Background:
This assignment pertains to the Maya, a Mesoamerican society, and the Cherokee, the indigenous population of the Southeastern United States. To complete this assignment, you must first watch a video clip and read a primary source document. The video is about Chichén Itzá is a complex of Mayan ruins on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. This clip (please note the video is in Spanish with English subtitles) shows what happens at the massive pyramid, known as El Castillo or Temple of Kukulcan, on the equinox (the time or date (twice each year) at which the sun crosses the celestial equator, when day and night are of equal length (about September 22 and March 20). The primary source document is an origin story. Traditional stories passed down from generation to generation, exist in most communities and cultures. Oral traditions have become the source of much knowledge of Native American history. This Cherokee origin story was recorded by an ethnographer.
After watching the Equinox at El Castillo video clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0kOyGZxKh4 and reading the Cherokee origin story, answer the following questions:
1. What did it require to create something like El Castillo at Chichén Itzá? Give at least 4-5 examples. What can we possibly deduce about Mayan society based on the examples you list?
2. Describe the connection between humans and animals/the natural world in the Cherokee origin story. Give at least 4-5 examples. What can we possibly deduce about Cherokee society based on the examples you list?
3. Briefly describe a story you’ve heard in your family/community about your origins OR upload a picture of an “artifact” of an important physical item in your life. Explain what the details of the story or the item signify. Finally, explain how it is similar and different to the El Castillo or the Cherokee origin story. (For this question just make something up please)
Wasn’t able to submit a file of the story so I just copy and pasted it below if anything please message me, thank you in advance.
Cherokee Origin Story:
The earth is a great island floating in a sea of water, and suspended at each of the four cardinal points by a cord hanging down from the sky vault, which is of solid rock. When the world grows old and worn out, the people will die and the cords will break and let the earth sink down into the ocean, and all will be water again. The Indians are afraid of this.
When all was water, the animals were above in Gälûñ’lätï, beyond the arch; but it was very much crowded, and they were wanting more room. They wondered what was below the water, and at last Dâyuni’sï, “Beaver’s Grandchild,” the little Water-beetle, offered to go and see if it could learn. It darted in every direction over the surface of the water, but could find no firm place to rest. Then it dived to the bottom and came up with some soft mud, which began to grow and spread on every side until it became the island which we call the earth. It was afterward fastened to the sky with four cords, but no one remembers who did this.
At first the earth was flat and very soft and wet. The animals were anxious to get down, and sent out different birds to see if it was yet dry, but they found no place to alight and came back again to Gälûñ’lätï. At last it seemed to be time, and they sent out the Buzzard and told him to go and make ready for them. This was the Great Buzzard, the father of all the buzzards we see now. He flew all over the earth, low down near the ground, and it was still soft. When he reached the Cherokee country, he was very tired, and his wings began to flap and strike the ground, and wherever they struck the earth there was a valley, and where they turned up again there was a mountain. When the animals above saw this, they were afraid that the whole world would be mountains, so they called him back, but the Cherokee country remains full of mountains to this day.
When the earth was dry and the animals came down, it was still dark, so they got the sun and set it in a track to go every day across the island from east to west, just overhead. It was too hot this way, and Tsiska’gïlï’, the Red Crawfish, had his shell scorched a bright red, so that his meat was spoiled; and the Cherokee do not eat it. The conjurers put the sun another hand-breadth higher in the air, but it was still too hot. They raised it another time, and another, until it was seven handbreadths high and just under the sky arch. Then it was right, and they left it so. This is why the conjurers call the highest place Gûlkwâ’gine Di’gälûñ’lätiyûñ’, “the seventh height,” because it is seven hand-breadths above the earth. Every day the sun goes along under this arch, and returns at night on the upper side to the starting place…
When the animals and plants were first made–we do not know by whom–they were told to watch and keep awake for seven nights, just as young men now fast and keep awake when they pray to their medicine. They tried to do this, and nearly all were awake through the first night, but the next night several dropped off to sleep, and the third night others were asleep, and then others, until, on the seventh night, of all the animals only the owl, the panther, and one or two more were still awake. To these were given the power to see and to go about in the dark, and to make prey of the birds and animals which must sleep at night. Of the trees only the cedar, the pine, the spruce, the holly, and the laurel were awake to the end, and to them it was given to be always green and to be greatest for medicine, but to the others it was said: “Because you have not endured to the end you shall lose your, hair every winter.”
Men came after the animals and plants. At first there were only a brother and sister until he struck her with a fish and told her to multiply, and so it was. In seven days a child was born to her, and thereafter every seven days another, and they increased very fast until there was danger that the world could not keep them. Then it was made that a woman should have only one child in a year, and it has been so ever since.
Source: W. Powell, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1897-1898, Part I (Washington: 1900), 239-240.
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