Stories among Native Americans. Smoke floats in the air and surrounds the people of the village. Everyone's eyes are on the village elder and no one says a word. This is the time to share the great history that the new generation must learn. Without written langue, history and important lessons are taught to children in Native American villages. These stories have special meaning for children because they represent everything they know about their ancestors. Often these stories contain elements of mystical beings helping the natives. In this way people not only receive a history lesson, but also a way to practice religion. Each story is unique to the village and tribe in which it was developed; however similar concerts can be seen as the Native American tribe, the Iroquois Confederacy, which has an origin story for the beginning of folktales. This is an interesting piece of writing in the way it describes how the stories began. Shows high regard for the art of storytelling. This story begins by telling the reader about a boy who had lost his parents. There was no other family to take care of him, so he raised himself as best he could. This boy was unhappy because the villages saw him as an outcast and wanted nothing to do with him. One day the boy came across a canoe. Once in the canoe, the boy was taken to the sky and paddled until he stopped at the top of a peek. The boy had built a house and at night he heard a voice calling him. The voice asked the boy to offer him Tabaco. After the boy obeyed the voice, the voice preceded the young man by telling a story. The voice then explained to the boy a series of rules that he had to follow if he wanted to be told stories. This continued for a while and the boy also came. This story begins with two boys searching for the tribe. They both see a figure in the distance and move closer to see who is coming in the direction of their village. Once they get closer they see that it is a woman. One of the boys decided to go and hug the woman. The boy who stays behind watches as his friend and the woman are covered by a cloud. When the other boy then went to see what had happened, the woman had shown the boy the bare bones of his friend. The boy was afraid, but the woman explained that she was a powerful spirit and that no harm would come to her if she listened to what she told him to do. The woman ordered him to return to her village and give him directions on what to do when she returned. The sign of his return were four puffs of smoke. When the villages saw this, they did as they were told when the woman appeared, but a man disobeyed and looked at her. This act of disobedience causes the woman to make the man's eyes feel as if smoke is always inside them. The rest of the tribe, however, had listened to her and had been rewarded. They were shown how to smoke a pipe and were told that when the smoke from the pipe was visible, she would hear their prayers. He would then take their prayers to the Wakan Tanka. He stayed with them for a while and eventually disappeared to smoke in a