|
Showing 1 - 25 of
281 matches in All Departments
"A long association with the Cheyennes has given me a special
interest in them, and a special wish that they should be allowed to
speak for themselves. What the Indians saw in the battles here
described, I have learned during years of intimate acquaintance
with those who took part in them."-George Bird Grinnell. Without
critical comment or biased judgement, George Bird Grinnell-one of
the truly great historians of the American Indian-has recorded the
major battles that the Cheyennes fought. In this account the entire
gallery of the heroic Cheyenne chiefs and warriors-Roman Nose and
Black Kettle and Dull Knife and many others-emerge in full color as
they strive against the greatest enemy of all: the failure of the
white man to understand and appreciate their way of life and his
ignorance of their real capacity for peace and cooperation.
"[Grinnell's] integrity, sincerity, sympathy, and understanding
made him welcome in every tipi. . . . He was one of the very few
historians who knew how to get authentic information from Indians,
and how to present things as they saw them in readable
form."-Stanley Vestal in the foreword. George Bird Grinnell was a
man of diverse talents-editor, author, traveler, and scientist.
Born in 1849, he became, by turn of the century, one of the
best-known and most popular interpreters of the American Indian.
This collection of powerful stories reveals the complex and
wondrous world of the Blackfoot nation in the nineteenth century.
The thirty tales transcribed by George Bird Grinnell provide an
intimate look into Blackfoot culture and philosophy and remind us
of tribal values to be upheld and taught. Classic tales of
adventure speak of deeds accomplished, and cultural heroes roam
across an arresting Native landscape of legend and history. Ancient
stories, captured in oral tradition, cast the shadow of the
Blackfoot people far into the past and provide foundation and
meaning for their lives in the present. The final section of this
book is an insightful overview of the history and culture of the
Blackfoot Nation. First published in 1892, "Blackfoot Lodge Tales"
is based on George Bird Grinnell's personal interactions with the
Blackfoot people. A member of the Blackfeet Tribe and a historian,
Thedis Berthelson Crowe provides an indigenous perspective of the
"Blackfoot Lodge Tales" in her new introduction to this edition.
Her great-great grandfather, William Russell, served as the
Blackfoot interpreter for Grinnell.
"The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Their Ways of Life" is
a classic ethnography, originally published in 1928, that grew out
of George Bird Grinnell's long acquaintance with the Cheyennes. In
Volume I he wrote about the tribe's early history and migrations,
customs, domestic life, social organization, hunting, amusements,
and government. Volume II looks at its warmaking and warrior
societies, healing practices and responses to European diseases,
religious beliefs and rituals, and legends and prophecies
surrounding the culture hero Sweet Medicine. Included are
appendixes on early Cheyenne village sites, the formation of the
Quilling Society, and notes on Cheyenne songs.
The Punishment of the Stingy, first published in 1901, has become a
classic of American Indian literature. George Bird Grinnell's
retelling of Indian tales like The Star Boy, The Girl Who Was the
Ring, The First Medicine Lodge, and Nothing Child retains the humor
and mystery of their sources. Featuring the twin themes of
generosity and stinginess, this is the only one of Grinnell's
collections to embrace narratives from a number of
tribes--Blackfoot, Pawnee, Blood, Piegan, and Chinook. Plucky young
heroes emerge from obscurity through their generosity; the
closefisted draw down supernatural punishments befitting their cold
and hardened spirits. Jarold Ramsey writes, The history of the
Plains Indians as we have it would be unthinkable without the keen
eye and honest, diligent pen of George Bird Grinnell. With him, it
is still possible after eighty or one hundred years to leap through
that historical lightning door that shut so suddenly on the Old
West. Among the heroic Pawnees, Cheyennes, Blackfeet, and their
neighbors of long ago, stories like these will continue to be our
horses, and Grinnell our faithful overland guide. Jarold Ramsey is
a professor of English at the Uni
In the late 1880s the ethnologist and writer George Bird Grinnell
visited the Pawnee Agency in Indian Territory. To Eagle Chief, whom
he had known for many years, he explained the object of his visit:
"Father, we have come down here to . . . ask the people about how
things used to be in the olden times, to hear their stories, to get
their history, and then to put all these things down in a book."
The chief meditated for a time and then said: "It is good and it is
time. Already the old things are being lost, and those who know the
secrets are many of them dead. . . . The old men told their
grandchildren, and they told their grandchildren, and so the
secrets and the stories and the doings of long ago have been handed
down."
The result of Grinnell's field work was "Pawnee Hero Stories and
Folk-Tales," first published in 1899. Here are stories about a
Pawnee youth who serves as a peacemaker and a warrior's quest for
lost joy, and such tales as "The Dun Horse," "The Bear man," "The
Snake Brother," and "The Ghost Wife." Extended notes describe the
origins and migrations of the Pawnees, their customs, methods of
warfare, and later history.
The Cheyenne Indians: Their History and Their Ways of Life is a
classic ethnography, originally published in 1928, that grew out of
George Bird Grinnell's long acquaintance with the Cheyennes. Volume
I looks at the tribe's early history and migrations, customs,
domestic life, social organization, hunting, amusements, and
government. In a second volume, Grinnell would consider its
warmaking and warrior societies, healing practices and responses to
European diseases, religious beliefs and rituals, and legends and
prophecies surrounding the culture hero Sweet Medicine. George Bird
Grinnell was a zoologist by training and an anthropologist by
inclination. He accompanied Custer's Black Hills expedition as a
naturalist in 1874 and from that time until his death in 1938 was
closely associated with the Cheyennes and other Plains tribes.
Other books by Grinnell available in Bison Book editions are
Blackfoot Lodge Tales, Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales, By
Cheyenne Campfires, and The Punishment of the Stingy and Other
Indian Stories.
Here are the folk tales of the Cheyenne--stories of their
heroes, their wars, their relationships with supernatural
powers--as told to George Bird Grinnell during the winter months in
Cheyenne tipis. "Of all the books written about Indians," say
Margaret Mead and Ruth L. Benzel in "The Golden Age of American
Anthropology," "none comes closer to their everyday life than
Grinnell's classic monograph on the Cheyenne. Reading it, one can
smell the buffalo grass and the wood fires, feel the heavy morning
dew on the prairie."
|
You may like...
LSD
Labrinth, Sia, …
CD
R213
Discovery Miles 2 130
|