Arapaho Storytelling

Because Arapaho was not a written language until recently, "literature" was handed down orally. The Arapaho had - and still have to a lesser extent - many genres of verbal art forms. These included:

• Creation stories
• Stories of mythological heros, characters, and events
• Stories about the origin of the various Arapaho ceremonial lodges and other important aspects of Arapaho culture
• Stories about historical events, such as warfare
• Trickster stories featuring the trickster-figure "nih'oo3oo" (listen to and watch the story in Arapaho)
• Tall tales (listen to and watch three different animated Arapaho tall tales in English)
• Comic tales about animals, ghosts, etc. (listen to and watch a ghost story, in Arapaho with subtitles)

Arapaho verbal narratives made use of complex poetic devices, many of which are unique to oral storytelling. These included:

• Extensive repetition of events, in order to allow listeners to follow the story, as well as to provide emphasis
• Grammatical parallelisms, in order to provide overall structure to stories
• Use of certain words to mark "verses" or "strophes" within the stories, giving them a semi-poetic form
• Use of changes in the speed, tone or volume of the vocal delivery
• Hand and facial gestures, some of which were borrowed from Plains Indian sign language
• Special words and phrases used only in narratives, which carried great traditional weight for an audience familiar with their uses.

  Listen to the Trickster story of "Nih'oo3oo and the Ducks" in English or Arapaho
  
  Read an illustrated story (powerpoint presentation) about the folk hero Strong Bear, in Arapaho or English