Last year's harvest was less than fruitful, and stocks are low. The party has to track a pure white deer so it can be used in a harvest ritual.

Enemy tribes are raiding the camps more and more. Warriors fend off the invaders while the shamans seek to purge the spirits of hatred from the enemy.

A coyote spirit has stolen the chieftain's firstborn son.

>>33199976

Collect roc feathers, have them take some spirit journey and enter another realm to ask for help/answers from spirits. Have a thunderbird attack.

There were plenty of monsters/mystic creatures back then. Have several be unfriendly for various reasons, like a chieftan of a nearby tribe stole an egg or killed a young skunk ape or whathaveyou.

Look up a lot of mythological creatures in America and try to see where they would fit in.

There's a certain type of extremely fucking rare obsidian that makes insanely sharp, and strong blades. Better than steel. How do we know? There was some ritual dagger that some native American tribe had that has a blade that's super sharp, but has never been sharpened (it was bad luck to try to sharpen it).

A quest to grab that might work. They have their own "legendary weapons."

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Hey man, just found something I typed up for either an alt-history thread that you might like if you want to put a potentially interesting spin on a New World campaign. Out of curiosity, how pre-columbian are you going? There was a pretty cool period in North American history where the whole society collapsed in an apocalyptic plague scenario, but that was just after first Old World contact and just before any real interaction (literally the time period between very first contact and Europe getting their shit together to check that shit out)

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Take a mundane conflict. Interpret it in the context of the spirits of the land. Adventure on that level. Then bring the conclusion back to solve the mundane problem through spirit adventure catharsis.

The chief's daughter, his only child, is sneaking away to meet with a member from another tribe. Rumors of her absence unsettle the village's power dynamic. Local boys see their dream girl slipping away and powerful fathers see their designs for their sons' marriage prospects crumbling. It causes tension. The players are tasked to investigate. The shaman cautions them to mind signs from the spirits on their endeavor, as the spirits watch every step closely and judge man on the basis of his actions.

Following the chief's daughter the PCs soon discover her frolicking with her enemy tribe lover in a secluded pond. Above in the trees they spot a majestic snake and a large blue bird sharing a branch peacefully.

Now the ways this can go down are confrontation, murder, helping her run away, war against the other tribe, or uniting the tribes. For each option a sign should present itself as a symbol and a suggestion from the spirits.

The spirits aren't a united front. They have their own inscrutable interests and different spirits will suggest different solutions that would please them. Eventually the players should be torn between different solutions symbolized by different signs each clearly belonging to a different spirit. The crocodile spirit should have cruder plans than the heron spirit.

This is where the railroad ends and player dynamic rules the situation. Just react to their impulses in the context of the spirits and let mundane details play out realistically. Eventually the players will corner one story element out of options and force a conclusion. Now interpret that conclusion in the eyes of the spirits and present its wisdom through the shaman's words.

And if that doesn't work go full Apocalypto.

>>33200699
fucking link

>>33199976
>havent held a game in ages
>decide to use a setting with a theme you don't know much about
>huge research ahead
Oh how I know this feel. Started to create a setting where I mix ancient greek mythology with classic fantasy, only my knowledge of greek myth is quite rusty. Didn't know Hades was a god of mining until I researched him. He is so totally the god who made the dwarves.
As for quests you could always have a random nomadic tribe pass through and kidnap one of your people. Then you must hunt after them and deal with the aftermath of their passing as you chase them down. For example they could have disrespected some spirits by killing an animal they shouldn't have and then when you pass through the angered spirits attack the group.

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Your party gets attacked by the goatman

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>>33202846
Jesus fuck man that was genuinely scary.

>>33199976
Well you could always set it in The years of rice and salt.

Natives fighting against Chinese, and mulsim expansionism could be fun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Years_of_Rice_and_Salt

Wendigos are pretty cool. Lizardmen in the swamps. Sasquatch. These could be some of the supernatural enemies they face.

>>332037961
If you'd like I can pull out my Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures and find the Native American ones.

>>33199976

The souls of a once peaceful tribe have been taken. Now these black eyed killers come to slay your people, or drag them away and make them like themselves. There seems to be no end of them and they attack without mercy.

>>33202846
Fuckig wendigoats man.

I actually have a decent idea for you. Sometime before columbus landed, there was a massive plague. Depending on what you read it was Leptospirosis/weil's disease or some kind of hemorrhagic fever. Its unclear how many people were wiped out by this, there aren't really hard numbers to be had, but it wiped out more than half of the indigenous population in the americas before columbus even got there. As far as I have read, if it was a hemorrhagic fever they are unsure as to what one it could be.

tl;dr
You could have your plays looking for a magical mystery cure for the plague.

>>33202198
I didn't know anyone even saw that movie. I skipped it.
Was it actually good? Or, failing that, at least kinda neat?

Op bump. Just woke up and at work atm. Will respond to replies throughout the day. Beautiful stuff so far guys

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>>33199976

I can throw a few things your way.

The Nunnehi are fairy like beings believed in by the Cherokee, living inside hollow hills and mountains in what is now Appalachia. They looked human, but they were immortal, could turn invisible at will, and had an entire other world that they lived in inside their hills. They had an affinity for the Cherokee, and would sometimes help them fight off invaders.

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>>33204677

Spearfinger is another Cherokee creature, a monster that belonged to a class of monsters sometimes called the "Stone Coats." These creatures could take on an illusory appearance, looking like humans, but in their default state they were covered with impenetrable rock-like skin. Often individual stone Coats have strange powers unique to themselves. They lived in the Appalachian mountains and had an affinity for stone; Spearfinger traveled between mountains by picking up huge rocks and when she held them together they'd fuse. She'd use this to make titanic archway bridges between mountains.

She usually traveled around in the guise of an old woman. You could spot her by her right hand, which even in her disguise was always held in a fist with the index finger extended. She'd softly sing a song about eating livers as she walked around. If she found someone alone she'd stab them, take their liver, eat it, and then take their shape, go back to their village, and stalk a new victim.

Her heart was concealed inside her clenched fist, and if a clever hunter could land an arrow in the side of her fist it might slip through her fingers and kill her.

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>>33204725

The Flying Head is an Iroquois monster that ate people. In some version instead of flying it rolls on the ground, using its hair to pull itself along.

The wings in this picture sometimes show up in native art, but just as often the heads fly under their own power. One of the names for them translates as "Whirlwind."

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>>33204748

Boo Hags aren't really Native American monsters, but they are a good monster from southern/Appalachian/African American folklore. They're skinless witches who suck out your breath in the night, asphyxiating you, and then they steal your skin and identity to move around during the day.

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>>33204777

Another Boo Hag picture.

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>>33204791

Wendigos were already mentioned earlier, but if you're not familiar with them then they are a sort of monster or demon of the Algonquin peoples, who lived around the Great Lakes. Wendigos are associated with cannibalism and winter.

Their exact origins vary. In some versions they are just supernatural beings who stalk the forests during wintertime. In other stories they are human beings transformed as a result of eating human flesh. Sometimes even the non-human version is capable of possessing or infecting human beings with a desire for human flesh. Basically, wendigos are a personification of the harsh winters the Algonquins had to endure, winters where all your supplies might run out and you and your family are looking at each other across the fire, wondering what you're going to do for food.

Wendigos can control winter storms and are usually accompanied by blizzards. They're also super-humanly strong. They are full of an insatiable hunger because for every amount of food they eat they grow taller, so they're never full. Wendigos look like emaciated humans who are tall and gaunt as the trees around them. In the night, you might not even realize you've passed one in the forest because they blend in so well. Their hunger also sometimes drives them to chew off and eat their own lips, as well as some of their fingers and toes. All wendigos have heart of solid ice and the only way to kill them is to melt the heart. As a result, the only thing they fear is fire.

The idea that a wendigo can drive people mad or possess them, thus causing them to eat human flesh, along with the attached idea that this can turn a person into a new wendigo, gave rise to wendigo psychosis. This is a sort of mass hysteria amongst the Algonquin peoples, similar to the witch hunt hysteria of Medieval Europe, where anyone accused of being a wendigo is burned alive. Incidents of wendigo psychosis were recorded as late as 1907.

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>>33204965

Here's an Uktena, another Cherokee monster. Horned serpents were pretty common monsters throughout the Native American world, but there's a lot written about Uktenas. They lived in lakes and rivers, or high up in the mountains. They were extraordinarily dangerous, being big enough to swallow a man whole, but worth killing because their scales and a magical stone inside their heads could offer great power to the person that killed them.

>>33205009

Another Algonquin monster, the Underwater Panther was a spirit-beast thought to be common to the Great Lakes and nearby bodies of water. Sometimes their tails were said to be prehensile and made of copper. They're very large and predatory. Drowning deaths were often blamed on them. The Algonquins regarded them as one of (if not the) most powerful of supernatural beings.

In this part of North America, natives often regarded them as the most powerful of mythical beasts. Copper from their tails could be made into powerful magic charms.

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>>33205033

Herpa derp, forgot my pic.

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>>33205058

Now this is an odd one. The Piasa Birds legend comes from an old rock painting near the border of Algonquin territory. the original painting was destroyed long ago, and later representations added wings. The only legend associated with the "birds" was written centuries later, by a white man, and it's pretty much accepted he made it up.

The original painting was probably of the Underwater Panther, but Piasa Birds look cool, so why let facts get in the way of a good monster design?

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>>33205073

Another picture of the Piasa Bird. The later "legend" about the Piasas basically said that two of them once nested atop the cliff where the painting was located. They terrified the local populace, swooping down and carrying people off to eat, until a local chief tricked them into landing on the ground, then had his warriors fill them full of poisoned arrows.

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>>33205009

Also, here's another interpretation of the Uktena.

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>>33205126

Ogre-like monsters are very common in native traditions across America. This picture is sort of a catchall, not referring to any one in particular. Almost all of them have some distinct quirk or feature that separates them from the others.

The Cheyenne, Sioux, and Omaha, for example, all believe in an ogre called Two Face/Double Face. The name comes from the monster having a second face on the back of its head. Anybody who meets the gaze of this face will be struck dead or paralyzed. Then the monster can eat them at its leisure. According to some Sioux legends, the female of this species also causes nightmares.

>>33205170
The fact that he wears a loincloth while being that tall will cause me nightmares.

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>>33205170

Basket Woman is an ogress from the Pacific Northwest, usually a bogeyman or fairy tale figure or tribes like the Kwakiutl or Tlingit. She's exactly what she sounds like, a monster who carries children off in the basket on her back, usually to eat them or to feed them to her own children. Like most ogres she is dimwitted and easy to trick.

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>>33205219

The Raven Mocker is another Cherokee monster, and it's one of my favorite Native American mythical beings.

Depending on the version it's either an evil spirit or a sort of witch. The name comes from a noise it makes, like a raven's call but slightly off and eerie sounding. At night, when flying through the air, it's a shadowy, vaguely humanoid figure with fire trailing from its wing-like arms. In its natural form it looks like a human only impossibly old and withered. Most of the time, though, it's invisible.

Raven Mockers prey on the weak and sickly. If somebody is sick or old or injured, the Raven Mocker invisibly attacks them at night. People who don't recognize its strange call will think the person is just having a thrashing fit. The Raven Mocker magically steals the victim's heart without leaving a mark or wound. Only an autopsy would reveal the real cause of death.

Then it flies to some secluded refugee or lair, takes on its human form, and roasts the heart and eats it. However many years the dead person was supposed to live then gets added on to the Raven Mocker's life. In this way they can maintain eternal life, but not eternal youth. They'd get more years if they went after a healthy person but it looks less suspicious if they target someone likely to die anyway.

Their only weakness is that if somebody sees them in their true form then they will die in seven days. Shamans would sit near the beds of the sick because they could see through the Raven Mocker's invisibility, so this threat would scare them off.

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>>33205245

Deer Woman is a fertility spirit among the plains tribes, but she's also sometimes a siren-like creature. She'll appear at night to promiscuous men, lure them away from others, and then stomp them to death with her hooves. The hooves are usually concealed under he dress, but if an observant man spots them he can escape before it's too late.

>>33205219
sounds like krampus

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>>33205269

Thunderbirds are probably the most famous Native American mythical being. They're mainly common in myths of the tribes in the west; the further east you go the more often thunder and lightning will be personified as humanoid spirits, sometimes with bird heads, usually just called "The Thunders."

Out west, though, especially in the southwest and the northwest, the thunderbird reigns supreme, with the Kwakiutl and Ho-chunk having especially well developed traditions in which the thunderbird is one of their totemic animals, representing certain clans.

The exact role of a thunderbird varies. In some cases they are treated as supremely sacred forces of nature, in others they are just treated as very big and powerful animals. They hunt killer whales, which they can carry off as a lesser eagle would carry off fish. They also hunt the great horned serpents, monsters similar to the Cherokee Uktena (though the Cherokee themselves did not believe in thunderbirds). Supposedly the horned serpents and the thunderbirds have had a rivalry going back to the dawn of time, and the two species hate each other.

There's one Potawatomi legend about a hunter coming across a battle between a thunderbird and a horned serpent, with the bird having attacked the snake while it was sunning itself on a hilltop. Both creatures ask the hunter to intervene on their side, promising great rewards. The hunter, unsure of what to do, eventually decides to shoot the thunderbird. The horned serpent wins and drags the thunderbird down under the hill, which from then on was called Thunder Mountain. Whenever a storm was coming lightning would be seen flashing from the hill.

This is awesome!!! Last night I was listening to an audio book on native myths and my god the person who read it sounded like they were half dead. These are amazing. I get off work around 4pm central time and ill post more info on my campaign .

>>33205269
If she looked like that, it'd be worth it.

>>33205412
You clearly know your shit. Could you recommend a site or book (preferably with copious illustrations) that talks about the NA myths in detail?

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>>33205412

Several tribes of the American southeast also believe in giant leeches. The Cherokee believe one such creature haunted the point where the Valley River and the Hiwassee River in North Carolina. they called this conjunction Tlanusi'yï, or "the leech place." The leech was enormous,a s big as a house, and striped red and white. People rarely saw the creatures, as it hid itself in the water. If anyone go to close to the rock ledges overlooking the area then it would send up huge spouts of water, knocking them off and into the river. The dead bodies would eventually wash ashore downriver, but they would have no obvious damage aside from the fact that their noses and ears had been chewed off.

The Passamaquoddy, on the other hand, tell a number of stories about weewilmekq, a type of giant leech with a red and green checkered body. One notable story involves two shamans who declare they are going to have a magical duel. They stand at either end of a lake. One of them turns into kitchi-at'Husis, a massive horned serpent with fangs so venomous that a single scratch will kill. The other turns into a weewilmekq. Each of them dives into the lake to give battle. However, the weewilmeq manages to latch onto a part of the horned serpent's body where he can't twist around to bite the leech. The leech's fanged suction cup proceeds to saw into the serpents body, then suck out all its blood and internal organs.

>>33205462

Many of these stories are ones I have picked up from a variety of sources. Native American folklore is very diverse; there's no one book that can possibly cover all the tribes in depth, so it's generally better to look for books that focus on a particular tribe or regional tradition. One good book I can recommend in that vein is Myths of the Cherokee, by James Mooney. It is, alas, picture free.

If you want an overview though, this website is a good resource: http://www.native-languages.org/legends.htm

It doesn't have everything, and some of the entries are quite brief, but you'll find some cool stuff in there, including a lot of stuff I have not talked about simply because I had no pictures to go along with it. Stuff like the cannibal dwarves of the Rocky Mountains, who went to war with the Arapaho tribe.

>>33205433

She stomps you to death BEFORE coitus.

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Hey OP, it sounds like you're planning on using D&D for this why but either way you might find some useful information in this game.

The creator describes it as "to real NA culture what Lord of the Rings is to real European culture".

>>33205821
Loves to toot his own horn a bit, then, huh?
Is this just FATAL: Tribal Edition?

>>33204620

No and no.

It begins with Native 1 and Native 2 making a practical joke on Native 3 because he can not fuck his wife.

Then suddenly Aztecs! Or whatever shit attacks, fightan and runnan.

European ships in the coast.

The end.

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It's shit.

>>33205859
I feel like you're implying that I'm the creator of this game for some reason. Maybe since you've never heard of it, you assume no one else has? No anal circumference rolls as far as I can remember.

>>33205893
Samefagging, I see. Well, no matter, OP might enjoy it. Later, gators!

This article has some really neat shit in it.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19864_6-ridiculous-lies-you-believe-about-founding-america.html

>way larger population than we realized
>a huge city/trading hub
>a multicolored man-made mountain larger than the pyramids

>>33205949

You could do a pretty crazy game set in the period of the massive epidemic disease apocalypse the natives had to go through. Hell, considering how quickly and how deep inland it spread you could do the game purely with native tribes, and the Europeans would never even need to show up.

>>33206048
What if the Europeens HADN'T shown up?
Maybe the plague started because the Aztecs finally pissed off enough dead people to make the spirit world angry.
>This is probably a really bad idea

>>33205916
No, see
Making two posts in the same thread is not samefagging
I was saying "Is it shit?" in one post
Then I confirmed in another post that it is, in fact, shit.

>>33206396
>confirmed

So a 30-something page PDF being distributed for free doesn't have bookmarks

Do you want someone to roll your dice for you, too?

>>33206574
In before he says you're me, because only the creator and sole poster would make fun of hi- I mean defend my shitty game

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I don't really feel like I need to make fun of this game
It's pretty shitty already.

OP bump.

The setting is not on a earth, so their is no real set time line. Once my players start getting bored with their maxed out gear I might introduce a "white man" scenario so they can see steel and work their way up into western magic and equipment

>>33206813
>Once my players start getting bored with their maxed out gear I might introduce a "white man" scenario so they can see steel and work their way up into western magic and equipment
Everyone does that with a tribal setting. Don't do it.

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>>33206928
Yeah, mix it up a bit. Do what Crusader Kings II did in their alt history scenario: have YOUR players discover the White Man's land, and then task them with conquering the shit out of it.

Sunset Invasion, motherfucker.

Anybody in this thread ever read Roma Eterna?

Basically the Roman Empire never falls, their technology stagnates, they launch a few expeditions to the New World and get their shit pushed in by the locals, and iirc the natives end up becoming honorary New Rome because it's easier to get along with them than to keep trying to defeat them.

>>33207014
>suddenly, smallpox

Last bump. I appreciate all the info provided guys. I think I have enough for at least a couple sessions. If I'm not home before this thread 404s just keep an eye out for future threads. Might record some of our session for yall to watch if interested.

>>33205412
Based on my research the thunder birds were plasma discharges bet we planets and the serpent is venus. Venus always has a duality in ancient myth throughout the would

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>>33209752

It's also been theorized that thunderbirds might have been inspired by some of the gigantic birds known as teratorns. The ancestors of the Native Americans may have encountered such creatures, though none of the North American species were quite as big as the largest one, pictured here.

Large birds often fly in front of thunderstorms when migrating, as the storm front can provide extra lift so they don't have to work as hard to stay aloft. Imagine humongous birds (one species native to California and Nevada had an 18 foot wingspan) flying in a line in front of a massive storm cloud. It wouldn't be surprising if that sort of primal image stayed with a culture for a long time.

>>33210645
That's pretty bad ass.

A vessel of foreign nature has arrived on a local shoreline. Tribes in the area are amok with chaos over the "white men" found killed aboard the ship (mutiny). They carry strange metals from their land. All of the local tribes begin to have skirmishes and battles over these relics. Amongst them is a small collection of sharp weapons that can withstand the imapcts of battle better than any clubs or paddles. The race to gain possession of these powerful hunting tools is on. (Steel or iron swords and knives.)
---------
A massive blackbear has made its home in a cave nearby your village. The villagers have tried communing with this abnormally large bear only to be mauled. It has sent a challenge to a few tribesmen (players) to hunt it or it will bring terror to this years harvest. After last year's, it could spell doom for your village. The chief sends the chosen hunters on their way immediately.

>>33205269
there's a horror movie based on this creature

>>33205269

Women with deer legs are my fetish.

>>33212721

That's a very specific fetish.

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OP here

all that is left of the camp fire is smoldering coals as the first glimpse of dawn creeps over the horizon
Song birds have already began to chirp and the nocturnal critters are making one last attempt at a meal before the godstar rises. The aroma of a herbal concoction wafts through the air as it seems the elder shaman is already right to work.

Today is an important day, the god star will be stretching his limbs to the cardinal points of heaven and this always means the arrival of the buffalo from the north coast.

Last season our tribes hunt was not successful enough to meet the tribute required of the raven tribe from the mountains to the west. They warn that if we fail this season it will anger the god star and he will forsake our paradise like the lost tribes that came before us.

The chief shaman can be heard it his tent. He is summoning us for the spiritual brew to aid us in our hunt. We should see him immediately.

Sound like a good opening?! Pic related, it is the god star

>>33212721
>90% of people in art with deer legs are dudes because of satyrs/Pan
Fuck this gay Earth.

>>33213899

Sounds good, though a common feature of North American religious belief is that the creator is a remote deity and doesn't judge humanity or require worship. I think it'd be enough to say everyone will starve if the hunt fails, without throwing in "angering the god star."

What've you settled on for the loot side of things?

>>33214615
The first thing that came to mind was using gem stones that hold specific magic properties based on their type and size( lol Diablo) but im open for suggestions.

Another idea is to make holy bronze the only enchantable material and even then they would have to seek a secluded elder or even make a deal with a witch if they favor the evil spectrum. As the game progresses they can caress the dream realm more and more easily and have weapons and armour that could only be used their.

>>33215040

I think the thing to do is save the really good weapons as loot from important quests. Slaying a uktena and digging the magic stone out of its forehead, doing a favor for a thunderbird and it gives you some of its feathers which if attached to a weapon's handle grant an electrical bonus on attacks.

Otherwise, the material rewards that they might get for, say, saving a village, would be valuable items that can be bartered. Otter pelts, eagle feathers, buffalo horn, high quality food stuffs or clothes, etc. Establish how valuable these things are, and then the players can exchange them for stuff they actually want. Shamans could reward players with minor medicine pouches and other fetishes that when worn provide passive effects.

>>33215221
>>33215040

I'd have two kinds of magic items. The first are the ones you get from your shaman. These are common, but weak, and frequently either consumable or passive.

The others would be things like thunderbird feathers or uktena stones, as mentioned by the other poster. Flakes of stone from the skin of a stone coat. Elements of the supernatural that carry massive cosmic power, and are treated with more fear and respect than "fuck yeah, new magic items." They're part of the nature beyond nature, and their magic isn't fully understood.

>>33215287

That work great for magic items, but you can't hand those out willy-nilly. There's no currency system, so if players want to buy or sell things you'd need to implement some sort of barter system. A particular item of great value to a tribe could serve as a sort of default currency. Tribes of the northwest, for example, often used sea otter pelts as a base way of calculating value. The Cherokee greatly prized eagle feathers, and eagle-hunters could make a pretty good living off of their craft (and they kept their methods a secret).

Many tribes also used slaves for this purpose, but that's opening a can of worms OP is probably better off avoiding.

Native Americans fighting Vikings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_colonization_of_the_Americas

That is all.

Nobody has mentioned skinwalkers.
You have to have skinwalkers.

>>33215558
The skinwalker, or naagloshii, was known to the Navajo. It looks like a man wearing a wolf's pelt at first, with the head draped over his forehead.They exist in our world only to bring suffering, grief, and death. It cannot be killed when in this form.

The only way to see its true form is to paint your face with the blood of one of its victims. Then you will see the naagloshii for what it truly is, and only then is it possible to kill it... though even then, only the greatest of warriors or shamen could ever dream of achieving such a victory.

If victory it is. The sight of a naagloshii's true form is indelible, and will linger in your nightmares until the day you die.

>>33215760

Skinwalkers are just a particular type of witch or evil sorcerer who uses magic to become an animal (that isn't even necessarily a wolf) to commit evil acts. They're not really an evil creature or spirit on their own, just an asshole with magic powers.

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Shitty map I made for a reference to myself. the brown line the the buffalo migration path. There are 7 tribes in the region (picture related only shows the players tribal lands). Aside from the main land there is a tribe that to the south you can't see. A tribe on the north west coast and onward and the raven tribe of the mountains that acts as the leader tribe.

Although I based the regions shape n central america I will try and make them each represent a totally distinct tribe of the Americas

File: Making Old Maps.pdf (4.57 MB, PDF)

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>>33216431
Happy birthday, Anon

>>33200699
by bad luck they really mean it would shatter into a million pieces if you created a breaking point. Obsidian is quite brittle.

>>33206750
>Female Inside Chief
>Because everyone's been inside 'er!

The jokes, they write themselves!

Since the topic of shapeshifters has come up, I should mention a very widespread native belief.

Most of these tribes have stories where they talk about animals as if they were people. This reflects a common belief that when the world was young (sometimes before humans showed up, but not always) animals could talk and lived in societies similar to humans. Often these stories do not actually mention shapeshifting. The puma may be walking along on all fours one moment, and then chopping wood the next. He isn't thought to shapeshift. It's as if he is both a man and an animal at the same time, capable of either action.

Another common aspect to these stories is that, as time went on, these animal-people withdrew into their own hidden world, distinct from the spirit world or the land of the dead. All the animals left on earth are pale imitations, shadows of the original animal-people, who were greater than them. These quasi-spirit animal-people still sometimes find their way back to the human world, and people can run into them, or in some cases human beings stumble into their world. These stories are often reminiscent of European traditions about fairies and Fairyland.

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>>33216523

>>33216630
>these animal-people withdrew into their own hidden world
Is this the Happy Hunting Grounds or something different?

>>33216697

Something different. What, exactly, is not always clear.

>>33216787

An example from Kwaiutl folklore:

Kid goes out to sea, a storm brews up, and his boat is destroyed. He starts to drown and passes out. He wakes up in a village of black and white giants. When he goes outside, he doesn't see the sky, but the underside of the sea. The giants agree to take him home the next day. That morning he climbs on one's shoulders, and they all fly up into the "sky." The kid passes out again. When he wakes up, he's breaking through the waves, riding on the back of an orca. It takes him to shore, and disappears back into the ocean. Despite it seeming like only two days have passed, his family thought he had been dead for a month.

Thisis a pretty typical story.

>>33202846
I will confess, there is a ton of weird and scarey shit in the deep Appalachia woods. I ran into some of it myself in my days, others I was told about.

Just keep in mind, I remember even real old fairy tales from Europe that back around the time of pre-roman take over or around the time they did invade. A large numbers of fae, gnomes, and more decided to make an armada of ships and sail west to new lands away from Iron welding man. Guess where they all landed at. HERE.

>>33216968

Cherokee were based out of Appalachia too. You got all the Raven Mockers, Uktenas, and stone Coat monster as well. Plus the weird shit that came from migrating Cornishmen and Scots.

Anyway, many old fairy tales, especially Irish ones, said that Fairyland existed across the western ocean, beyond an archipelago of enchanted islands. It's what JRR Tolkien based Valinor off of.

>>33205412
Thunder Birds I fully believe to have been real animals. Hold overs from older times before man when animals were big all the time. Some of them might still be around, who knows. They got likely their names by using the updrafts of plains storms to help them get aloft.

>>33217103
Both my granddad and his dad where coal miners in the coal fields of SW Virginia. Those mines back then were DARK and they didn't have much in the way lights. He said that in the dark, they saw from time to time, glowing images of weird creatures that moved in and out of the mine walls and the coal seam. The bigger ones I did get a description form him and they HAD to be dinosaurs of some type.

>>33217428

It is possible they were pulling your leg.

>>33217428
>>33217458
No, what he's describing is called phosphene flashes and is a normal phenomena that occurs in your eye in complete darkness, showing lights, patterns and movement where there is none. The eye creates it's own patterns in pitch darkness as your visual neurons misfire on occasion.

http://zidbits.com/2013/03/what-are-the-colors-you-see-when-you-shut-your-eyes/

>>33213345
I have it too. I blame Planescape.

>>33217553
At first, that was what also believed it was. But those miners also pulled out of the coal was a massive amount of fossils of both plants and animals of all kinds. Larges bones too, but they threw almost all of them away into the slate piles. No one wanted them then and they are likely still laying down in those heaps today. My Grandpa knew well enough what a dragonfly was and he pointed out he saw one the size of a plate flying though the coal seam. I still wonder about it.

>>33217766

Must have been the Tommyknockers.

>>33205009

Funny how closely that lines up with some of the transitional forms of the Korean dragon, only evil.

>>33217894
This are different. (and they are not related Steven King wrote about, so forget about him). The welsh Immigrants brought over their tales about the 'Tommy knockers' to our shore. We would call them 'Dwarfs' in today's description. They were considered a good sign to have. Once the humans leave a shaft for a time, they showed up and picked away at what ever you were digging for their share of it and helped keep the mine in good shape. Also they gave out warning to the human workers if a mine is about to collapse.

>>33218037
Also, the Dwarfs didn't seem to want coal all that much, but wanted metals much more. The miners way up in the super rich copper fields of the Keweenaw MI region (more so in the Calumet and Hecla, Quincy, Wolverine, Centennial, and a few others shafts) had noted of their presence.

>>33218037
>>33218190

The Tommyknockers are originally from Cornwall, where they were just called Knockers, and were a sort of hobgoblin. The stories about them are very similar to German stories about kobolds.

>>33218332
So the Welsh/Cornwall group became what we know now as the gnomes, and the German group became what we know now as the kobolds. Damn, that would explain the long running grudge between the two races then.

>>33218497

Actually "gnomes" are from the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus. He created the word and the concept, along with the concept of elementals; he described gnomes as earth elementals.

This thread should be saved. It's surprisingly useful.

Ghost Dance, but for real.

>>33219814
I am proud of you /tg/

>>33205664
>Native American folklore is very diverse
If you take into account that it's a whole damn continent...

>>33215558
This. Several of my friends are Navajo, and the stories they tell about Skinwalkers are terrifying. Apparently there's actually some kind of cult around them that still exists, with compounds in the Malpais.

>>33220621

Yeah, you'd think it'd be obvious, but you see people treat it like its all one big thing. Especially in games, where you might end up with thunderbirds and wendigos rubbing shoulders, nevermind that they're essentially from two entirely different nations/ethnic groups.

>>33220667

Well don't leave use hanging, share a few anecdotes.

Read the following on a different site, thought the OP might find it useful:

>One of the interesting things about the native groups of the Pacific Northwest is that they really had a good 40+ years of commercial contact with Old World and Euroamerican traders before any meaningful settlement really started showing up. And the people making contact with the Natives were usually explorers or trading ship captains, which meant that either way they tended to keep pretty good documentation. Explorers like Cook and Vancouver were obviously curious about the peoples of the Northwest, but the traders accounts were equally valuable, as their future incomes depended on accurately judging the material supply and demand of the locals. And what they documented were extremely commercial people, notoriously hard-driving in their bartering. A version of the pidgin Chinook trade language was probably already in existence from Oregon up to southern-ish Alaska before European contact, and once trade was established it rapidly adopted useful words in English, French, and Russian.

>>33221785

>The popular image of most coastal villages is usually stereotyped as being pretty sedentary - they stay in basically the same region, they fish, hunt, weave some nice baskets, and generally live in some sort of non-commercial, sharing communal state of nature. This does a hell of a disservice to the Native Americans though, and especially flies against the documentation we have about the Pacific coast. The mouth of the Columbia River and Vancouver Island were both major trading hubs. Inland traders would come from east of the Cascades following the Columbia, while traders all along the west coast, from the tip of southern Alaska all the way down to Northern California would come along the coast once a year or so to trade for jewelry, beads, blankets, a local breed of tobacco, furs and pelts, whalebone, oils, woven baskets, and other trade goods (or a chain of middlemen tribes would bring their goods up to the Columbia).

>Indeed, the explosive growth of the NW fur trade probably wouldn't have been possible without the pre-existing trade network that was already in place, and while trading ships radically increased the demand for furs - especially the famously thick pelts of the sea otter - they were already a cornerstone of the northwest market. When Captain Cook sailed into Nootka sound (and the Russians before him) the Natives didn't see him as some white ghost or god or any of those stupid cliches, they just pretty much immediately started trying to sell him stuff. When Captain Robert Gray, the first European to ever sail up the river-soon-to-be-named-Columbia (in his ship, the Columbia), writes that the first Natives he comes into contact with on the river sail up to him in trade canoes, carrying furs.

>>33221797

>Anyway, all of that brings us to the other keystone of the northwest trade - slaves. Unlike the complex captive relationships that some tribes in the south and east practiced, pretty much all accounts of early contact with the northwest tribes agree that they practiced something very similar to chattel slavery. Tribes like the Haidas and the Tsimshians were well known as slavers, and regularly raided the west coast to capture slaves. These raids were purely economic in motivation, and not as a way to avenge wrongs or avenge dishonor. Men were considered too dangerous and difficult to control so they were killed, while women and children were abducted and then traded to far-distant tribes to prevent escape. The children of slaves remained slaves, forming a permanent undercaste in many tribes all along the west coast. About the Haida, Hudson Bay Company manager George Simpson wrote in the 1820s that "[slaves] form the principle article of traffick on the whole of this coast and constitute the greater part of their wealth." Simpson estimated around 1/3 of NW coast Indians were slaves, and used for all manner of physical drudgery, housework, fishing, hunting, and cutting lumber. Livingstone Jones, who lived among Alaskan tribes for more than 20 years wrote in his 1914 book A Study of the Thlingits [tlingits] of Alaska, "There are living today not a few who were once held as slaves. They and their children are still looked down upon by those who never had the misfortune to come within the grasp of slavery."

>>33221811

>For once, whitey wasn't really to blame for this - traders sailing to the northwest were mostly uninterested in the slave trade for two reasons. First, most of the captains were either from Boston or Britain, both places by where at this point slave-trading was a pretty big social faux pas. Secondly and probably more importantly, traders from both countries were more interested in trading for the far more profitable otter furs, which had finally provided the tea-thirsty western world with a trade good that China was actually interested in importing. There is reason to believe though that at least some captains engaged in a little bit of slave trading as a side venture, often not recording it in the log (either because it was considered unsavory, or because they didn't want their company bosses to know of the extra money they were making on the side). At least one ship mentions picking up Hawaiian women to sell in the northwest on its return voyage from Canton, while another mentions buying slaves at the mouth of the Columbia river and selling them in the Strait of Juan de Fuca for a tidy profit of furs.

>As the fur trade began drying out due to over-trapping, and the Indians begin dying off in larger numbers due to disease, the prices on slaves rise. 1 slave in 1791 was sold by the Haida for 1-2 otter skins, by 1799 it's 3 skins, in 1811 it's 3-8 skins depending on quality, and by 1835 the Tsimshians were offering 10 beaver skins or 15 elk pelts for one slave.

>>33221819

>One way in which the Europeans and American traders WERE complicit in the slave trade though was through prostitution. The Northwest was initially a pretty unpopular port - unlike the famous sexual generosity of many of the Pacific islanders, the northwest people were considered chaste, generally unsociable, and dour (so yes, apparently the Seattle Freeze outdates even Seattle). Even though many of the tribes were matrilineal, and unmarried women apparently enjoyed a degree of sexual freedom, it was apparently well within the man's rights to prostitute out the women of his household. The Northwesterners were infamous for offering their wives for sex to Americans, bargaining long and hard for the best bargain... And then at the last moment declining, simply for the pleasure of tweaking their guests. They were however far more willing to prostitute out their household slaves, especially tribes without other desirable trade goods. Sex with slaves was offered as a gift to guests to ease bargaining, or in exchange for European trade goods like pipes, clothing, and jewelry.

>>33221832

>As the maritime trade went on, and the size of the western presence increased, prostitution became increasingly common among the native women, with a corresponding wave of venereal disease throughout the tribes. And of course just as in other parts of the continent where there was cross-cultural sexual contact, soon came a new class of half-breeds, sometimes held in contempt by both whites and their mother's native tribes, sometimes acting as intermediaries between both worlds.

>Another interesting consequence of the maritime fur trade was the native economy basically blowing up thanks to out-of-control inflation. Where once only rich men could hold a potlatch to demonstrate their wealth and leadership potential, "Now all men consider themselves chiefs." Old social bonds were falling apart, and tribes began to specialize in acquiring more profitable goods for export, rather than providing their own staples.

I post all this because I thought it provided an interesting perspective on the scale and intricacy of trade relations amongst the native nations, something that will inevitably come up if players go to a market to buy and sell loot.

>>33219814

I submitted it for archival on sup/tg/ if anyone wants to vote for it.

>>33221958
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=native%20american

>>33221958
>>33222042
thanks

One more bit i want to add. The southern part of the Shenandoah valley, Roanoke Valley to be more exact is probably one of the most haunted blood stained lands in this world and most people don't realize it.

Before the non natives arrived, it was a local's dream land. good soil to grow crops, lots of wood, a river that does not go dry in the worst of times. Most of all, some of the best hunting to be had. For a very good reason.
(1/2)

nativefag here, I'll share some of the old legends and shit I still remember.

The important thing to know is that every animal, whether a fish, a bear, or a raven, has a human form that it returns to when it is not cavorting as an animal. Most animals live in villages when not hunting, where they will have their own chiefs and such. When they need to go hunting, they put on their skin-coats, which transforms them into a fish, bear, etc. It is possible to steal these coats and use them to transform yourself into an animal, but it is often difficult to find your way back to human form.

Since every animal is a person, it is very important to be respectful and polite to the animals you hunt, otherwise his family could come to avenge him. If you properly use every piece of a fishes body, and dispose of the remains respectfully (usually by returning them to a river), then it considered an honor for the fish to be used to continue your life.

>>33222475
(2/2)
There is, or was right now, a surface exposed salt lick deposit that attracted all sorts of animals far and wide. That made this land the most wanted east of the Mississippi. The Indianan nations fought bloody wars with each other ALL THE TIME to get control of that land. This went on for hundreds, if not thousands of years. We'll never know just how many people died in this spot of land, but I'm betting millions+.

I do swear that when it gets foggy in this region, you could just see their specters moving among the mist.