Looking for Lost Lore: Studies in Folklore, Ethnology, and Iconography
245
Looking for Lost Lore: Studies in Folklore, Ethnology, and Iconography
245eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780817381066 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alabama Press |
| Publication date: | 09/15/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 245 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Looking for Lost Lore
Studies in Folklore, Ethnology, and IconographyBy George E. Lankford
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS
Copyright © 2008 The University of Alabama PressAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-5479-4
Chapter One
Losing the Lore
Some Notes on the Destruction of Knowledge
Students of North American prehistory frequently find themselves confronted by enigmatic myths, beliefs, and art. Trying to explain their cognitive content or the set of events that produced a complex distribution pattern often leads a researcher into attempts to reconstruct former myths and beliefs that no longer exist. One of the major problems in assessing the plausibility of such efforts lies in the fundamental assumption-that there was in earlier times knowledge that has been lost. Is it possible for societies to lose important knowledge? How would such a process of destruction occur? What are the dynamic principles of losing the past? Are there any indications that such a process has in fact occurred in the Native American past? This chapter argues that the destruction of esoteric knowledge has occurred and, further, that it is not difficult to understand how such a thing can happen.
Some Assumptions
A hypothetical model of the societal loss of knowledge can be put forward as a set of assumptions, each of whichseems reasonable on the basis of what is known both about oral traditional societies in general and about Native American groups of the Eastern Woodlands.
1. Complex knowledge in an oral society will not be known and understood by all members of the society, any more than the knowledge of chemistry or physics is possessed by all citizens in a literate society. It will instead take the form of esoteric knowledge that is known only to a small number of people.
2. Such complex knowledge will be encoded by them in various forms of mnemonic devices such as visual charts, collections of objects, and iconographic images, as well as myths and songs.
3. The ability to interpret mnemonic devices is the key to the possession and preservation of the esoteric knowledge. That ability will be demonstrated in the society by both public and private interpretations by the "owners." The demonstrations will both affirm the performer's possession of the knowledge and aid in the retention and preservation of the lore. While the public interpretations will be ritual occasions that reiterate at least the basic beliefs of the society to all in attendance, the private interpretations will likely take the form of more intensive training of apprentices who have been chosen to be the next generation of bearers of the traditions.
4. Due largely to the public performances of the lore, most of the people in the society will know at least that the knowledge exists, even if their own understanding of it is sketchy. The society's retention of the knowledge, however, will depend upon the transmission process of passing on detailed lore from master to apprentice. In order to be effective and trustworthy, the process itself must be a good educational system, and the rewards for becoming a master must be great enough that the best minds of the society will dedicate themselves to the process of learning from the master.
5. In the light of this process of retaining knowledge in an oral traditional society, it seems clear that the stability and security of the lore depend on two primary factors-the number of people who bear the knowledge at any given time and the ability of each bearer to pass on his or her knowledge to one or more competent successors. To the extent to which the transmission chain is reduced in size or suffers broken links, the society's knowledge is endangered. In an oral traditional society, the corps of bearers is the core of the knowledge.
From these principles of the preservation of knowledge within a traditional society it is not difficult to envision the dynamics of a process by which specialized knowledge can be lost. The basic factor is death. The death of tradition bearers by definition reduces the central corps, and if their deaths are sudden and unexpected, it is likely that the transmission chain will be broken before the next links can be forged. The chain is even more fragile if a particular tradition is owned by only one person. If a society undergoes a catastrophe in which a great number of the possessors of the esoteric knowledge die in a short period of time, there is a strong probability that some significant chunks of the lore will be permanently lost. The mnemonic devices will still exist, along with the general awareness of the existence of the knowledge, but the preservation of the lore will depend solely on the ability of the survivors to interpret the mnemonics or create a usable reinterpretation of them.
Could such catastrophes have happened in the Native American past? Was there a disastrous loss of the traditions, by the death of those entrusted with them? Here are three provocative possibilities of such destruction of knowledge, one each from the Shawnee, the Cherokee, and the Creek (Muskogee) (Figure 1.1). Since this material is largely from the already published work of three scholars, Noel Schutz, Raymond Fogelson, and Joel Martin, I will merely summarize their presentations in brief form.
Shawnee
In a lengthy analysis of Shawnee myths in general, Noel Schutz used as a major focus a myth of which versions had been recorded for a century and a half. The earliest text was by Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee Prophet, in 1824, and there is another early 19th-century text. Three more versions were collected by C. F. Voegelin in 1933-34, and Schutz himself collected another in 1972. He referred to versions that have been recorded from the Cheyenne, Creek, Koasati, Alabama, Hitchiti, and Yuchi (Schutz 1975:147-175; Kroeber 1900:184; Swanton 1929:36-38.) Additional texts are known from the Caddo, Pawnee, Crow, and Dakota (Dorsey 1905:81; Gatschet 1889; Lowie 1918:220-222; Dorsey 1889:136).
Although the details change from text to text, in the usual manner of myths in oral tradition, the basic plot seems stable and the myth is readily recognizable. The plot is as follows:
A small group of men were hunting together when they happened upon a giant turtle. Deciding to take a ride, all but one of the men climbed on the shell. After a while the turtle came to a body of water and walked steadily into it. When the men tried to leap down, they discovered that they were stuck to the shell, and they were carried into the water to their deaths. When the lone survivor carried the news of what had happened back to the town, the leaders decided to take their vengeance. Armed with their own magical powers, as well as the first menstrual blood of a young woman of the tribe, the doctors went to the body of water and began their singing, calling the turtle. A series of underwater creatures (ranging from snakes to fish to turtles to alligators) came to the surface and were slain by the power of the menstrual blood. They were resuscitated by the doctors and sent back into the depths, since they were not the one responsible for the deaths. Finally the head water manito (the horned water serpent, in the Shawnee Prophet's version) came to the surface and was likewise slain by the blood. They burned his body, and many of the people took portions of his flesh to use as power sources in their sacred bundles. "Thus was created the evil power of the witch bundles."
Schutz considered this myth, if not originated by the Shawnee, at least to be basic to their belief system. "[I]t is my contention that the origin of witchcraft motif in the myth is no mere aetiological addendum by the Shawnee, but is an integral part of the myth which attests to its authenticity" (Schutz 1975:180). His analysis demonstrates an important dimension of the Shawnee self-understanding. Their national life is caught in the tension between benevolent power, as manifested in the tribal bundle and in the personal spirit guides of its leaders, and malevolent power, which is focused in the witch bundles kept by individuals who wield their powers against others in the society. The source of the power of the witches is the flesh of the primordial horned water serpent, gathered in the mythic dawn times (Schutz 1975:196).
I contend that it is the purpose of this myth to explain not merely the origin of witchcraft among the Shawnee, but the fact that despite the power invested in the Shawnee by the Great Spirit, and despite his (her) favour, there exist forces of disorder which threaten an end to the Shawnee, and thus to human society-bringing about the end of the world. The weapon used by the Shawnee in their battle is the sacred power invested in them by the Great Spirit in the form of the tribal palladium or bundle.... The opposition of the monster serpent continues from within society by those who possess witchcraft bundles in which a piece of the serpent's flesh is kept-still alive after thousands of years. [Schutz 1975:209-210]
It is noteworthy that the tension inherent in the Underwater spirit's role as the source of both good and wicked medicine is reflected in the Central Algonkian Manabozho myth in which the Water Spirits are the origin of the Mide Society and are also thought to be sources of negative power. With a change of personae this same ambivalence is embedded in the Cherokee myth of the killing of the giant Stone Coat, from whose burned body comes power objects used for good or ill (Speck and Broom 1983:13-18). This myth, Schutz argued, is the explanation of the quite real tension and violence that exist between factions within Shawnee society, labeled in the particular situation as followers of the path established by the Great Spirit versus "witches." The existence of witchcraft and witches was a firm belief, and doubt was strongly suppressed, he pointed out. In his comparative examination of other peoples' versions of the myth, particularly those from the Muskogee (Creek, Alabama, Koasati, Hitchiti) of the Southeast among whom Shawnee had lived for many years during the historic period, Schutz concluded that the loss of detail and the lack of a central place in the mythic corpus of those groups indicate the diffusion of the myth to them from the Shawnee. However, the other texts do not necessarily imply the same message about witchcraft, even if the Shawnees were the source of the narrative.
If the myth were the charter for the existence of witches among the Shawnee, what would be the social context for its use? Schutz suggested that the ongoing process of discovering and executing witches would have kept the myth in the heart of the corpus, but that special periods of religious turmoil, such as revitalization movements, would have called the myth to the fore, or even caused its creation. He pointed out that the political use of witchcraft accusation could be easily seen in the movement led by the Shawnee Prophet, who probably not incidentally provided the earliest text of the myth. In that movement, he pointed out, "older leaders who opposed the confederation which [the Prophet and Tecumseh] proposed found themselves tried and executed as witches." However, despite the connection between the myth and the revitalization movement of the early 19th century, Schutz concluded that the myth did not originate with the Shawnee Prophet, but was refined and used by him for his purposes. Instead, he argued, it may have been forged several decades earlier, when the Shawnee had been bested in wars with the Iroquois and had undergone a religious upheaval. "I hypothesize that one such [nativistic revitalization] movement in the late 17th century, involved in the wars with the Iroquois, formulated the structure of Shawnee mythology and other aspects of Shawnee culture as it existed at the earliest known period for which documentary evidence is available" (Schutz 1975:235).
For the purposes of the argument of this study, the conclusions do not need to be more precise. The identification of a series of revitalization movements beginning in the late 17th century and continuing sporadically for decades, culminating in the disastrous war with the United States in 1812, as the occasion for the execution of many "witches" provides a context for the destruction of knowledge among the Shawnee. The major insight into the process offered by Schutz's examination of the myths is that the religious dispute that is the heart of many revitalization movements may take the concrete focus of the elimination of some of the religious leaders, of whatever variety, under the aegis of purification from witchcraft.
One important aspect of the process, which was not discussed by Schutz, is the identity of the witches. Comparison with the religious structures of other Central Algonkian societies opens a fruitful avenue of understanding. The Shawnee witches received their power from the flesh of the Great Serpent, or underwater manitou. Their equivalent in societies such as the Ojibwa, to focus on but one well-recorded group of the Algonkian peoples of the Great Lakes area, was the respected shamanic doctors of the Mide Society, for they, too, derived their powers from the Great Serpent (for one among many sources on the Mide Society, see Smith 1995). If the Shawnee at an earlier period had been participants in the broader religious tradition of shamanism that is rooted in a relationship to the Great Serpent and other Beneath World powers, then they, like their sister Algonkian societies, would have had a significant number of religious leaders who possessed sacred bundles and esoteric knowledge. When the revitalization movements came, those specialists would have become the targets and been reidentified as "witches." Their elimination almost certainly would entail the loss of knowledge important in the society. In this scenario, the Shawnee myth Schutz analyzed would originally have explained the source of the power of a group of respected doctors in Shawnee society, but the myth would have been reworked in more recent times in order to explain the dark origin of a group of witches who were then deemed malevolent and executed as the religious upheavals occurred. Although speculative, this model provides a way of understanding how the destruction of knowledge among the Shawnee could have happened.
Cherokee
That same process has been discussed in regard to Cherokee history. In a provocative article two decades ago, Raymond Fogelson gathered the evidence for the violent extermination of a hereditary group of Cherokee leaders. The information came from 19th-century documentary sources, from early in the century to James Mooney's ethnographic work at the end, and those sources rested on still earlier oral tradition. Here is a brief summary of the evidence adduced by Fogelson.
In 1809 Major John Norton, an adopted Mohawk, visited the Cherokees to attempt to trace his own Cherokee ancestry. His journal included information gathered from a Cherokee informant who told him of the priestly men who presided over the Green Corn Dance and related rituals. He said that in his boyhood he recalled a New Fire ceremony in which the priest spoke in a barely intelligible dialect, reciting a migration legend and communicating religious information gained by a celestial journey to the Great Spirit. "This person was joined by many others in his office, their numbers greatly increased; their persons became sacred in the opinion of the people. They called themselves Anikanos." Because of their wickedness, however, the people rose up and put them all to death (Klinck and Talman 1970:79-80, in Fogelson 1984:257).
Charles R. Hicks, who became Principal Chief in 1827, earlier gave an oral tradition to John Haywood, who published it in 1823. Hicks claimed that their ancestors had "extirpated" a superior group of priestly people within the tribe because of the attempt by one of them to take the wife of the chief's brother (Haywood 1959:249). In 1826 Hicks wrote down the tradition in a letter to John Ross. He claimed that the Cherokee formerly recognized three ranks within society-the head man of a town (political chiefs?), "the Auh, ne coo tauh, nies," and the common people. The second group was composed of teachers of "Heavenly knowledge from the Creation" who were related to the New Fire, but "this order of men had exercised their offices to an extent that it became disagreeable and oppressive to the people," which led to their annihilation. Hicks speculated on whether the Aní-Kutánî were transformed or replaced by the "Jugglers and Doctors, for it is found in our days that the Jugglers and Doctors possess more knowledge of the Traditions of this nation than any others among the present race" (Letter in Ayer Collection, Newberry Library, quoted in Fogelson 1984:238).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Looking for Lost Lore by George E. Lankford Copyright © 2008 by The University of Alabama Press. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.