Elsie Clews Parson - Native American Folklore & Traditions

Both the fantastical legends and the everyday life of the first peoples of the Americas continue to fascinate us. Medicine men and shamans, potlatches and marriage ceremonies, harvests and hunts fill the pages to come. There are family feuds, ambitious men, poignant love stories, and powerful tales of the struggle to survive in a hostile climate. In these tales, we can recognise our own hopes and dreams as well as marvel at the diversity of traditions that have sprung up across North America

The stories range across the continent. They come from the Crow, the Blackfoot, the Menomini, the Iroquois, the Apache, the Mojave, the Nootka, and the Inuit (or Eskimos) respectively. The Crow and the Blackfoot roamed the Great Plains of Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Saskatechwan, and Alberta. Semi-nomadic peoples, the horse and the buffalo became central to their way of life after the arrival of the Europeans. The Menomini and the Iroquois lived a more settled, agricultural existence along the shores of the Great Lakes and across much of the north-eastern United States. The Menomini were an Algonquin speaking people, one of the two major language groups of the region and fierce rivals of the Iroquois, who lived to the south and east of them. The Apache and the Mojave come from the southwestern plains of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado, and their long resistance to European incursion has established their reputation as fearsome warriors.

The Nootka, or Nuu-chah-nulth as they are now known, come from the west coast of Vancouver Island, where their impressive house posts and expressive potlatch ceremonies provide a very different culture from the inland peoples. And finally there are the Inuit, who live across the entire arctic region of the continent. The people in this tale come from Baffin Island to the north of Hudsons Bay, where temperatures rarely rise above freezing.

The stories within this volume were compiled by anthropologists aiming to bring the traditions of the Native Americans to a wider audience. Each writer did their best to discard their own biases and to present the tales as the truest possible representation of Native American life.

Fearing that the Native Americans were a vanishing race, many sought to document the peoples and the culture before their traditional way of life was lost forever. As well as writing down the stories they heard, many Americans in the early 20th century sought to record the culture of the Native Americans for posterity through the new medium of photography.

There was no more renowned photographer than Edward Curtis. Curtis began working on his magnum opus, The North American Indian, in 1906 with the support of the businessman J. P. Morgan. Over the course of 20 years, he took more than 40,000 photographs of people from more than 80 different tribes. Along with the photographs themselves, he provided extensive annotations on the traditions, societies, and recreations of the peoples he saw through the lens of his camera. The portraits are a stunning tribute to the diversity of cultures in North America and help bring their stories to life.

Curtis is not the only artist featured in this collectionyou will also find images from the photographers Joseph Dixon and Roland Reed, as well as paintings by accomplished artists such as Charles Marion Russell and Frederic Remington. The images range from the haunting to the joyful, from the alien to the familiar.

The tales here provide only a brief taste of Native American life. Both fascinating and entertaining, they give an insight into cultures that continue to endure more than a century after their predicted doom.

HORSES neighing, women scurrying to cover, the report of guns, his mother, Pretty-weasel, gashing her legs for mourningthat was Takes-the-pipes earliest memory. Later he learned that his own father, a famous warrior of the Whistling-water clan, had fallen in the fight and that his father, Deaf-bull, was really a paternal uncle who had married the widow. No real father could have been kinder than Deaf-bull. If anything, he seemed to prefer his brothers son to his own children, always petting him and favoring him with the choicest morsels.

When Pretty-weasel needed help in dressing a hide or pitching a tent, her sisters and cousins of the Sore-lip clan came as visitors, often bringing moccasins and gewgaws for their little clansman, Takes-the pipe. One of the sisters stood out more clearly than the rest, a lusty wench who would pull Deaf-bull by the ear and pour water on his face when he took an afternoon nap. He in turn would throw her on the ground and tickle her till she bawled for mercy. Another salient figure was the grandmother, old Muskrat, who used to croon the boy to sleep with a lullaby: The dog has eaten, he is smoking. Haha, huhu! Haha, huhu! Whenever she came to the refrain she raised a wrinkled, mutilated hand, and snapped what remained of her fingers in the childs face.

The people were always traveling back and forth in those days. Now Takes-the-pipe was throwing stones into the Little Bighorn, then with other boys he was chasing moths in the Wolf Mountains. When he caught one he rubbed it against his breast, for they said that was the way to become a swift runner. One fall, the Mountain Crow traveled to the mouth of the Yellowstone to visit their kin of the River band. All winter was spent there. It was fun coasting down-hill on a buffalo-rib toboggan and spinning tops on the smooth ice. Each boy tried to upset his neighbors with his own, and when he succeeded he would cry, I have knocked you out! Takes-the-pipe was a good player, but once he came home inconsolable because his fine new top was stolen, and another time a bigger lad had cheated, knocking him out with a stone deftly substituted for the wooden toy. His mother comforted him saying, That boy is crazy! His father is of the Bad-honors clan, thats why he acts that way! Takes-the-pipe was still a little fellow when Deaf-bull made him a bow and arrows, and taught him to shoot. Now he ran about, letting fly his darts against birds and rabbits. There was ample chance to gain skill in archery. The boys would tie together a bundle of grass and set it on a knoll, then all shot at this target, and the winner took all his competitors arrows. Whenever Takes-the-pipe brought home a sheaf of darts, his father would encourage him, saying, Youll be like Sharp-horn, who always brings down his buffalo with the first shot. And when his son had killed his first cottontail, Deaf-bull proudly called Sliding-beaver, a renowned Whistling-water, feasted him royally and had him walk through camp, leading Takes-the-pipe mounted on his horse and proclaiming his success in a laudatory chant.

One spring there was great excitement. The supply of meat was exhausted, yet the buffalo remained out of sight. Scouts were sent to scour the country in search of game, but in vain. At last Sharp-horn offered to lure the buffalo by magic. At the foot of a cliff he had the men build a corral. He summoned Deaf-bull to be his assistant. Bring me an old unbroken buffalo chip, he said. Takes-the-pipe found one, and together he and his father brought it to the shaman. Someone is trying to starve us; my medicine is stronger than his; we will eat, said Sharp-horn. He smoothed the earth in his lodge and marked buffalo tracks all over. He put the chip on one of the tracks and on the chip a rock shaped like a buffalos head, which he wore as a neck ornament. This rock he smeared with grease. The buffalo are coming, bid the men drive them here, he said.