This anthology examines the origins, meanings, and enduring power of the powwow. Held on and off reservations, in rural and urban settings, powwows are an important vehicle for Native peoples to gather regularly. Although sometimes a paradoxical combination of both tribal and intertribal identities, they are a medium by which many groups maintain important practices. "Powwow" begins with an exploration of the history and significance of powwows, ranging from the Hochunk dances of the early twentieth century to present-day Southern Cheyenne gatherings to the contemporary powwow circuit of the northern plains. Contributors discuss the powwow's performative and cultural dimensions, including emcees, song and dance, the expression of traditional values, and the Powwow Princess. The final section examines how powwow practices have been appropriated and transformed by Natives and non-Natives during the past few decades. Of special note is the use of powwows by Native communities in the eastern United States, by Germans, by gay and lesbian Natives, and by New Agers.

Everywhere they are dancing. From Oklahoma City's huge Red Earth celebration to fund-raising events at local high schools, powwows are a vital element of contemporary Indian life on the Southern Plains. Some see it as tradition, handed down through the generations. Others say it's been sullied by white participation and robbed of its spiritual
significance. But, during the past half century, the powwow has become one of the most popular and visible expressions of the dynamic cultural forces at work in Indian country today.

Clyde Ellis has written the first comprehensive history of Southern Plains powwow culture-an interdisciplinary, highly collaborative ethnography based on more than two decades of participation in powwows. In seeking to determine what "powwow people" mean by so designating themselves, he addresses how the powwow and its role in contemporary Indian identity have changed over time--along with its songs and dances--and how Indians for nearly a century have used dance to define themselves within their communities.

"A Dancing People" shows that, whether understood as an intertribal or tribally specific event, dancing often satisfies needs and obligations that are not met in other ways--and that many Southern Plains Indians organize their lives around dancing and the continuity of culture that it represents. As one Kiowa elder explained, "When I go to these dances], I'm right where those old people were. Singing those songs, dancing where they danced. And my children and grandchildren, they've learned these ways, too, because it's good, it's powerful."

Ellis tells us not only why and how Southern Plains powwow culture originated, but also something about what it means. He explores powwow's cultural and historical roots, tracing suppression by government advocates of assimilation, Indian resistance movements, internal tribal disputes, and the emergence of powerful song and dance traditions. He also includes a series of conversations and interviews with powwow people in which they comment on why they go to dances and what the dances mean to them as Indian people.

An insightful study of performance, ritual, and culture, "A Dancing People" also makes an important statement about the search for identity among Native Americans today.

"Tales of the Tepee" grew out of Edward Everett Dale's close association with Indian tribes living in Oklahoma. During territorial days young Dale rode, hunted, and visited with the Kiowas, Comanches, and Wichitas. Later he taught many Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, Sac and Fox, and Delawares at the state university. Near the beginning of his long and distinguished career as a historian, he gathered and recorded these stories.

Originally published in 1920, "Tales of the Tepee" takes the reader to the lodge bonfires of the Cherokees, Wichitas, and Pawnees, where children stayed awake to hear about giant cannibals, magical transformations, mortal unions with celestial bodies, and journeys to the Spirit Land. Dale preserved these popular tales of danger and revenge, renewal and romance, and family life. They are populated with an ogress named Spearfinger, the monster Flint, the tragic Wynema, and the cyclic heroes Wild Boy, Stone Man, and Found-in-the-Grass. Here are animal people like the courageous Rabbit and the great bird Tlan-u-wa. And here are lovely explanations for matters mundane and cosmic: how strawberries came to be, and how the moon got its spots.

Near the close of the nineteenth century, Isabel Crawford went to the Kiowa-Comanche Reservation in Oklahoma and founded the Saddle Mountain Baptist Mission. This book, written in journal form, begins with her arrival at the reservation in 1896 and describes her decade-long crusade to convert the Indians to Christianity. She and her assistant were the only white women at the isolated station in the Wichita Mountains.

Crawford's experience there tested her resourcefulness, endurance, and sometimes her faith. Humor marks her journal as she recounts her struggles to establish a formal mission. She lived with the Indians, at first putting up in a tipi and adjusting, not without difficulty, to their ways. She was "the Jesus woman" who taught the Ten Commandments. In her wake came camp meetings, baptisms, and "big eats." Through the years Isabel Crawford and her Indian brothers and sisters were bound more closely as they raised money to build a church. Though written with Christian purpose, "Kiowa: A Woman Missionary in Indian Territory" shows Crawford's sensitivity to Kiowa history and culture during a period of transition.

The mission still exists and Isabel Crawford is still remembered kindly, according to Clyde Ellis, who introduces this Bison Books edition.

Reservation boarding schools represented an important component in the U.S. government's campaign in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to "civilize" American Indians according to Anglo-American standards. The history of the Rainy Mountain School in southwestern Oklahoma reveals much about the form and function of the Indian policy and its consequences for the Kiowa children who attended the school.

In "To Change Them Forever," Clyde Ellis surveys changes in government policy and tells how the Kiowa people resisted and accommodated the efforts of school personnel to transform them. Ellis combines archival research with personal memoirs, conversations with former students, and the school's official records to portray a school often at odds with official policy and frequently neglected by the Indian Service's bureaucracy.