VanSpanckeren, Kathryn. AMERICAN LITERATURE Outline of REVISED EDITION. , United States Information Agency, 1994.

American literature begins with the orally transmitted myths, legends, tales, and lyrics (always songs) of Indian cultures. There was no written literature among the more than 500 different Indian languages and triba cultures that existed in North America before the first Europeans arrived. As a result, Na tive American oral literature is quite diverse Narratives from quasi-nomadic hunting cultures like the Navaho are different from stories of set- tled agricultural tribes such as the pueblo- dwelling Acoma; the stories of northern lakeside dwellers such as the Ojibwa often differ radical- ly from stories of desert tribes like the Hopi.