Essay Week 9: The Origins

I have always been someone who enjoys learning the origins of anything really. I find that it helps me to better understand whatever subject that it may be more fully. Because of this, I really enjoyed reading the Un-Textbook unit on Tejas Legands. I found the stories in this unit to be very creative and fun to read. Some of my favorite stories were about the origins of the orchid flowers, how the mistletoe came to be in the trees, and the reason why the woodpecker pecks. All of the stories gave explanations of how all of these things came to be as well as a giving an additional lesson. For instance, in the case of the Indian shoes turning into orchids, there was a lesson about how life can throw curve balls at you, but if you trust in God (or in this case, the spirits) than your path home will be made straight. Proverbs 3:5-6 is proof of this. Now in the situation where the woodpeckers are created, there is a lesson on greed and addiction. When you give up your life to a harmful external substance, you may lose the things that you used to value more. For the Indians that were transformed into woodpeckers, their loss came in the form of having their children taken away from them and hidden in the trees. These woodpeckers would now spend the rest of their lives searching for what they once had. Finally, in the case of how the mistletoe came to be in the trees, there is a lesson on symbiotic relationships. The bird needed food and the poor grounded mistletoe was the only one available to give the bird what little he had left. So, the bird took it up into the trees so that the mistletoe would be safe from other predators in exchange for allowing the birds to enjoys it's berries. It is a very "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" situation that almost everyone can relate to in some form or another.

(Indian Moccasins. Web Source: Wikimedia Commons)