“If Europeans were not from the land of the dead, or the sky, alternative explanations which were consistent with indigenous cosmologies quickly developed” (“First Contact” 43). Robinson gives us one of those alternative explanations in his stories about how Coyote’s twin brother stole the ‘written document’ and when he denied stealing the paper, he was ‘banished to a distant land across a large body of water’ (9). We are going to return to this story, but for now – what is your first response to this story? In context with our course theme of investigating intersections where story and literature meet, what do you make of this stolen piece of paper? This is an open-ended question and you should feel free to explore your first thoughts.”

I was intrigued by this prompt, because the written document seemed very mysterious to me. My first thought was:

A written document? Weren’t the indigenous people who created this story an oral culture? How, then – or when – did they come up with this?

…Yes,  that is what I thought. I am embarrassed to admit it, but I present it to you as evidence that people often need to be exposed to an idea several times before it sinks in and becomes a part of their worldview. These questions came up for me despite the fact that we have just studied that there is no such thing as a fully oral or written culture. Thankfully, being asked to write about my first thoughts gave me the opportunity to recognize and dismiss my confusion.

Second I noticed that this story reminded me of the one about Cain and Abel (the first children of Adam and Eve) from the Bible. The story about those brothers originated in Mesopotamia, and it tells about how Cain was put “under a curse” after he killed his brother Abel out of jealousy (New International Version, Gen. 4.8-11). God made him “a restless wanderer on the Earth” (Gen. 4.12) and “Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden” (Gen. 4.16). More than that, the indigenous creation story told by Robinson reminded me of the Judeo-Christian one itself, in which Adam and Eve are told not to eat a fruit in the garden of Eden (one that confers knowledge) and then are banished when they do (Gen. 3). Maybe the similarities between these three stories arose after missionaries communicated Biblical tales to the indigenous people? Or maybe all three of the stories reflect the same original truths?

It is interesting, as well, that the contents of the paper stolen by the younger twin were concealed by him when he returned from his banishment. This caused me to wonder if the paper contained information about whose descendants ought to live where on their homeland (and, therefore, about which regions and resources of North America ought to belong to who). This would explain why the greedy younger twin wanted the paper at the start. He may have wanted access to it not only to know what it said, but also potentially to change it. That would also explain why he didn’t want to reveal its contents in the end: it would have said that some of the land belonged to his elder brother’s (Coyote’s) descendants and that these areas were not able to be claimed by him and his own.

A second thing that I think the paper might have contained is a moral code. This thought occurred to me before I got to the part about the “Black and White” document that “outlined a set of codes by which the two groups were supposed to live and interact” (Robinson 10); and it seemed to me that the necessity of writing the Black and White document when the original written words were not being revealed increases the probability that it was something to the same effect.

In context with our course theme, however, it is also very interesting that the piece of written paper goes away with the ancestor of Europeans to a land where written literature becomes the dominant mode and that the elder twin, who stays in the Americas, produces a line of people whose culture was primarily (although not entirely) oral. In this sense, the written paper seems to carry with it the mode of written literature itself.

These were my first thoughts when I read Robinson’s creation story. I am curious to find out how they may change when we return to this piece later in this course!

Works Cited:

“Coyote.” Encyclopedia Mythica. 2015. Encyclopedia Mythica Online. 06 Feb. 2015 <http://www.pantheon.org/articles/c/coyote.html>