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The folklore of the United States, or American folklore, is the folk tradition which has evolved on the North American continent since Europeans arrived in the 16th century. While it contains much in the way of Native American tradition, it should not be confused with the actual tribal beliefs of any real band, nation or community of native people. American Folklore, rather, is that strange fusing of European ideals of "civilization" with a European obsession with the "exotic" and the "savage." Any way you slice it, American Folklore is essentially about immigrants and their misunderstanding of each other, and of the new landscape they found themselves conquering, and of the people that had already been there when the first "white men" arrived.
Ultimately, American Folklore is a constant intertwining of the new and the old, the mechanical and the pastoral, the mundane and the miraculous, for no other purpose it seems than to fill up the space of a lazy afternoon.
The founding of the United States is often translated as myth. A mythology is simply a story of some sort which has emotional, cultural, moral or ethical value to a nation. Taken broadly, then, American mythology can include any narrative which has contributed to the shaping of American values and belief systems. These narratives may be true and may be false; the veracity of the stories is not a determining factor. Three founding myths include: Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims, and George Washington.
Though Christopher Columbus did not participate in the founding of the American government, he has been interpreted as a "founder" of the American nation, in that it is descended from the European immigrants that would not have moved to the New World if Columbus had not found where it was. Indeed, one particularly pervasive myth is that Columbus discovered America, as it is far easier to heroify a man than a complex series of waves of immigrants from multiple conditions and walks of life. According to some stories, Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in order to prove that the world was round, because he expected to reach the Far East by sailing west. Like most mythological "founders" Columbus' mission is then rendered entirely noble, intellectual and rational. He helped dispel the inaccurate myths of his time, and, so, it is concluded, the nation he founded must be a nation of intellect and logic. Washington Irving is the first citation for this myth.