Friday, October 23, 2015

Essay: Ancient Sciences


Within this Marriage Tales unit there was a common theme of marriage between man and animal. In many of the stories this was the way the Native Americans explained certain behaviors and appearances of animals because of the actions of man. For example in The Splinter Foot Girl, a young girl is married off to a buffalo. Eventually her family misses her too much and decides to secretly take her back. After the buffalo tracks them down and discovers them in a tree he and his herd begin ramming it. They lose a big chunk of their horns, thus explaining why buffalo have such small ones. In addition, the buffalo chief gets his horns stuck in the tree at one point. The people then began firing arrows into his neck to kill him. This was also their explanation as to why the buffalo were so scared of man and would run when they saw them.
Marriage between man and beast is a certainly odd one to read about in our present day society. While going through this unit the reader has to be conscious to the fact that the Native American people had a lot of respect for the animals around them. They were regarded at a much higher “status” than people see them today. The lives of animals were so intertwined with their own and each beast had certain defining characteristics. The stories told make them seem almost human like.
Ancient people used stories such as the one above to describe the actions and the appearances of the world around them. They tried to explain why things happened the way they did and these stories were logical for them. Being a science major I particularly enjoy reading stories like this. Our present day foundation for science has only built upon what our predecessors established.  It is truly fascinating to know the curiosity they had and to see what they came up with as an answer.
American bison k5680-1.jpg

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