Indian Picture Writing

This collection of Delaware legends has long been out of print. Originally published in 1905, this collection of authentic Delaware legends has long been sought both by scholars and individuals who cherish the lessons these tales impart. Stories such as "The Hunter and the Owl" teach us the importance of keeping a promise. The legend "A-le-pah-qua, The Woman with the Two Plants" demonstrates how we should not abuse the powers we are given. This book does much more than introduce the richness of the original Delaware language to an English-speaking audience: Four of these legends have been retranslated into the Delaware language by native Delaware speakers. Readers will find line-by-line translations that reveal the eventual transformation of a transliterated Delaware text into an English-language story.

This collection of twenty-two Delaware Indian stories has long been sought out both by scholars and individuals. Beyond the lessons, the book introduces the richness of the original Delaware language to an English-speaking audience: four of these legends have been retranslated into the Delaware language by native Delaware speakers. Readers will find line-by-line translations that reveal the eventual transformation of a transliterated Delaware text into an English-language story.

Plains Indian History and Culture, an engaging collection of articles and essays, reflects John C. Ewers multifaceted approach to Indian history, an approach that combines his far-reaching interest in American history generally, his professional training in anthropology, and his many decades of experience as a field-worker and museum curator. The author has drawn on interviews collected during a quarter-century of fieldwork with Indian elders, who in recalling their own experiences during the buffalo days, revealed unique insights into Plains Indian life. Ewers use his expertise in examining Indian-made artifacts and drawings as well as photographs taken by non-Indian artists who had firsthand contact with Indians. He throws new light on important changes in Plains Indian culture, on the history of intertribal relations, and on Indian relation with whites—traders, missionaries, soldiers, settlers, and the U.S. Government.

This edition explores the history of musical contact, interaction, and exchange between American Indians and Euramericans, as documented in musical transcriptions, notations, and arrangements. The volume contributes to an understanding of American music that reflects our cultural reality, depicting reciprocal influences among Native Americans, scholars, composers, and educators, and illustrating consequences of those encounters for American musical life in general. Culled from a published record of over 8,000 songs, the edition contains 116 musical examples reproduced in facsimile. Included in the volume are the earliest attempts to represent tribal music in European notation, archetypal transcriptions in the scholarly literature of ethnomusicology, and recent contributions by contemporary scholars. Some of the notations shown here inspired composers in search of a distinctively American musical idiom to write works based on American Indian melodies. Others captured the imagination of American school children, whose concept of cultural and musical identity came to be linked with American Indians. Indigenous notations, the work of native scholars and educators, and recent compositions by native composers working in the classical vein also appear in this volume. As a compendium of historic materials, the edition illustrates the development of Euramerican attitudes and approaches to American Indian musics, the infusion of native musics into American musical culture, and native responses to and participation in the enterprise.

This work is essential for anyone doing research in rock art and petroglyphs. Col. Garrick Mallery's report on the picture-writing of the American Indians is one of the most significant of all the early reports of the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. Besides a special section on petroglyphs, most of the specimens are roughly contemporary with the report's writing and were collected by ethnologists, explorers, and expeditions to reservations. The focus is on the significance of the pictures and the dissimilarities between the styles of picture-writing of the various tribes. Col. Mallery's report is the fundamental study of North American Indian picture-writing for anthropologists, sociologists, historians, or artists. Since most of the samples were collected by peers while picturing was still a vital method of communication, the ethnologists were often helped by the Indians themselves in interpreting the pictographs and uncovering the wealth of information they conveyed. The report consists of almost 1,300 pictures and 54 plates illustrating the samples which Col. Mallery describes.