Audiobook · read by volunteers
Old Indian Legends
Zitkala-Sa (1876–1938)
Read by Robert Scott · 14 chapters · 2 h 50
About the book
Iktomi is the spider, the schemer, the trickster whose cleverness is forever leading him into trouble. In these fourteen legends from the Dakota people, he meets ducks, a muskrat, a coyote, a fawn and a turtle, and the stories seldom end the way he plans. The collection runs from Iktomi and the Ducks and Iktomi’s Blanket to tales of a badger and a bear, a toad and a boy, and a rabbit called Manstin. Zitkala-Sa wrote them down in English so that readers outside her community could encounter them, and she brings to them a clear, direct voice. The tales are short, funny and sometimes sharp, and they work equally well as entertainment and as an introduction to an oral tradition. Each recording is a self-contained story, so you can listen to one or to all fourteen, which together take under three hours.
Introduction
Zitkala-Sa (1876-1938), whose name means Red Bird in the Dakota language, was a Native American writer, musician and activist. Old Indian Legends, published in 1901, brought together stories that she had heard in her own community and set them down for a wider public in English.
The central figure is Iktomi, a trickster who appears as a spider. The stories about him follow a familiar pattern: he sets out to do something clever, usually at someone else’s expense, and he is undone by his own pride or carelessness. These tales have both an entertaining side and a serious one, since trickster stories often carry a lesson about conduct. The book also includes stories of other figures and creatures.
Readers should remember that these legends began as spoken stories, and that a written version is always a translation, in a way, from one mode into another. Zitkala-Sa was conscious of this. Her prose is simple and natural, leaving room for the rhythm of telling.
This recording has fourteen files, one per legend, and runs for about two hours and fifty minutes. It was read by a LibriVox volunteer. It is a good book for family listening, for anyone interested in Native American literature, and for readers who enjoy the old human pleasure of a story about a clever fellow who is not quite clever enough. Because every recording is a complete tale, there is no need to listen in sequence. The stories are good for reading aloud to children, and they offer older listeners a way to think about how oral traditions are carried over into print, and about what is gained and lost in the process.
Public domain
Zitkala-Sa died in 1938: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text