quests, in the dusk-to-dawn Tipi Meetings of the Native American Church, in Bean Dances and Deer Dances, at intertribal powwows. It is because these stories are part of a living culture, rather than historical curiosities from a vanished age, that there is controversy attached to their use as raw material by fiction writers -- particularly if those writers are white, using myths that are not their own. This is a controversy that concerns those of us working in the field of mythic fiction, for ours is a literature that routinely draws upon the mythic lore of many cultures. Writers of magical fiction rarely feel constrained to stick to the myths of their own ethnic makeup. (And using myths from one's own culture can also be a dicey proposition if those myths touch upon religious beliefs -- as Salman Rushdie discovered when he wrote The Satanic Verses.)

     Sherman Alexie, a talented young writer from the Spokane/Coeur d'Alene nation, is outspoken in his condemnation of non-Indian writers who assume they can understand and depict the Indian experience. He takes particular exception to the works of Barbara Kingsolver, who has written about Indian characters although she is only part-Cherokee and was not raised as an enrolled tribal member. Alexie attacks her frequently in print and on his book reading tours; his recent novel Indian Killer is a long diatribe on the subject, thinly disguised as fiction, in which all the white characters are wicked or foolish and all the Native characters are noble and misunderstood. Alexie's Angry Young Indian shtick (a lucrative publicity pose which has made him the darling of Guilty White Liberals) is a bit absurd (as even my Native friends point out) coming from someone who writes about white, black, female and disabled characters while being none of these things himself -- and yet he is right to remind fiction writers to be particularly careful when working with the myths and cultures of others. Critics like Alexie are naturally wary of works by non-Indians that serve to perpetuate destructive stereotypes -- the literary equivalent of all those awful pastel paintings of Indians one sees on sale throughout the West, painted by whites and sold to whites, in which Indian men and women are merely symbols and not human beings. Yet on the other end of the spectrum of controversy is Tony Hillerman, a white man who has written a popular series of detective novels with Native protagonists, set on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico/Arizona. Far from decrying his use of their culture in his bestselling fiction, Hillerman has been lauded by the Navajo for his sensitive portrayal of their way of life, and presented with the Navajo Tribe's Special Friend Award.

     I happen to be a fan of Kingsolver and Hillerman both, and while I can agree with Alexie that the best work often comes from a writer's own direct experiences, I personally believe it's ridiculous to expect all novelists to be limited to this. We are fiction writers, not reporters. And yet the danger of clumsily working with someone else's sacred beliefs was demonstrated a couple of years ago when the Hopi tribe in northern Arizona was appalled to discover the revered kachina figures of their religion clumsily depicted as the villains of a Marvel comic book. It proved to be the last straw in a series of incidents disrespectful of their ways, and as a result, they closed many of their beautiful dances and ceremonies to non-Natives. It was startling to visit the Hopi mesas before and after the comic's publication. The casual friendliness extended to outside visitors seemed to vanish overnight.

     The recent revival of interest (among Indians and non-Indians alike) in traditional Indian ways and beliefs has had the beneficial effect of making fiction, art and music by Native American artists more widely available. Because a good portion of these arts are steeped in the enduring folklore of their cultures, much of it will be of interest to readers of fantasy and mythic fiction. There is also, despite the above controversy, good work to be found by non-Indian artists as well -- such as Tony Hillerman's wonderful "Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn" mystery novels, which touch upon Navajo legendry and beautifully evoke the mysticism of the vast Southwestern landscape.

     Both Indian and non-Indian writers have contributed to Tales from the Great Turtle, a collection of "Fantasy in the Native American Tradition" edited by Richard Gilliam and Piers Anthony. I'd suggest skipping the embarrassing Anthony introduction and heading directly for the stories. Tales by William Sanders, Jack Dann, Steve Rasnic Tem and Kristine Kathryn Rusch are particularly notable, and while some of the stories are slight, the collection as a whole is a worthy endeavor. Also in the fantasy genre, take a look at Orson Scott Card's Red Prophet; Eric S. Nylund's Dry Water; and Charles de Lint's excellent "Coyote Stories" (in his collection The Ivory and the Horn), as well as de Lint's novels Svaha, Spiritwalk, Memory and Dream and Someplace to Be Flying.

     It is on the "mainstream" shelves, however, that you will find some of the best of the current fiction inspired by Native American legends. Three of my favorite mythic novels of all time fall into this category: La Maravilla, by Yaqui writer Alfredo Vea Jr., set in the Arizona desert; The Antelope Wife by Chippewa writer Louise Erdrich, set in modern Minneapolis; and Power by Chickasaw novelist/essayist/poet Linda Hogan, set in the swamps of Florida. All three are brilliant and I can't recommend them too highly. Thomas King's hilarious Green Grass, Running Water is a wild, mythic romp set among the Indians of modern Canada. King's Medicine River is also a terrific novel, and his short stories, collected in One Good Story, That One, seem to have been written by Trickster himself.

     Leslie Marmon Silko, like the authors above, writes about Indian characters caught between traditional and modern worlds. Ceremony is about a World War II prisoner of war returning to his Pueblo reservation; the more recent Almanac of the Dead is an extraordinary work sprawling across Arizona and Mexico, ignoring all such Anglo-drawn borders. N. Scott Momaday is a writer and visual artist who, like Silko, has a home in Tucson, Arizona and writes about the Southwest. His brilliant novel House Made of Dawn won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction; his magical novel The Ancient Child is also recommended. Susan Power's The Grass Dancer, set on a reservation in the Dakotas, is a gorgeous multi-generational saga, magical, romantic, and highly recommended. Susanna Moore's Sleeping Beauties is another all-time favorite, using native Hawaiian folklore to tell a compelling contemporary tale. Luci Tapahonso writes movingly about her Navajo family in northern Arizona in her exquisite little book of poems and stories, The Women are Singing. We Are O'odham and other poetry volumes by Tohono O'odham writer Ofelia Zepeda of Tucson is also recommended.

     Pawnee writer Anna Lee Walters has created a splendid book of art and text called The Spirit of Native America: Beauty and Mysticism in American Indian Art; it is one of the best books on the subject I've seen, modestly priced and handsomely presented. Turning from historic Indian art to modern art, I recommend Fritz Scholder: 30 Years of Sculpture, recently published by Nazraeli Press. Although best known as a painter (and for his association with Georgia O'Keeffe and the Santa Fe school of art), this Native artist's first collection of sculpture is a revelation, and should not be missed. English painter/illustrator Susan Seddon Boulet was raised in South America and heavily influenced by Native imagery from both South and North America. Her art is collected in Shaman, published by Pomegranate Press. Mark Wagner is a painter who has worked with Native American imagery and ritual for many years. "I believe that art is sacred and inseparable from life," he says about his paintings, which are "focused on the direct connection between nature, spirit, and the human race." You can see his work on the Hearts and Bones Studio Web site, and on our Gallery suite.

     Steve Wall has recently compiled interviews and photographs of Indian women across the country into a terrific book called Wisdom's Daughters: Conversations with Women Elders of Native America. Charles L. Woodward has published a book of conversations with writer/artist N. Scott Momaday, Ancestral Voice, an interesting look at Momaday's background and creative process. Gary Snyder works with Native American and naturalist themes in his poetry (such as the collection Turtle Island) and in his nonfiction work The Practice of the Wild -- a brilliant and inspiring book. In Coyote Medicine, Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona (of the Lakota and Cherokee tribes) looks at the differences between Native and Anglo healing practices, as well as the role of storytelling in the healing process. For an introduction to Native American spiritual beliefs, try Evan Pritchard's lovely little book No Word for Time, Ed McGaa's Mother Earth Spirituality, and (for women) Marilou Awiakta's Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother's Wisdom.

     No exploration of art rooted in Native American lore would be complete without a mention of the music being recorded today by talented musicians such as R. Carlos Nakai, a Navajo/Ute master of the Native American Flute. These flutes, according to a Brule Sioux legend, were made for one kind of music: love music. A warrior might be too shy to speak to a woman he desired in front of the entire village. So at night he would put all of his desire into the low, moaning cry of the flute, and if the "medicine" was strong in him, the woman would hear his words in the sound, slip from her tipi and meet him in the dark . . . .

     R. Carlos Nakai has recorded several CDs combining traditional flute tunes with haunting music of his own. The result is utterly magical. I particularly recommend Ancestral Voices (with William Eaton), and How the West Was Lost (the soundtrack from the PBS documentary). Nakai also plays in the band Jackalope, which adds rock and jazz rhythms to this material. Walk In Beauty by the inspired team of Primeaux & Mike features the exquisite music of The Native American Church -- reminiscent (in the slower, harmonic form developed by Primeaux & Mike) of Gregorian chanting. Between Father Sky and Mother Earth is a compilation CD from Narada, which features Primeaux & Mike, Nakai and many others -- a good introduction to the music. Bill Miller, of the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe, is a singer/songwriter who combines traditional and original tunes; his The Red Road is a powerful, wonderful CD (with a nice bit of back-up from Peter Rowan and Tish Hinojosa). Sharon Burch has created original songs from the traditional music of her Navajo ancestry on her beautiful CD Touch the Sweet Earth. Rita Coolidge, Priscilla Coolidge and Laura Satterfield have teamed up on Walela, featuring gorgeous women's music inspired by the Cherokee tradition. Burning Sky's Blood of the Land features entrancing instrumental music with a jazz influence. Things We Do by Indigenous is good blues-rock from a Minnesota Nakota family band. Robbie Robertson (of The Band) and the Red Road Ensemble have recorded Music for the Native Americans, which is actually music for anyone who likes rhythms to be found at the intersection of traditional music and rock-and-roll.

     At a recent concert, R. Carlos Nakai (decked out in traditional braids and beaded shirt, along with blue jeans and running shoes) complained about the term Native American. "We're all Native Americans," he says; "all of us who were born on this land; all of us who attempt to share it with greater and lesser efforts at harmony."

     When Europeans first came to these shores, they demanded native peoples adapt to their ways (when they weren't wiping them out altogether). Now many of us are doing what those early settlers should have done back then: listening to the people who know this land best, learning its ways, its own history. Blood and culture have intermingled over the generations since those first settlers came. It is the task of the next generations to find strength in this, instead of divisiveness. One step in that process is to listen to legends and stories of the first Americans, for these myths are the heart and voice of the land that is now home to us all.