Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indians

An American Indian language belonging to the Muskogean linguistic family, Koasati is spoken today by fewer than five hundred people living in southwestern Louisiana and on the Alabama-Coushatta Indian Reservation in Texas. Geoffrey D. Kimball has collected material from the speakers of the larger Louisiana community to produce the first comprehensive description of Koasati.

The book opens with a brief history of the Koasati. The chapters that follow describe Koasati phonology, verb conjugation classes and inflectional morphology, verb derivation, noun inflectional and derivational morphology, gramma,ical particles, and syntax and semantics. A discussion of Koasati speech styles illustrated with texts concludes the book. Because examples of grammatical construction are drawn from native speakers in naturally occurring discourse, they authoritatively document aspects of a language that is little known.

Geoffrey D. Kimball is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University.

For centuries, a persistent and important component of Lakota religious life has been the Inipi, the ritual of the sweat lodge. The sweat lodge has changed little in appearance since its first recorded description in the late seventeenth century. The ritual held within, the "sweat" consists of songs, prayers, and other actions conducted in a tightly enclosed, extremely hot and stifling environment. Participants who "sweat" together experience moral purification and even physical healing. Today, the sweat lodge ritual continues to be a vital part of Lakota religion. It has recently become popular among Lakotas recovering from alcohol and drug addiction and among those afflicted with AIDS. This impressive study is the first in-depth look at the history and significance of the Lakota sweat lodge. Bringing together data culled from historical sources and recent fieldwork at Pine Ridge Reservation, Raymond A. Bucko provides a detailed discussion of changes that have occurred in the structure and function of the "sweat" ritual over time. He offers convincing explanations for the longevity of the sweat lodge and its continuing popularity. The ritual survives because it is inherently malleable, girded by fixed physical and symbolic forms but continually subject to reinterpretation and creative modification. Consequently, the Lakotas are able to adapt this important healing ritual to meet their changing collective and individual needs. Raymond A. Bucko is an assistant professor of anthropology at Le Moyne College. His articles have appeared in European Review of Native American Studies and Mission. This is his first book.

This volume introduces the oral literature of Native American peoples in Puget Salish-speaking areas of western Washington. Seven stories told by Lushootseed elders are transcribed and translated into English, accompanied by information on narrative design and cultural background. Upper Skagit elder and cotranslator Vi Hilbert, a 1994 recipient of the NEH National Heritage Fellowship in Folk Arts, includes a cultural welcome and offers childhood reminiscences of the storytellers. Cotranslator Thomas M. Hess, associate professor of linguistics at the University of Victoria, parses the beginning lines of a text to show the grammatical structures; he also includes his recollections of working with the storytellers in the 1960s as a graduate student. Editor and cotranslator Crisca Bierwert, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, provides information on the processes of language translation and of rendering oral traditions into written form. Annotator T. C. S. Langen, who holds a Ph.D. in English literature and is a curriculum developer for the Tulalip tribe, provides analyses of Lushootseed poetics. The book includes information about purchasing audiotapes of the stories.

For the residents of the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, mainstream medical care is often supplemented or replaced by a host of traditional practices: the Sun Dance, the yuwipi sing, the heyok'a ceremony, herbalism, the Sioux Religion, the peyotism of the Native American Church, and other medicines, or sources of healing. Thomas H. Lewis, a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist, describes those practices as he encountered them in the late 1960s and early 1970s. During many months he studied with leading practitioners. He describes the healers, their techniques, personal histories and qualities, the problems addressed and results obtained and examines past as well as present practices. The result is an engrossing account that may profoundly affect the way readers view the dynamics of therapy for mind and body. Retired from the National Naval Medical Center, where he served as chief of psychiatry, and from Georgetown University School of Medicine, Thomas H. Lewis now lives in Montana.

This book describes the musical culture of the Northern Haida Indians, who speak two closely related dialects. One dialect group lives on Graham Island, British Columbia, the other on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska. The recordings on which the book is based were compiled over a period of more than a decade from a wide variety of historical and contemporary sources. Representing the entire range of the Haida musical tradition -a tradition that nearly died out and is currently being revived- this volume documents its changes over more than a century. Part 1 is a lengthy ethnographic description of musical genres that situates Haida music in the context of the Northwest Coast. Part 2 presents 128 songs, fully transcribed and analyzed and representing some twenty types, ranging from traditional genres such as peace-making and mourning songs to songs of personal expression composed during the modern period. Part 3 is a detailed musical and linguistic analysis of the songs presented in the second part. The integration of descriptions of these two facets of song -music and language- is the particular goal of the book. The volume is a substantive contribution to the ethnomusicology of native North America and will be of special interest to scholars concerned with vocables in Native American music. John Enrico has been engaged in linguistic research on the Haida language since 1975. His publications include The Lexical Phonology of Masset Haida and articles on aspects of Haida grammar. Wendy Bross Stuart's first ethnomusicological publication was Gambling Music of the Coast Salish Indians. In 1980 she began collaborating with John Enrico in the transcription and analysis of Haida songs. 

Sherman Sage (ca. 1844–1943) was an unforgettable Arapaho man who witnessed profound change in his community and was one of the last to see the Plains black with buffalo. As a young warrior, Sage defended his band many times, raided enemy camps, saw the first houses go up in Denver, was present at Fort Laramie for the signing of the 1868 treaty, and witnessed Crazy Horse’s surrender. Later, he visited the Ghost Dance prophet Wovoka and became a link in the spread of the Ghost Dance religion to other Plains Indian tribes. As an elder, Old Man Sage was a respected, vigorous leader, walking miles to visit friends and family even in his nineties. One of the most interviewed Native Americans in the Old West, Sage was a wellspring of information for both Arapahos and outsiders about older tribal customs.

Anthropologist Jeffrey D. Anderson gathered information about Sage’s long life from archives, interviews, recollections, and published sources and has here woven it into a compelling biography. We see different sides of Sage—how he followed a traditional Arapaho life path; what he learned about the Rocky Mountains and Plains; what he saw and did as outsiders invaded the Arapahos’ homeland in the nineteenth century; how he adjusted, survived, and guided other Arapahos during the early reservation years; and how his legacy lives on today. The remembrances of Old Man Sage’s relatives and descendants of friends make apparent that his vision and guidance were not limited to his lifetime but remain vital today in the Northern Arapaho tribe.

Jeffrey D. Anderson is an associate professor of anthropology at Colby College. He is the author of The Four Hills of Life: Northern Arapaho Knowledge and Life Movement (Nebraska 2001).

People of The Dalles is a historical ethnography of the Chinookan (Wasco-Wishram) and Sahaptin peoples of The Dalles area of the Columbia River (ancestors to peoples now located on the Warm Springs and Yakama reservations) between about 1805 and 1848. The book begins with early historical background reconstructed from the accounts of explorers and travelers, then presents the human geography, subsistence and economics, social structure, life-cycle rituals, and aboriginal religion of these peoples. This is followed by chapters on cultural and religious change and a summary chapter on the effect on the Indians of the Methodist Mission. Much of the material on which the book is based is taken from the writings of the Methodist missionaries at Wascopam, in particular from the papers of the Reverend Henry Perkins, who was stationed there from 1838 to 1844. Perkins and his fellow missionaries lived among the Indians at The Dalles during a crucial period, shortly after the devastating mortalities caused by the epidemics of the early 1830s and just before the equally wrenching wars and removals of the 1850s. Appendices to the volume include Perkins's major writings on the Wascopam Mission, a list of sources of material relating to the mission, and brief biographical sketches of mission personnel and Indians whose names appear frequently in the historical record. Robert Boyd has published several articles on Pacific Northwest Indian ethnohistory.

"This work sheds new light on the meaning of war and violence for both the Virginia Indians and the English who invaded them. And that leads to some stimulating new interpretations of the demise of the 1570 Spanish Mission, John Smith's captivity (including his rescue by Pocahontas), and the great attacks of 1622 and 1644." -Helen C. Rountree, Old Dominion University. "This fine new study . . . [pieces] together stories far richer and people far more complex than the literary and celluloid stereotypes that so dominate our views of this early encounter. Frederic Gleach steers us expertly through the cultural cross-currents, conflicts, and misunderstandings that swirled around the English founding of Virginia." -Jennifer S. H. Brown, University of Winnipeg. Drawing on the latest anthropological studies of colonial encounters, Frederic Gleach offers a more balanced and complete accounting of the early years of the Jamestown colony than has been seen before. When English colonists established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown in 1607, they confronted a powerful and growing native chiefdom consisting of over thirty tribes under one paramount chief, Powhatan. For the next half-century, a portion of the Middle Atlantic coastal plain became a charged and often violent meeting ground between two very different worlds. Gleach argues that the history of Jamestown is essentially the story of how two cultures with conflicting world-views attempted to civilize and incorporate each other. He examines historical events from both native and colonial perspectives, resulting in original and fuller interpretations of seventeenth-century Virginia history. Frederic W. Gleach is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University. This is his first book.

Dogrib Indians are one of the Dene groups - Athapaskan-speaking peoples of the western Canadian Subarctic. Based on the author's field studies from 1959 to 1976, this volume presents an ethnographic description of the Dogrib prophet movement. Part 1 introduces three prophets who came to prominence in the 1960s 1970s. Although they developed from the same cultural background and had the same aims, their prophetic styles contrasted dramatically with one another. Helm situates the prophet movement in relation to both aboriginal and Christian traditions and shows the determining importance of the prophets' personalities in shaping their practice of prophecy.

Part 2 examines the traditional Dogrib concept of power (ink'on), which underlies the prophet movement. It draws together information given over the course of years by Vital Thomas, a Dogrib who collaborated closely with Helm. This first-hand material is noteworthy for its personal perspective and for the understanding it provides of the differing sources and uses of power. The concept of power is so pervasive in daily life that it forms the key for understanding the dynamics of Dogrib culture. The book concludes with a brief autobiography related by Vital Thomas..

JUNE HELM received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and has for many years been a professor of anthropology at the University of Iowa. She is the editor of Subarctic, volume 6 of the Handbook of North American Indians, published by the Smithsonian Institution (1981).

Reserve Memories examines how myths and narratives about the past have enabled a Northern Athabaskan community to understand and confront challenges and opportunities in the present. For over five centuries the Chilcotin people have lived in relative isolation in the rich timberlands and scattered meadows of the inland Northwest, in what is today known as west central British Columbia. Although linguistic and cultural changes are escalating, they remain one of the more traditional and little known Native communities in northwestern North America.

Combining years of fieldwork with an acute theoretical perspective, David W. Dinwoodie sheds light on the special power of the past for the Chilcotin people of the Nemiah Valley Indian Reserve. In different social and political settings, they draw upon a "reserve" of memories-in particular, myths and historical narratives-and reactivate them in order to help make sense of and deal effectively with the possibilities and problems of the modern world. For example, the declaration of the Chilcotins against clear-cut logging draws upon one of their central myths, adding a deeper and more lasting cultural significance and resonance to the political statement.

David W. Dinwoodie is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico. His articles have appeared in Anthropological Linguistics and Cultural Anthropology.

"A significant contribution to Salishan linguistics and more generally to the linguistics of Native America. It is, I believe, the most comprehensive comparative study of a set of syntactic structures to date for any language family in the Americas (and perhaps elsewhere as well). . . . The scholarship is impressive throughout.迫Sarah G. Thomason, editor of Contact Languages: A Wider Perspective.

In this pioneering study Paul D. Kroeber examines the history of an array of important syntactic constructions in the Salish language family. This group of some twenty-three languages, centrally located in the Northwest Coast and Plateau Regions, is noted for its intriguing differences from European languages, including the possible irrelevance of a noun/verb distinction to grammatical structure and the existence of distinctive systems of articles, which also often function as marks of subordination.

Kroeber draws on and analyzes data from a wide range of textual and other sources. Centering his detailed investigation on patterns of subordination and focusing, he situates these against the broader background of Salish syntax, examines their interrelationships, and reconstructs their historical development. The result is a study that significantly enhances understanding of the structure and history of Salish. As important, Kroeber痴 critical command of sources and well-considered historical proposals are exemplary, setting a methodological standard for Americanist scholarship.

Paul D. Kroeber has written for International Journal of American Linguistics and Anthropological Linguistics. He is a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University, Bloomington.

The languages of the Athabascan family are noted for their rich aspectual systems—inventories of grammatical forms that denote the nature of the action of a verb in relation to its beginning, duration, completion, or repetition, but without reference to its position in time. Koyukon is an Athabaskan language spoken along the Yukon and Koyukuk rivers in Alaska. Among Athabaskan languages, Koyukon has the most elaborate and profusely varied possibilities of morphologically marked derivational aspect.

This work comprises three parts. The first describes the aspectual system, which sorts out a complex network of four modes, fifteen aspects, four superaspects, and some three hundred aspect-dependent derivation prefix strings. The second analyzes the organization of verb theme categories, which are directly linked to aspectual categories. The last assesses the function of the aspectual system as a whole.

MELISSA AXELROD received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Colorado in lggo. She has worked for the Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and currently teaches in the English Department at California State University, San Bernardino.

During the summer of 1963, Harvard linguist Karl V. Teeter traveled along the Saint John River, the great thoroughfare of Native New Brunswick, Canada, with his principal Maliseet consultant, Peter Lewis Paul. Together they recorded a series of tales from Maliseet elders whom Paul regarded as among the best Maliseet storytellers born before 1900, including Charles Laporte, Matilda Sappier, Solomon Polchies, William Saulis, and Alexander Sacobie. Paul also contributed eleven narratives of his own.

Tales from Maliseet Country presents the transcripts and translations of the texts Teeter collected, together with one tale recorded by linguist Philip S. LeSourd in 1977. The stories range from chronicles of shamanistic activity and mysterious events of the distant past, through more conventionally historical narratives, to frankly fictional yarns, fairy tales with roots in European traditions, and personal accounts of subsistence activities and reservation life. This entertaining and revealing volume testifies to the rich heritage of the Maliseets and the enduring vibrancy of their culture today.

Philip S. LeSourd is an associate professor of anthropology at Indiana University. He is the author of Accent and Syllable Structure in Passamaquoddy.

On a typical day in Bennett County, South Dakota, farmers and ranchers work their fields and tend animals, merchants order inventory and stock shelves, teachers plan and teach classes, health workers aid the infirm in the county hospital or clinic, and women make quilts and heirlooms for their families or the county fair. Life is usually unhurried, with time for chatting with neighbors and catching up on gossip. But Bennett County is far from typical.

Nearly a century ago the county was carved out of Pine Ridge Reservation and opened to white settlers. Today Bennett County sits awkwardly between the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Sioux Reservations, with nearly one-third of its land classified as "Indian Country" and the rest considered by many Pine Ridge Lakotas to still belong to the reservation. The county is home to a dynamic population, divided by the residents into three groups—"whites," "fullbloods," and "mixedbloods." Tensions between the three groups lurk amid the quiet harmony of Bennett County's everyday rural life and emerge in moments of community crisis.

In a moving account, anthropologist Paula L. Wagoner tells the story of Bennett County, using snapshots of community events and crises, past and present, to reveal the complexity of race relations and identities there. A homecoming weekend at Bennett County High School becomes a flashpoint for controversy because of the differences of meaning ascribed by the county's three identity groups to the school's team name—the Warriors. At another time, the shooting of a Lakota man by a local non-Indian rancher and the volatile wake that follows demonstrate the impulse to racialize disputes that lies just beneath the surface of everyday life.

Yet such very real problems of identity have not completely overwhelmed Bennett County. Wagoner also shows that despite their differences, residents have managed to find common ground as a region of "diverse insiders" who share an economic dependency on federal funds, distrust outsiders, and, above all, deeply love their land.

Paula L. Wagoner is an assistant professor of anthropology at Juniata College.

Until the late eighteenth century the Arikaras were one of the largest and most influential Indian groups on the northern plains. For centuries they have lived along the Missouri River, first in present South Dakota, later in what is now North Dakota. Today they share the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota with the Mandans and Hidatsas. Although their postcontact history and aspects of their culture are well documented, Douglas R. Parks's monumental four-volume work Traditional Narratives of the Arikara Indians represents the first comprehensive attempt to describe and record their language and literary traditions. Volumes 1 and 2 present transcriptions of 156 oral narratives in Arikara and include literal interlinear English translations. Volumes 3 and 4 contain free English translations of those narratives, making available for the first time a broad, representative group of Arikara oral traditions that will be invaluable not only to anthropologists and folklorists but to everyone interested in American Indian life and literature. The narratives cover the entire range of traditional stories found in the historical and literary tradition of the Arikara people, who classify their stories into two categories, true stories and tales. Here are myths of ancient times, legends of power bestowed, historical narratives, and narratives of mysterious incidents that affirm the existence today of supernatural power in the world, along with tales of the trickster Coyote and stories of the risque Stuwi and various other animals. In addition, there are accounts of Arikara ritualism: prayers and descriptions of how personal names are bestowed and how the Death Feast originated.

Until the late eighteenth century the Arikaras were one of the largest and most influential Indian groups on the northern plains. For centuries they have lived along the Missouri River, first in present South Dakota, later in what is now North Dakota. Today they share the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota with the Mandans and Hidatsas. Although their postcontact history and aspects of their culture are well documented, Douglas R. Parks's monumental four-volume work Traditional Narratives of the Arikara Indians represents the first comprehensive attempt to describe and record their language and literary traditions. Volumes 1 and 2 present transcriptions of 156 oral narratives in Arikara and include literal interlinear English translations. Volumes 3 and 4 contain free English translations of those narratives, making available for the first time a broad, representative group of Arikara oral traditions that will be invaluable not only to anthropologists and folklorists but to everyone interested in American Indian life and literature. The narratives cover the entire range of traditional stories found in the historical and literary tradition of the Arikara people, who classify their stories into two categories, true stories and tales. Here are myths of ancient times, legends of power bestowed, historical narratives, and narratives of mysterious incidents that affirm the existence today of supernatural power in the world, along with tales of the trickster Coyote and stories of the risque Stuwi and various other animals. In addition, there are accounts of Arikara ritualism: prayers and descriptions of how personal names are bestowed and how the Death Feast originated.

Until the late eighteenth century the Arikaras were one of the largest and most influential Indian groups on the northern plains. For centuries they have lived along the Missouri River, first in present South Dakota, later in what is now North Dakota. Today they share the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota with the Mandans and Hidatsas. Although their postcontact history and aspects of their culture are well documented, Douglas R. Parks's monumental four-volume work Traditional Narratives of the Arikara Indians represents the first comprehensive attempt to describe and record their language and literary traditions. Volumes 1 and 2 present transcriptions of 156 oral narratives in Arikara and include literal interlinear English translations. Volumes 3 and 4 contain free English translations of those narratives, making available for the first time a broad, representative group of Arikara oral traditions that will be invaluable not only to anthropologists and folklorists but to everyone interested in American Indian life and literature. The narratives cover the entire range of traditional stories found in the historical and literary tradition of the Arikara people, who classify their stories into two categories, true stories and tales. Here are myths of ancient times, legends of power bestowed, historical narratives, and narratives of mysterious incidents that affirm the existence today of supernatural power in the world, along with tales of the trickster Coyote and stories of the risque Stuwi and various other animals. In addition, there are accounts of Arikara ritualism: prayers and descriptions of how personal names are bestowed and how the Death Feast originated.

Until the late eighteenth century the Arikaras were one of the largest and most influential Indian groups on the northern plains. For centuries they have lived along the Missouri River, first in present South Dakota, later in what is now North Dakota. Today they share the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota with the Mandans and Hidatsas. Although their postcontact history and aspects of their culture are well documented, Douglas R. Parks's monumental four-volume work Traditional Narratives of the Arikara Indians represents the first comprehensive attempt to describe and record their language and literary traditions. Volumes 1 and 2 present transcriptions of 156 oral narratives in Arikara and include literal interlinear English translations. Volumes 3 and 4 contain free English translations of those narratives, making available for the first time a broad, representative group of Arikara oral traditions that will be invaluable not only to anthropologists and folklorists but to everyone interested in American Indian life and literature. The narratives cover the entire range of traditional stories found in the historical and literary tradition of the Arikara people, who classify their stories into two categories, true stories and tales. Here are myths of ancient times, legends of power bestowed, historical narratives, and narratives of mysterious incidents that affirm the existence today of supernatural power in the world, along with tales of the trickster Coyote and stories of the risque Stuwi and various other animals. In addition, there are accounts of Arikara ritualism: prayers and descriptions of how personal names are bestowed and how the Death Feast originated.

Until the late eighteenth century the Arikaras were one of the largest and most influential Indian groups on the northern plains. For centuries they have lived along the Missouri River, first in present South Dakota, later in what is now North Dakota. Today they share the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota with the Mandans and Hidatsas. Although their postcontact history and aspects of their culture are well documented, Douglas R. Parks's monumental four-volume work Traditional Narratives of the Arikara Indians represents the first comprehensive attempt to describe and record their language and literary traditions. Volumes 1 and 2 present transcriptions of 156 oral narratives in Arikara and include literal interlinear English translations. Volumes 3 and 4 contain free English translations of those narratives, making available for the first time a broad, representative group of Arikara oral traditions that will be invaluable not only to anthropologists and folklorists but to everyone interested in American Indian life and literature. The narratives cover the entire range of traditional stories found in the historical and literary tradition of the Arikara people, who classify their stories into two categories, true stories and tales. Here are myths of ancient times, legends of power bestowed, historical narratives, and narratives of mysterious incidents that affirm the existence today of supernatural power in the world, along with tales of the trickster Coyote and stories of the risque Stuwi and various other animals. In addition, there are accounts of Arikara ritualism: prayers and descriptions of how personal names are bestowed and how the Death Feast originated.

The people who call themselves Dene Dhaa, a group of the Athapaskan-speaking Natives of northwestern Canada known as the Slave or Slavey Indians, now number about one thousand and occupy three reserves in northwestern Alberta. Because their settlements were until recently widely dispersed and isolated, they have maintained their language and traditions more successfully than most other Indian groups. This collection of their stories, recorded in the Dene language with literal interlinear English glosses and in a free English translation, represents a major contribution to the documentation of the Dene language, ethnography, and folklore.

Patrick J. Moore is a linguist with the Yukon Native Language Centre; Angela Wheelock is a freelance writer.

The Yuchis are one of the least known yet most distinctive of the Native groups in the American southeast. Located in late prehistoric times in eastern Tennessee, they played an important historical role at various times during the last five centuries and in many ways served as a bridge between their southeastern neighbors and Native communities in the northeast. First noted by the de Soto expedition in the sixteenth century, the Yuchis moved several times and made many alliances over the next few centuries. The famous naturalist William Bartram visited a Yuchi town in 1775, at a time when the Yuchis had moved near and become allied with Creek communities in Georgia. This alliance had long-lasting repercussions: when the United States government forced most southeastern groups to move to Oklahoma in the early nineteenth century, the Yuchis were classified as Creeks and placed under the jurisdiction of the Creek Nation. Today, despite the existence of a separate language and their distinct history, culture, and religious traditions, the Yuchis are not recognized as a sovereign people by the Creek Nation or the United States.

Jason Baird Jackson examines the significance of community ceremonies for the Yuchis today. For many Yuchis, traditional rituals remain important to their identity, and they feel an obligation to perform and renew them each year at one of three ceremonial grounds, called “Big Houses.” The Big House acts as a periodic gathering place for the Yuchis, their Creator, and their ancestors. Drawing on a decade of collaborative study with tribal elders and using insights gained from ethnopoetics, Jackson captures in vivid detail the performance, impact, and motivations behind such rituals as the Stomp Dance, the Green Corn Ceremony, and the Soup Dance and discusses their continuing importance to the community.