Reading Notes: Tejas Legends, Part B
These are stories from "When the Storm God Rides: Tejas and Other Indian Legends" (link above) written by Tejas Indians in the early 20th century. The part B reading had 11 parts, so I chose my favorite two stories to focus this blog post on.
The first story out of the 11 that I chose was titled "The Maiden Who Loved a Star". This story is about a young and beautiful Indian girl who went into a desert to gather some fruit of the prickly pear. By the time she was ready to head home, the night sky was lit with the stars. She noticed that one star was much brighter than the others, and that it seemed closer to Earth. She stopped and stared at the star for a while, and she dreamed of the star that night. In her dream she met a tall, young sky dweller. She went back to gather more fruit the next day and waited again until the stars began to come out. She once again saw the star, and decided to go back every day for the next seven days. She dreamed of the sky dweller and that he could not join her on Earth as long as she lived on Earth and he lived in the sky. She was tired of not being with him, so she asked an old witch how to die. The witch refused to tell her, but instead agreed to turn her into a tree. The sky dweller saw her transformation, and he shattered to dust that then covered the tree, turning him into purple blossoms. Finally, the two were together.
The next story I chose was titled "When the Rainbow Was Torn". This story is about a rainbow who gave its colors to the plants below it. The two ends of the rainbow always touched the Earth somewhere. However, the rainbow had never touched a cactus, maybe for fear of the sharp needles on it. After a heavy rain, the rainbow fell heavy with the weight of the water, and tried hard to not fall onto a cactus. Right as an end of the rainbow was about to touch the Earth, it noticed a bed of cacti right underneath it. The rainbow tried to lift its end, but the weight of the water was too much. Once the rainbow touched the cacti, the thorns began to catch the colors and try to keep them for their own flowers. The only colors that were caught were yellow, red, and orange. Once those three colors were caught, the flowers began to bloom and show off their new colors. The flowers had fully turned red, orange, and yellow before the rainbow was able to pull itself away.
I like both of these stories because they are very simple and happy, but yet exciting at the same time. They both have drama incorporated in them, but are not too long or too short. For my writings, I think I will try to imitate this writing style as these stories and others like it are very fun and interesting to read.
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