Chapter 1 - Remembering Muskrat

Summary

The oral tradition's various tribal creation accounts invariably link the generative word, the resulting narrative, earth, animals, and people into one great chain of Native being. The poetics of the oral tradition, which governs Native orality, also informs modern Native writings to the extent that there's no clear demarcation between old and new, oral and written. American Indian literature is creative power controlled and propelled by a specialized vocabulary. American Indian medicine texts incorporate prose accounts, songs, poetry, dance, and sacred objects in ritual form. Works in the oral tradition fall into four major categories: the ancient tradition that existed before contact, the nineteenth- and twentieth-century works collected by ethnologists, the modern oral tradition, and current written works, which are closely informed by the oral tradition. Once Musquash, or Muskrat, is invoked by the power of the Algonquian word, Prospect becomes an example of American Indian poetics at work.