The Quileute legends in Twilight have a basis in the actual tales, Quileute stories do included descending from wolves – but definately not werewolves. In order to give fans a taste of the true culture, the tribe has begin to have storytelling on special fan weekends and events such as weekly healing drum circles (Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m. at the Community Center) to entertain and teach. If you get to Forks, you don’t want to miss that.
From the Peninsula Daily News
Chris Morganroth III was raised by his grandmother, who spoke the Quileute language, told the stories and made baskets and food in traditional ways.
He tells the story of the origin of the Quileute:
Quileute beginnings
If you begin to look into the stories and how we got to be here, they go back to the beginnings of time.
Before that, Spirit beings could transform themselves into animals or people at will. There were even living beings in outer space, such as the sun. They called those people the fire sky people.
After some time, the Spirit beings had to choose what they would be and were no longer able to transform.
After this, K’wati came into the area of LaPush and found that there were no humans. He went to the mouth of the river and there were wolves, timber wolves.
Now these wolves always travel in pairs and they mate for life.
K’wati saw that there were no people in this area near LaPush. So he transformed that pair of wolves into the Quileute people.
K’wati is a supernatural figure in Quileute stories who transforms people or objects. K’wati wasn’t a “sorcerer” or “witch king,” as Meyer’s has it. “He wasn’t really a god, but a transformer — he was put on Earth to make things better,” Morganroth said. Although Meyer’s teen werewolves are not part of Quileute legends, she draws from the tribal connection to wolves.
Even in present times, the wolf is often referred to as a brother of the tribe, as is the orca — which also is said to have descended from the wolf, Morganroth said.
The New Moon werewolves aren’t your average, hairy-faced cross between a man and a wolf. The boys “phase” into bear-sized wolves with enough superpowers to kill vampires. And they developed out of a need to protect the people of Forks and LaPush from vampires. The Quileute have no such legend.
Morganroth said it doesn’t bother him much when he hears how the stories are changed and used in the books.
“People are always telling me how my stories are not the real way things happened — science is the main one — but I think of them as ways to explain things that happened,” Morganroth said. “We have stories in LaPush that explain events going back to the Ice Age, but science and history people claim that we came across the land bridge much later than that.
“And her book is a work of fiction. If she needed to make some changes to make it more exciting that is up to her.”
He went on to say that one legend talks about the fire of the sun being captured in leaves and used to keep the plant living — a legend which perfectly parallels the scientific process of photosynthesis. “So we have our story to explain how that works,” he said.
“If Ms. Meyer wanted to make up a story about werewolves, that is her thing — it helped make the characters more interesting.”
