Native American Stories on Sacred-Texts.com

As oral societies, the aboriginal peoples of Canada and the U.S. do not have “sacred texts” – an equivalent to the Bible or the Koran, whose word order has been fixed for centuries. Their stories and myths continually change, slightly or greatly, with the teller and the circumstances and the place, as oral stories do. However, the website Sacred-texts.com has compiled a large collection of stories and myths, frozen at a certain time and place, mainly transcribed by non-native ethnographers or historians in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The website seems to be a one man project with good intentions, and I am inclined to trust it. All excerpts are documented and often accompanied with some useful context, e.g. “The study of Native Americans by anthropologists has had its share of bad science and ethical problems.” There is a section for Inuit stories, and a collection of Haida songs is included in the Northwestern Indian section (the English translations of the cradle and mourning songs are lovely). As a historical source for myths, stories and songs, it does a good job.