Elizabeth Willis De Huff
Scholars and historians believe author Elizabeth Willis De Huff was born around 1886 in Augusta, Georgia to John Turner and Ann Boyd Wilson Willis. She became a teacher and followed her husband to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she quickly became fascinated with Native American folklore. Her husband was the superintendent of the Santa Fe Indian School and when the Bureau of Indian Affairs said Native students were forbidden to learn the arts, she began teaching art classes.
“During the long winter nights Taytay told tales to his little grandson.” Illustration by Fred Kabotie and Otis Polelonema, published in Taytaty’s Tales: Collected and Retold by Elizabeth Willis DeHuff (1922), Harcourt, Brace and Company
While working with Hopi and Pueblo students, she decided to write down the Native American folktales. The resultwas her first book, Taytay’s Tales, published in 1922. The book featured artwork from her students Fred Kabotie, a renowned Hopi painter, and Otis Polelonema, a painter and artist of the Hopi second Mesa. De Huff eventually back to Georgia after her husband died in 1945. She passed away in 1983 leaving behind the Elizabeth Willis DeHuff Collection of American Indian Art, a collection with more than 55 Native American artists.
Fairy tales by Elizabeth Willis De Huff
- The Boy and the Pig
- The Boy, the Coyote, and the Magic Rock
- The Bad Little Girl of Acoma
- Bunny Cottontail and the Crane
- Bunny Rabbit and the King of the Beasts
- The Coyote and the Fox
- The Coyote and the Turtle
- Mr. Coyote and the Two Pretty Girls
- The Coyote and the Blackbirds
- The Conceited Ant
- The Fate of the Boy Witch
- The Fox and the Crows
- The Rabbit and the Crow
- The Fate of the Witch Wife
- The Fox and the Turkey
- The Fox That Flew
- The Fox and the Lizard
- The Fox and the Indians
- The Fox and the Skunk
- The Fox and the Mice
- The Fox and the Sheep
- The Meadow Lark and the Fox
- The Man from the North, the Girl, and the Turtle
- Mr. "Get-Even" Coyote
- The Man-Eater
- The Bee and the Fox
- A War Between the Birds and the Animals
- White Corn and Her Sons Fire
- White Corn and the Grasshoppers
Suggest a tale
Do you think the best tale is still missing? Paste in a link and let us now.