Comparison Of Algonquin Indian And French Cinderella
As stated in the first paragraph, before researching this topic I had only known of one Native American fairytale. It was a sort of Indian Cinderella and it was told to me by my grandmother who knew I enjoyed the tales that never seemed to find their way into their own cinematic retelling. She read me this book and, though I don’t think I could ever find the book, I found the story at least. It turns out to be an Algonquin Indian tale and shares many similarities with the more well known French Cinderella. The Algonquin Indian story even has a book adaptation called “The Rough Faced Girl. However, since I am unable to obtain a copy and am unsure what the picture of this book looked like, I am unsure if it is the original book read to me many
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years ago. However, it does not have a prince or a fairy godmother and ‘Cinderella’s’ life before happily ever after was more sorrowful than the European version. In the Native American version the stepsisters are blood related to ‘Cinderella, but that does not mean they are kind to her. They literally scar her and do terrible things to make her look worse than they do. (See Page 18). The second story in my mental library is the origin of the Aztec people’s empire and the beginning of humanity. It is said that they were told to build their city where an eagle sat perched on a cactus with a snake in its mouth by the god Huitzilopochtli. There the Aztec people founded the city of Tenochtitlan, which became the heart of a long standing empire. (See Page 21) Upon further research into Native American lore I found the “Bear Legend” from the Cherokee that tell of how humans and bears are related. It starts when a boy goes off into the woods and refuses to eat at home, soon his whole family leaves and turn into bears who say that it is ok to eat them as they are eternal spirits. (See Page 23). The aforementioned creature the Horned Serpent was featured in one of the stories I found. The legend titled “Hero with the Horned Snakes” comes from Cherokee lore and seems to follow the cookiecutter European basic story. Wherein there is some beast that is plaguing a city/town/kingdom/village and a brave hero steps forward to slay the beast and is handsomely rewarded when he does. Usually that reward entails the hand of a fair maiden, but in this story the hero is a Shawnee Indian that was taken as a slave by the Cherokee. When he goes to fight the horned snake he does so with the promise of freedom should he succeed. (See Page 25). The origin of strawberries, according to the Cherokee, was a sort of love story between the first man and the first women. The story goes that the first man and the first woman had a lover’s spat and the woman walked out on her husband, heading East. Her husband follows, but cannot bring her back. So the creator tempts the woman to stop by creating many different kinds of fruits. She ignores them all until she comes across strawberries. Then, accidentally, she looks West to where her husband was and longs for home. She returns and they are reunited. (See Page 27). The media, whether that be television or the movies, hardly gets a story quite right when it comes to adapting from something like a fairytale.
Just taking a look at the list of successful Disney animated pictures can show that such movies can be lucrative, but they don’t follow the source material ‘to a T’. In Cinderella, the story ignore the part where the stepsisters cut off bits of their heels and toes to fit the show. In Snow White, the writers left out the first two attempts on Snow’s life. So it is with any other story when it changes from on medium to another. However, it seems that the folklore, legends, and myths of the Native American, at least the ones that existed before the arrival of Europeans, do not have any movies or television shows that I could find. Of course, there might be some obscure movie or show that tells a story originating from North America, but there are none popular enough to find when specifically searching for it. The closest thing that is the most popular, at least it was very popular several years ago especially with the female youth, was the book and movie series “Twilight”. The story only attempted to use elements of Native American folklore. Even then, it was so far off from any existing stories or legends that it could hardly be considered to be in the same league as even Disney’s “Frozen”. First off, Stephenie Meyer’s book told of a vampire legend and then half borrowed the concept of skin-walkers and set these werewolf want to be’s as a real name Native American tribe in Washington. However, the legend doesn’t exist. In fact, there are no “vampire” legends to be found in North America, as stated prior. I’m sure if I were to keep on looking I could find a poorly animated television show that tells all sorts fairy tales or a direct to VHS that was rightly never released to theaters as there is no shortage of companies that capitalize on all available public domain
stories. Native American folktales, legends, lore, fairy tales, and myths tend to rely on characters from natural world embellished with supernatural abilities or even purely supernatural beings interacting with mortal men. Their creatures seem odd and strange at first, especially if you’re more familiar with European monsters and story arcs and, in particular, Irish/English monsters and German/French fairy tales. However, after becoming more familiar with some of the basic themes and trends of their stories, I found that their myths and folktales were more similar to the ones we all know and love than I had first thought. Indeed, once thinking under this train of thought, all civilizations can be thought of as brothers and sisters in this most intimate and human way. As human beings, we try to make sense of a world we live in. It’s only natural and it is what has kept this species alive and at the top of the food chain for so long. Curiosity is in our blood, we are metaphorically covered in it. In this day and age we use science and data collected from empirical sources to explain what we can and come up with probable theories based on proven knowledge to explain what we can not. We know that the world is round, though not perfectly and revolves around the sun spinning on its axis as it does so. Our little blue ball hurtles through this universe at an alarming rate, yet somehow keeps all life on it safe and comfortable. We have set foot on that great white disk of romantic mystery we call the moon. We have discovered cures for deadly diseases and have discovered the microscopic creatures that cause them. However, before we made all of these accomplishments as a species, we lived in a world with so many unknowns. Our ancestors lived in a world where anything could kill you and they did not know why, where amazing things happened and they didn’t know how. At that time in human history, there were more unknowns and more to fear. So humans did what humans do best, they told stories. They invented characters that were bigger than life. They created the answers they sought. In addition to creating answers for questions that were unanswerable at the time, due to technological restraints, stories also gave people and sense of hope and the right kind of fear. Hope that things would get better soon and that everyone will live happily ever after, and fear that keeps children obeying their parents and keeps adults from hurting others needlessly with the threat of supernatural retribution. So humans, from all around the world, created stories to comfort themselves with knowledge. From Hades and Persephone being responsible for the changing of the seasons in Ancient Greece, to the Thunderbird being the cause of thunder in North America, to Sedna being the creator of all livings things in the ocean in Inuit legend, mankind shows its creativity in these stories. Though different, they all share a common theme. They are ancient answers to timeless questions. So, in this most basic way, all of humanity is one and that kind of historic unity is a comforting thought in a world that seems to be fracturing before our eyes.
years ago. However, it does not have a prince or a fairy godmother and ‘Cinderella’s’ life before happily ever after was more sorrowful than the European version. In the Native American version the stepsisters are blood related to ‘Cinderella, but that does not mean they are kind to her. They literally scar her and do terrible things to make her look worse than they do. (See Page 18). The second story in my mental library is the origin of the Aztec people’s empire and the beginning of humanity. It is said that they were told to build their city where an eagle sat perched on a cactus with a snake in its mouth by the god Huitzilopochtli. There the Aztec people founded the city of Tenochtitlan, which became the heart of a long standing empire. (See Page 21) Upon further research into Native American lore I found the “Bear Legend” from the Cherokee that tell of how humans and bears are related. It starts when a boy goes off into the woods and refuses to eat at home, soon his whole family leaves and turn into bears who say that it is ok to eat them as they are eternal spirits. (See Page 23). The aforementioned creature the Horned Serpent was featured in one of the stories I found. The legend titled “Hero with the Horned Snakes” comes from Cherokee lore and seems to follow the cookiecutter European basic story. Wherein there is some beast that is plaguing a city/town/kingdom/village and a brave hero steps forward to slay the beast and is handsomely rewarded when he does. Usually that reward entails the hand of a fair maiden, but in this story the hero is a Shawnee Indian that was taken as a slave by the Cherokee. When he goes to fight the horned snake he does so with the promise of freedom should he succeed. (See Page 25). The origin of strawberries, according to the Cherokee, was a sort of love story between the first man and the first women. The story goes that the first man and the first woman had a lover’s spat and the woman walked out on her husband, heading East. Her husband follows, but cannot bring her back. So the creator tempts the woman to stop by creating many different kinds of fruits. She ignores them all until she comes across strawberries. Then, accidentally, she looks West to where her husband was and longs for home. She returns and they are reunited. (See Page 27). The media, whether that be television or the movies, hardly gets a story quite right when it comes to adapting from something like a fairytale.
Just taking a look at the list of successful Disney animated pictures can show that such movies can be lucrative, but they don’t follow the source material ‘to a T’. In Cinderella, the story ignore the part where the stepsisters cut off bits of their heels and toes to fit the show. In Snow White, the writers left out the first two attempts on Snow’s life. So it is with any other story when it changes from on medium to another. However, it seems that the folklore, legends, and myths of the Native American, at least the ones that existed before the arrival of Europeans, do not have any movies or television shows that I could find. Of course, there might be some obscure movie or show that tells a story originating from North America, but there are none popular enough to find when specifically searching for it. The closest thing that is the most popular, at least it was very popular several years ago especially with the female youth, was the book and movie series “Twilight”. The story only attempted to use elements of Native American folklore. Even then, it was so far off from any existing stories or legends that it could hardly be considered to be in the same league as even Disney’s “Frozen”. First off, Stephenie Meyer’s book told of a vampire legend and then half borrowed the concept of skin-walkers and set these werewolf want to be’s as a real name Native American tribe in Washington. However, the legend doesn’t exist. In fact, there are no “vampire” legends to be found in North America, as stated prior. I’m sure if I were to keep on looking I could find a poorly animated television show that tells all sorts fairy tales or a direct to VHS that was rightly never released to theaters as there is no shortage of companies that capitalize on all available public domain
stories. Native American folktales, legends, lore, fairy tales, and myths tend to rely on characters from natural world embellished with supernatural abilities or even purely supernatural beings interacting with mortal men. Their creatures seem odd and strange at first, especially if you’re more familiar with European monsters and story arcs and, in particular, Irish/English monsters and German/French fairy tales. However, after becoming more familiar with some of the basic themes and trends of their stories, I found that their myths and folktales were more similar to the ones we all know and love than I had first thought. Indeed, once thinking under this train of thought, all civilizations can be thought of as brothers and sisters in this most intimate and human way. As human beings, we try to make sense of a world we live in. It’s only natural and it is what has kept this species alive and at the top of the food chain for so long. Curiosity is in our blood, we are metaphorically covered in it. In this day and age we use science and data collected from empirical sources to explain what we can and come up with probable theories based on proven knowledge to explain what we can not. We know that the world is round, though not perfectly and revolves around the sun spinning on its axis as it does so. Our little blue ball hurtles through this universe at an alarming rate, yet somehow keeps all life on it safe and comfortable. We have set foot on that great white disk of romantic mystery we call the moon. We have discovered cures for deadly diseases and have discovered the microscopic creatures that cause them. However, before we made all of these accomplishments as a species, we lived in a world with so many unknowns. Our ancestors lived in a world where anything could kill you and they did not know why, where amazing things happened and they didn’t know how. At that time in human history, there were more unknowns and more to fear. So humans did what humans do best, they told stories. They invented characters that were bigger than life. They created the answers they sought. In addition to creating answers for questions that were unanswerable at the time, due to technological restraints, stories also gave people and sense of hope and the right kind of fear. Hope that things would get better soon and that everyone will live happily ever after, and fear that keeps children obeying their parents and keeps adults from hurting others needlessly with the threat of supernatural retribution. So humans, from all around the world, created stories to comfort themselves with knowledge. From Hades and Persephone being responsible for the changing of the seasons in Ancient Greece, to the Thunderbird being the cause of thunder in North America, to Sedna being the creator of all livings things in the ocean in Inuit legend, mankind shows its creativity in these stories. Though different, they all share a common theme. They are ancient answers to timeless questions. So, in this most basic way, all of humanity is one and that kind of historic unity is a comforting thought in a world that seems to be fracturing before our eyes.