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Intimations of Unity
Carobeth Laird
ABSTRACT:
It is a truism that certain mythological
themes occur and reoccur and certain
mythological episodes are endlessly repeated
and variously combined, disguised at times
almost beyond recognition as they are filtered
through widely disparate cultures and adapted
to widely differing environments. Apparently
behind every god, demigod, or hero stands an
archetypal figure, seen "through a glass
darkly" but nonetheless present and indestructible.
This is especially true of the mythologies of
Native Americans. I have neither the requisite
scholarship nor time to undertake an in-depth
study of so vast a subject—indeed, it is a
subject which will engage armies of scholars
for generations to come. However, I am familiar
with Chemehuevi mythology. I shall
therefore venture to point out a few of the
correspondences between the Mythic Coyote
(or Wolf and Coyote) Cycle of the Chemehuevi
and the Trickster and Hare Cycles of the
Winnebago, as related by Radin (1956). These
parallels would be interesting enough if found
within the same culture area or the same
linguistic stock; they are extraordinarily
challenging when they occur in the sacred
narratives of tribes separated by roughly two-thirds
of a continent and speaking unrelated
languages.
KEYWORDS:
ethnology, archaeology, ethnohistory, native peoples
SUGGESTED CITATION:
Carobeth Laird
(1977)
"Intimations of Unity",
The Journal of California Anthropology:
Vol. 4:
No. 1,
Article 8.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/ucmercedlibrary/jca/vol4/iss1/art8
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