<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>This paper examines “Coyote, Whirlwind, and Ravine,” a long tale told in the Northern Paiute language by McDermitt storyteller Pete Snapp and recorded by folklorist Sven Liljeblad in the early 1960’s. It weaves in traditional episodes of western Numic folklore to narrate the history of the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone community as witnessed by an elder born shortly after the beginning of the colonization of this area of the Northwestern Great Basin in the western United States. This paper explores how the bodies of certain characters who emanate from landscape, mainly monsters, are tools for the narrative expression of social change, for the telling of history, and the expression of Indigenous spiritual frameworks. It places the experience of the Indigenous social body, embodied by Coyote, through the grinds of the ultra-material Ravine and confronts it to ethereal nefarious powers. Poetics of materiality applied to the body of Coyote operate a structural transformation. Mythical turmoil expresses social experiences and change in the colonial context, but also makes manifest the transformation of the social body that result in the contemporary form of the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone community.</p>
</abstract>

This paper examines “Coyote, Whirlwind, and Ravine,” a long tale told in the Northern Paiute language by McDermitt storyteller Pete Snapp and recorded by folklorist Sven Liljeblad in the early 1960’s. It weaves in traditional episodes of western Numic folklore to narrate the history of the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone community as witnessed by an elder born shortly after the beginning of the colonization of this area of the Northwestern Great Basin in the western United States. This paper explores how the bodies of certain characters who emanate from landscape, mainly monsters, are tools for the narrative expression of social change, for the telling of history, and the expression of Indigenous spiritual frameworks. It places the experience of the Indigenous social body, embodied by Coyote, through the grinds of the ultra-material Ravine and confronts it to ethereal nefarious powers. Poetics of materiality applied to the body of Coyote operate a structural transformation. Mythical turmoil expresses social experiences and change in the colonial context, but also makes manifest the transformation of the social body that result in the contemporary form of the Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone community.

Monsters, Disaster, and Organic Balance: Digesting History Through Oral Traditions

American Indian Studies Research Institute and Department of Anthropology

Ethnologia Actualis

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This paper examines “Coyote, Whirlwind, and Ravine,” a long tale told in the Northern Paiute language by McDermitt storyteller Pete Snapp and recorded by...

Monsters, Disaster, and Organic Balance: Digesting History Through Oral Traditions

Published Online: Nov 20, 2021

Page range: 58 - 81

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/eas-2021-0021

Keywords
body, indigeneity, monsters, myth, Northern Paiute, oral history

© 2021 Thierry Veyrié, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Monsters, Disaster, and Organic Balance: Digesting History Through Oral Traditions

Published Online: Nov 20, 2021

Page range: 58 - 81

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/eas-2021-0021

Keywordsbody, indigeneity, monsters, myth, Northern Paiute, oral history

© 2021 Thierry Veyrié, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
body, indigeneity, monsters, myth, Northern Paiute, oral history