Chumash traditional narratives

Chumash traditional narratives include myths, legends, tales, and oral histories preserved by the Chumash people of the northern and western Transverse Ranges, Santa Barbara—Ventura coast, and northern Channel Islands, in present-day Southern California.

Early analysts expected Chumash oral literature to conform to the regional pattern of Southern California narratives. However, little evidence was available before accounts from the papers of John Peabody Harrington began to be published in the 1970s. The narratives now seem to have stronger ties with central California than with the Takic and Yuman groups to the south.

Despite their close ties to the Chumash, Spanish sources did little to collect information on native oral culture. In addition, the Chumash were roughly divided into 8 separate linguistic groups. Obispeño, Purismeño, Inezeño, Barbareño, Ventureño, Island, Cuyama, and Emigdiaño varied to a degree where they were closer to separate languages than similar dialects. The Chumash weren’t a cultural or linguistic sovereignty in the traditional sense; they were a conglomeration of autonomous settlements. Most recording of Chumash narratives occurred through anthropological study, specifically Harrington’s papers.

Like other Native American universes, the Chumash mythical universe is ordered, but still very uncertain. Events occur at the whim of supernatural beings capable of kindness and malevolence. Supernatural beings can be both rational and irrational at times, as humans may be. Chumash narratives vary in plot, but the “hero’s journey” and “trickster’s story” appear frequently in Chumash oral culture. The motives inspiring the protagonist, however, appear dubious by Western standards. Whereas Western fictional heroes are called to action and make decisions based off a clear set of choices, Chumash protagonists act based on an abstruse imperative or “must”.

Magic and death also appear commonly as literary devices. Conflict often arises between beings with innate magical powers and those who acquired their powers through magical objects or helpers. Death, wherever it occurred in native stories, was always reversible, and was usually undone with the aid of the aforementioned magical powers or special “medicines” bearing similar supernatural powers. Another commonly used literary device was inversion, where the opposite of what’s to be expected occurs, ex. supernatural beings consume only toxic materials, or events occurring at day versus night in the human world are chronologically switched in the underworld.

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