Donald Bahr
Biographic Data
| ID | 3621641 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Donald Bahr |
| GIVEN NAMES | Donald |
| FAMILY NAME | Bahr |
| SIGNATURE | BAHR D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Arizona State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 51 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 68 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Owens Valley Epics
One of the best-studied, least-discussed texts of Native American oral literature is a long Mojave “epic” taken down from a man named Inyo-kutavere by Alfred Kroeber in 1902 and published in 1951. The Mojaves live along the Colorado River at the border of today’s states of Arizona and California. For his publication Kroeber condensed the text from an estimated one hundred thousand Mojave words to about thirty-five thousand words in English. The M…
O'odham Creation and Related Events, As Told to Ruth Benedict in 1927 in Prose, Oratory, and Song by the Pimas William Blackwater, Thomas Vanyiko, Clara Ahiel, William Stevens, Oliver Wellington, and …
O'odham Creation and Related Events, As Told to Ruth Benedict in 1927 in Prose, Oratory, and Song by the Pimas William Blackwater, Thomas Vanyiko, Clara Ahiel, William Stevens, Oliver Wellington, and Kisio. Edited by Donald Bahr, Foreword by Barbara Babcock. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2001. Pp. $45.00 cloth) desert landscape of southern Arizona is home to the Akimel and Tohono O'odham, also known as the Pimas and the Papagos, both well…
Bad News
This article holds that native American communities generally did not produce and maintain stories of white and Indian relations, in other words,the sort of stories that loom large in the writings of ethnohistorians. What the communities traditionally produced instead were myths and mythologies about an ancient Edenic time before normal human procreation and marriage. The article also holds that the main influence on the content of mythologies wa…
Ants and Orioles
Ants and Orioles
Two-Spirit People
The Short Swift Time of Gods on Earth
The invented Indian
The Whore
This chapter explores a story of a footloose woman. Beyond its general continuity with the marital theme of the previous part, there is a particular shared item to point out. The name given for the woman's second father-in-law is Cadigum. Juan Smith and William Allison thought this was the name of a bird, but they did not know which. Thin Leather gave what is undoubtedly the same name either for a village companion (co-resident, not the same fami…
Feather Braided Chief and the Gambler
This chapter discusses the origin of war ceremonies. It is interesting that this origin occurs among the Hohokam. They are killed in Siuuhu's war, but in some sense also invented the practice. The chapter establishes that there has been neither warfare nor war ceremony in the mythology so far, that is, in the first nine stories. It defines that war is the intentional, face-to-face, bloodletting killing of a male by a male. Thus, war is men killin…
Conclusion
This chapter defines mythologies as a collection of texts, organized by one person, stating the origins of the things of this earth. Its defense is simple. In the first place, the Pima–Papago mythology intends to be historical, and the problem is to understand how it is so; that is, how it is preoccupied with Pima history and yet makes almost no reference to Pima and white relations. Second, except for a feeling conveyed by the narrative that wha…
Morning Green Chief and the Witch
This chapter shows that there are two, or really a negation of women giving birth and an irregular affirmation. The negation is in the flood myth. A woman thwarts her one-night-stand husband and causes him to give birth. The irregularity is the wife of Corn who gives birth normally but after an irregular impregnation, by eating a worm. The whore has no children; parenting is not the point of that story; footlooseness is. The mythology, then, is t…
Prelude, the Font Text
New Creation and Corn
Genesis
The Flood
The flood in this chapter is caused by an abnormality in sexual relations. Worlds or creations were ended because of eating one's own kind, that is, cannibalism, and because of two seemingly more minor abnormalities in aging: the progressively earlier onset of greyness and tobacco smoking. Here the abnormality is the ever-shorter length of pregnancies, that is, of the time period between making love and giving birth. The flood is caused by nothin…
After the Conquest
This chapter discusses just one text given to supplement Juan Smith and William Allison, which is from the long but poorly recorded Mattias Hendricks version of the conquest. It describes the death of an old woman among the conquerors, and is clearly the same story as Smith–Allison's. Thin Leather lacks a version of it. The chapter includes it to show that more narrators than Smith–Allison follow the conquest, which is almost bloodless for the vi…
Origin of Wine and Irrigation
This chapter explores two myths, the first of which is really an adjunct to the stories on farming and family life. It gives the origin of the cactus wine ceremony, a topic that was treated at the end of the Thin Leather Corn and Tobacco text. The cactus wine ritual is for the purpose of bringing rain, which is best seen in the chanted or orated speeches that are given during the event. Wine feast speeches sometimes also mention drinking, and the…
The Conquest Until Buzzard
This chapter explores three more parts in the mythology, two on the conquest and a final one in which the victorious Pima–Papago experience their first individualized death and then meet an insuperable enemy to the west of Hohokam country. With Mattias Hendricks and Juan Dolores to remind us of the diversity in conquest narratives, the chapter reviews the key points held in common by the two longest and richest versions, Juan Smith and William Al…
The Short, Swift Time of Gods on Earth
In the spring of 1935, at Snaketown, Arizona, two Pima Indians recounted and translated their entire traditional creation narrative. Juan Smith, reputedly the last tribesman with extensive knowledge of the Pima version of this story, spoke and sang while William Smith Allison translated into English and Julian Hayden, an archaeologist, recorded Allison's words verbatim. The resulting document, the “Hohokam Chronicles,” is the most complete native…
Native American Dream Songs, Myth, Memory and Improvisation
Chants du rêve, mythe, mémoire et improvisation chez les Indiens d'Amérique du Nord. Au cœur de l'Ouest américain, il existe une ancienne tradition régionale de chants du rêve à caractère poétique. Le présent travail examine cette tradition en tant que littérature orale fondée sur l'exercice de la mémoire. Il présente et développe un exemple de chants dont le sujet est un avion, en reprenant une idée, énoncée il y a déjà longtemps, selon laquelle…
Whither T-himdag
This article was requested by me in the fall of 1991, after I learned of William Willard's plans for this journal issue. The request Frank Lewis was made by telephone, as Frank lived near Los Angeles and I lived near Phoenix. Between Christmas and New Year's, we met in his home village in Arizona, where Frank had come for a visit. It was agreed that he would plan out the ideas, speak the article in Papago (or Tohono O'odham) into a tape recorder,…
Interpreting Sacramental Systems
This paper, which uses the ideas of transformation and sacrament to understand White and Indian religious relations, was written to honor the ethnohistorian Harold Hickerson.1 Thus it deals with the religious and cultural frontier that interested him, that between the Chippewas and Europeans in today's Wisconsin and Minnesota from the 17th to the late 19th centuries. Specifically, I will interpret the Chippewa midewiwin ceremony, which Hickerson …
A Grey and Fervent Shamanism
This essay treats three instances of shamanic sung poetry : from the contemporary Pima-Papago, the early 20th century Shoshone, and the 16th century Aztecs. The object is to understand them as poetry and shamanism. The first example, being familiar to the author, is the easiest to interpret : dreamt poems concerned with ghosts and the end of the world. The second, from the famed Ghost dance religion, is found to be simpler as poetry but more thri…
Supplement to the Handbook of Middle Americans Indians Vol. 3
The Short, Swift Time of Gods on Earth
In the spring of 1935, at Snaketown, Arizona, two Pima Indians recounted and translated their entire traditional creation narrative. Juan Smith, reputedly the last tribesman with extensive knowledge of the Pima version of this story, spoke and sang while William Smith Allison translated into English and Julian Hayden, an archaeologist, recorded Allison's words verbatim. The resulting document, the “Hohokam Chronicles,” is the most complete native…
Song in Piman Curing
Two-Spirit People
Native American Architecture
For many people, Native American architecture calls to mind the wigwam, tipi, iglu, and pueblo. Yet the richly diverse building traditions of Native Americans encompass much more, including specific structures for sleeping, working, worshipping, meditating, playing, dancing, lounging, giving birth, decision-making, cleansing, storing and preparing food, caring for animals, and honoring the dead. In effect, the architecture covers all facets of In…
Piman Shamanism and Staying Sickness
Of Earth and Little Rain
Who Were the Hohokam? The Evidence from Pima-Papago Myths
A corpus of thirteen Pima-Papago myths is examined for historical evidence concerning the prehistoric Hohokam peoples in southern Arizona and concerning the origin of the Buzzard moiety among Pimans. It is suggested that most myths involving the Hohokam express a death and rebirth ideology which may have been influenced by any of four sources, including diffusion from central Mexico, an actual Hohokam conquest, Spanish expeditions in search of Ci…
Native American Dream Songs, Myth, Memory and Improvisation
Chants du rêve, mythe, mémoire et improvisation chez les Indiens d'Amérique du Nord. Au cœur de l'Ouest américain, il existe une ancienne tradition régionale de chants du rêve à caractère poétique. Le présent travail examine cette tradition en tant que littérature orale fondée sur l'exercice de la mémoire. Il présente et développe un exemple de chants dont le sujet est un avion, en reprenant une idée, énoncée il y a déjà longtemps, selon laquelle…
Bad News
This article holds that native American communities generally did not produce and maintain stories of white and Indian relations, in other words,the sort of stories that loom large in the writings of ethnohistorians. What the communities traditionally produced instead were myths and mythologies about an ancient Edenic time before normal human procreation and marriage. The article also holds that the main influence on the content of mythologies wa…
Ants and Orioles
The Golden Woman
A Format and Method for Translating Songs
Necessite d'analyser la forme musicale et le langage oral auxquels appartiennent les chansons avant de les traduire. L'A. propose une methode evoluant vers une traduction qui privilegie l'equilibre entre le sens et la forme
Piman Songs on Hunting
T his paper examines three sets of Piman (Pima-Papago) songs on hunting. 1 Each set is for the cure of a different kind of sickness. One is for 'deer sickness' (huawi mumkidag).2 Another, for 'jimsonweed sickness' (kotdopi mumkadag), has a deer as its central character and in effect tells a hunting story. The last, for 'cow sickness' (haiwaii mumkidag), is also a hunting story with cowboys and cows in the roles of hunters and hunted. The three se…
The invented Indian
"Pima-Papago -ga, "Alienability
Pima Swallow Songs
On the Complexity of Southwest Indian Emergence Myths
Chanted and prose versions of the Zuni and Pima emergence (or creation) stories are compared from the standpoints of literary complexity and narrative content. We show how the Pima have a more complex text than the Zuni instances under consideration, a fact which we attribute to the Zuni determination to render their emergence story in chanted form. The differences between prose and chant as southwestern literary genres are explored with a view t…
Ethnography and Ethnology
Western Apache Witchcraft
Who Were the Hohokam? The Evidence from Pima-Papago Myths
A corpus of thirteen Pima-Papago myths is examined for historical evidence concerning the prehistoric Hohokam peoples in southern Arizona and concerning the origin of the Buzzard moiety among Pimans. It is suggested that most myths involving the Hohokam express a death and rebirth ideology which may have been influenced by any of four sources, including diffusion from central Mexico, an actual Hohokam conquest, Spanish expeditions in search of Ci…
Development and Change
Piman Shamanism and Staying Sickness
On the Complexity of Southwest Indian Emergence Myths
Chanted and prose versions of the Zuni and Pima emergence (or creation) stories are compared from the standpoints of literary complexity and narrative content. We show how the Pima have a more complex text than the Zuni instances under consideration, a fact which we attribute to the Zuni determination to render their emergence story in chanted form. The differences between prose and chant as southwestern literary genres are explored with a view t…
Pima and Papago Ritual Oratory
Song in Piman Curing
Piman Songs on Hunting
T his paper examines three sets of Piman (Pima-Papago) songs on hunting. 1 Each set is for the cure of a different kind of sickness. One is for 'deer sickness' (huawi mumkidag).2 Another, for 'jimsonweed sickness' (kotdopi mumkadag), has a deer as its central character and in effect tells a hunting story. The last, for 'cow sickness' (haiwaii mumkidag), is also a hunting story with cowboys and cows in the roles of hunters and hunted. The three se…
Films
K. Basso. Portraits of “the Whiteman.”Cambridge, London, New York, and Melbourne
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Ethnology
The Whole Past In a Yavapai Mythology
INTRODUCTION\nThis paper stems from two concerns with a long history in Americanist anthropology, one the study of how individuals shape the intellectual life of their community, the other the study of myth "as history." They come together in the particular definition of "mythology" adopted for this paper, namely "all the texts that one narrator tells; his entire corpus of texts." We will discuss a corpus of 24 texts collected from the Yavapai Ji…
The Pima Bajo of central Sonora, Mexico, vol. 1
When It Rains
A Format and Method for Translating Songs
Necessite d'analyser la forme musicale et le langage oral auxquels appartiennent les chansons avant de les traduire. L'A. propose une methode evoluant vers une traduction qui privilegie l'equilibre entre le sens et la forme
Hopi
Of Earth and Little Rain
Two Issues in the Writing of American Indian History. A Review Article
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Anthropology of Space
"Pima-Papago -ga, "Alienability
Pima Swallow Songs
The Golden Woman
Sacred Language
Massacre on the Gila
History (33 works) · Art (23 works) · History (17 works) · Literature (16 works) · Computer Science (15 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Archaeology (11 works) · Mythology (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Citation (9 works)