American Indian Myths and Legends has many strong, reoccurring themes throughout all of its stories that reflect the important principals of the Native American Indians. The understanding of these repeated symbols and actions can aid in our general understanding of what was essential to these people and why. The stories, The Powerful Boy, The Origin of Curing Ceremonies, and The Well-Baked Man, all contain some of the most repeated motifs of the Native American stories. This makes them strong representatives into what might have been of great value to them. The main themes in these three stories are powerful babies, rituals, tricksters and the figure 4.
The Powerful Boy has the frequently used figure of a magically powerful baby. In the story, a tiny infant is born and grows strong. Through an incident, the baby discovers his ability to crush anything he hits. Throughout the story, the father continually warns them not to go in 4 certain direction, whether west, south north or etc, and everyday the baby ignores his father and goes. This journeys reveal his supernatural powers that lead him to winning his father a country. Young babies with supernatural powers that save and provide for families and entire villages are reoccurring in Indian myths. This lends to the idea that Indians placed a high importance on their youth and what they were capable of doing.
The Origin of Curing Ceremonies, is told almost as if it is a history lesson for how rituals began. In this story, two men are sick, and the One Who Made the Earth, gave the knowledge of how to cure the sick men to four men. The four men, headed in the 4 directions (much like the baby did in The Powerful Boy) and did chants, prayers, drums that they eventually did over the sick men to heal them. The mentioning of rituals are prevalent in the stories which shows the Indians high use and value in them. They might also use the stories as a tool to pass on their rituals to different generations; giving reason to why they were continually retold.
The Well-Baked Man is a short story about a creator who is tricked by the coyote into making a dog instead of a human. The creator ends up making a variety of people due to the coyote’s tricks leading to different ethnicities through 4 attempts (the figure that occurs in the previous stories). The coyote being a trickster in these stories are very common in these myths. The symbol of this animal, while difficult to figure out, is something of great meaning and obbsession to the Indians and their culture and deserve acknowledgment and further study. 
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