How might look a fantasy setting based on Navajo mythology...

How might look a fantasy setting based on Navajo mythology, folklore and/or history rather than European ("based" in this case doesn't necessarily mean it has to be historically accurate, but rather possess the same kind of relationship "European" fantasy settings tend to have to European history and folklore)

Specifically Navajo or Native Americans in general?

My thought was specifically Navajo, though I suppose if we gathered enough knowledgeable people making a mega setting based on the mythologies of North America at large might be very fun.

Have you read any of Tony Hillerman's "Navajo Tribal Police" stories? He portrays Navajo beliefs and customs in all of them.

The Navajo have witches of both sexes and the usual skinwalkers. Ghosts are very feared. A dead person's "hogan" is shunned for a period and, IIRC, has part of it's roof removed so the ghost can leave.

Hogans are built in different shapes depending on the sex of the occupant. A married man lives with his wife's family. At birth you're part of two extensive clans or gens. Your mother's clan/gens is your "Born To" clan and your father's clan/gens is your "Born For" clan.

They live in a "holy land" of sorts bounded by four mountains which they should never leave. Four is a sacred number to them. Sand paintings (which also use various pollens) are important ceremonial practices. Most of their ceremonies have to do with healing or preventing diseases, both physical and spiritual. Some ceremonies can take over a week and involve dozens of singers and dancers.

They have the usual coyote/trickster myths and myths about other animals too. Like many other cultures, they have a cyclic view of time. This is the 4th World. Their version of Adam & Eve passed through 3 prior worlds before making a home here.

There's a lot I'm forgetting and probably some I'm getting wrong, but the whole topic is a fascinating one. I borrowed a lot of Navajo beliefs & practices for an alien species in a sci-fi game of mine.

You may wish to note that Navajo culture is among the ones who changed most drastically by the coming of Europeans. Pre-European contact Navajo were practically a different society, especially insomuch as it might be relevant to depicting them as a fantasy people. For example, the shepherding, wool crafts, silver mining and silversmithing which have become nigh synonymous with their lifestyles in the past few centuries are habits they only developed afterwards.

>You may wish to note that Navajo culture is among the ones who changed most drastically by the coming of Europeans.

Those are skills, tech, and economic parts of a culture, not the mythology and folklore part the OP asked about.

The fact that the Navajpo became shepherds and silver smiths didn't either produce or change their creation stories, their sacred numbers, use of pollens, belief in skinwalkers, withces, and ghosts, the idea they must live within the boundaries of certain mountains, etc.

You should check this out.

Hey, that's a really cool game. Thanks!

>Their version of Adam & Eve passed through 3 prior worlds

If I'm remembering correctly it wasn't just two people climbing up through the pillar into the new world, for the "good" people climb up first and draw a sigil around the entrance to trap "the witches" on the other side. Of course the witches still trick their way into the new world, but it's all of the people and animals who cross over.

Fate was supposed to receive a "Worlds of Adventure" setting book sometime in 2016 called "Sisiutl's Children", which would've been inspired by Pacific Northwestern tribal mythology. Unfortunately, the writer got cancer.

Ehh.. we'll never know. It's highly suspicious that the Navajo share so many similar stories with other ancient tribes, like the mound builders and their offshoots. It's entirely possible, the most likely even, that the tribes combined and influenced eachother over the hundred years before even seeing a European, due to smallpox traveling so much faster throughout the continent.

The fact is that smallpox ravaged so many tribes so many times, that tribes mingled just to get by. Leaving us no trace of the truely prehistoric tribes and cultures. Many historians like to romanticize that the cultures are distinct and unbroken, but it's just an anthropology fantasy. Look to the Hopi if you want a culture that is "untainted," for they had the least amount of contact with the outside world throughout the entirety of history.

>Those are skills, tech, and economic parts of a culture, not the mythology and folklore part the OP asked about.

Tech, trade, and skills inform mythology just as anything else. Legends about cold iron and horseshoes, Death reaping with a sycthe, Vulcan having the appearance of a smith. These things bleed into your gods.

You're right, but Native Americans had no modern crafts they invented themselves. They had no attachment to those ideas because they were seen as an encrouching enemy culture. You do find some things like the peace pipe / tomahawk hybrid that entered into some Indian cultures (crafted specially to impress Indians by traders), and some Christian ideals bleeded into Pueblo and Iroquois traditions, but most Indians were staunchly against European culture and ideas.

So generally Indians, even to this day, hold on to their traditions with a bloody grip. Sadly some of the more recognizable traditions, pow wows, the sun/ghost dances, are kind of modern traditions and are certainly Americanized at this point.

What I'm trying to say is that location and resources inform culture, then skills, tech, magic, etc. will inform culture. And Navajo culture was informed by a major resource: the horse. Their religion was still older that we see in Diné Bahane', but this idea of just copy/pasting Navajo mythology would require a restructured cosmology.

>These things bleed into your gods.

True, but they didn't bleed into Navajo mythology because 1) they were introduced relatively recently and 2) the Navajo were busy syncretizing various forms of Christianity with their beliefs.

You're ignoring the TIME required, most likely because you just took Anthropology 101. Tech, trade, and tools do "inform" mythology but only when they have time and space in which to work.

>>And Navajo culture was informed by a major resource: the horse.

Point to a major part of Navajo mythology and/or religious beliefs in which the horse figures prominently.

>If I'm remembering correctly it wasn't just two people

I used Adam & Eve in a metaphorical sense and intended that the term would read as "X number of first humans". Sadly, I forget that I was posting at the Home of the Sperglords and neglected to put Adam & Eve in quotes.

Navajo have some seriously great witch/monster witch myths for games.

I think you're missing the difference between mythology and culture. A setting based on Navajo mythology will probably also include a lot of more mundane Navajo culture for stuff like "what the geography is like, what people do for a living, how they get around, etc.". All people here are saying is that OP should decide for those subjects whether he wants to go with pre-contact Navajo or post-contact, because there'll be major changes.

>trying to alpha out over a glorified social studies degree

Son, you seem upset for wasting your life. You also are shortsighted as fuck regarding setting up mythology. It's OK though, glad to hear you're moving up! Fast casual dining is a booming industry, and more money than Maccas!

m8, I'm not that user but you definitely seem like the guy more defensive about your life choices right now. How are you this pissy?

No, I'm mocking out a liberal arts neckbeard. Keep up.

Seems like you're upset because you were just wrong.

You seem upset on Veeky Forums.

Lol y u mad tho

>>I think you're missing the difference between mythology and culture.

I'm not missing out that very real difference.

I'm ignoring it because the OP's question specifically asked about mythology and not culture.

You can't write a setting with only mythology. Culture's going to come into it sooner or later.