Oral Literature of the Northeastern Algonquians and the Northern Iroquoians

Contacts between the League Iroquois and the Northeastern Algonquians were generally hostile, and the two language families are unrelated. Not surprisingly, their oral traditions are quite different, although there are instances of diffusion between the two areas, like, for example, the borrowing of Trickster tales by the Huron and Seneca from their Algonquian neighbors, and the borrowing of the rival twins theme from Iroquois into Micmac cosmology. Some of the elements in the my thologies of one or both groups have a wider distribution in North America or even beyond: the themes of the earth diver, the rival twins, the overworld thunderer vs. the underworld serpent, and the magic flight.