ABSTRACT
Such organization is very antithetical to major currents in literary criticism in our own society. There, deconstruction and a sort of widespread revolt against stories that have endings and expectable patterns have replaced acceptance of the kind of literary form which took shape for most peoples of the world for most of human history. Traditionally, it has been ‘the arousal and satisfying of expectations’, to use Kenneth Burke’s characterization of literary or poetic form in relation to the audience, that was accomplished through devices such as the ones seen in these Native American texts (Burke, 1925). Such devices give experience a shape, a satisfying shape which is convincing. As things come out this way, accounts are convincing not only because they may be believed in terms of the actors and actions, but also in terms of form. This form may be hidden in a sense, since no one talks about it, but it is responsible for making the story seem to come out right, to be warranted in the sense of fitting a deep-seated cultural norm for the form of reported experience.
