Sacred Stories Of The Sweet Grass Cree

Sacred Stories of the Sweet Grass Cree, first published in 1930, is once again available, allowing readers to enjoy these wonderful Native stories that have been passed down from generation to generation. These stories concern the time when the earth was not in its present, definitive state, and tell of the origins of the world, its people, and the creatures that eventually took the shape of present-day animals. The collection includes stories such as The Birth of Wisahketchahk and the Origin of Mankind, The Origins of Horses, Why the Dead are Buried, Thunderbird and Winter, and many others. In 1925, Leonard Bloomfield, a linguistics professor at Yale University, spent five weeks on the Sweet Grass Reservation near Battleford, Saskatchewan, recording stories told to him by members of the tribe. The storytellers -- none of whom spoke English -- included Coming-Day, an extemely articulate blind old man who was said to know more traditional stories than any other member of the band; Adam Sakewew, a gifted storyteller; Maggie Achenam, a middle-aged woman full of interesting lore; and others. The stories, dictated to Bloomfield in Cree, are presented in the book in the original Cree and in English translations. A valuable treasury of traditional stories from the Sweet Grass Cree, this collection provides insights into the language, culture, and sacred teachings of some of North America's First Nations.

This is a new release of the original 1930 edition.

These stories from the Peepeekisis Cree Nation tell of the Little People, Wesuketchuk, and the Sky People, and share the Plains Cree worldview, values, and spiritual beliefs. "nipakosēyimon ēkā ta-wanihtāhk kinēhiyawātisinaw, tāpitaw awiyak ta-masinahahk ēkwan ta-pīkiskwātahk." --Eleanor Brass, 1987 "I am hoping that our Indian culture will not be lost, that there will always be someone to write and speak about it. As the treaty reads, 'As long as the grass grows and the water flows.'" --Eleanor Brass, 1987

When Europeans first arrived on this continent, Algonquian languages were spoken from the northeastern seaboard through the Great Lakes region, across much of Canada, and even in scattered communities of the American West. The rich and varied oral tradition of this Native language family, one of the farthest-flung in North America, comes brilliantly to life in this remarkably broad sampling of Algonquian songs and stories from across the centuries. Ranging from the speech of an early unknown Algonquian to the famous Walam Olum hoax, from retranslations of "classic" stories to texts appearing here for the first time, these are tales written or told by Native storytellers, today as in the past, as well as oratory, oral history, and songs sung to this day. An essential introduction and captivating guide to Native literary traditions still thriving in many parts of North America, Algonquian Spirit contains vital background information and new translations of songs and stories reaching back to the seventeenth century. Drawing from Arapaho, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Cree, Delaware, Maliseet, Menominee, Meskwaki, Miami-Illinois, Mi'kmaq, Naskapi, Ojibwe, Passamaquoddy, Potawatomi, and Shawnee, the collection gathers a host of respected and talented singers, storytellers, historians, anthropologists, linguists, and tribal educators, both Native and non-Native, from the United States and Canada--all working together to orchestrate a single, complex performance of the Algonquian languages.

Ten Stories of the House People, plains Cree from north of the North Saskatchewan River, told by Peter Vandall and Joe Douquette to Freda Ahenakew. In Cree with English translations, Cree-English and English-Cree glossaries and an outline of the writing system. The term wâskahikaniwiyiniwak ‘House People’ was traditionally used for the Plains Cree groups clustering around Carlton House.

Strong women dominate these reminiscences: the grandmother taught the girl whose mother refused to let her go to school, and the life-changing events they witnessed range from the ravages of the influenza epidemic of 1918–20 and murder committed in a jealous rage to the abduction of a young woman by underground spirits who on her release grant her healing powers. A highly personal document, these memoirs are altogether exceptional in recounting the thoughts and feelings of a Cree woman as she copes with the challenges of reserve life but also, in a key chapter, with her loneliness while tending a relative’s children in a place far away from home – and, apparently just as debilitating, away from the company of other women. Her experiences and reactions throw fresh light on the lives lived by Plains Cree women on the Canadian prairies over much of the twentieth century. The late Sarah Whitecalf (1919–1991) spoke Cree exclusively, spending most of her life at Nakiwacîhk / Sweetgrass Reserve on the North Saskatchewan River. This is where Leonard Bloomfield was told his Sacred Stories of the Sweet Grass Cree in 1925 and where a decade later David Mandelbaum apprenticed himself to Kâ-miyokîsihkwêw / Fineday, the step-grandfather in whose family Sarah Whitecalf grew up. In presenting a Cree woman’s view of her world, the texts in this volume directly reflect the spoken word: Sarah Whitecalf’s memoirs are here printed in Cree exactly as she recorded them, with a close English translation on the facing page. They constitute an autobiography of great personal authority and rare authenticity.