North American Literature
It's not impossible that some people in North America
knew how to write before 1500 AD. Some Cherokee
people tell stories about an early way of writing, for instance. But there
is no evidence from before 1500 of any writing in North America. There's
nothing that looks like paper,
and nothing with writing on it. If people were writing at this time, the
evidence has all rotted away or people have hidden it. So they can't have
been writing very much, or there would be stone inscriptions and things
that would have lasted, as there are for the Aztec,
the Inca,
and the Maya
in South America.
Most kids learned stories by hearing them told out loud.
These stories were usually about religion,
or about how people should act. Some of these stories were written down,
much later, and you can read some of them here:
