The Oral Literature of the Crow Indians

7 HE unwritten of the Crow Indians comprises several distinct genres. There is poetry in the form of religious, marital, and satirical songs. Prayers and orations represent poetical prose; myths and folktalesnot always distinguishable-are forms of fiction. One must also include tales of personal adventure, topical stories, and historical narratives, for all three admit of distinctly literary effects.1 Crow literature cannot, of course, be divorced from everyday speech, which is full of figurative locutions and other tricks of style. Thus, in compensation for a prayer uttered on his behalf, the young brave was wont to offer the aged suppliant a horse, but he would not tell him so outright. Instead, he was likely to say, Come, holding a rope (disbici'axpe kura'k hu), i.e., Bring a halter to lead away your horse. Again, a woman obliged to decline a ceremonial office that required an incumbent of flawless chastity confessed her unworthiness in the cryptic phrase, My moccasin has a hole in (basahpe' hupi'ky). To start from the other end, we find that nothing is more typical of Crow literary style than balanced structure, especially by way of antithesis, in many cases, in which English would be content with a simple affirmation. In the tales one hears such sentences as All were men, women there were none, or When you get to it, if you get to something hard, that is not it. If you get to something soft, put it into your bill. A supernatural being who has befriended a chief thus complains of his protdge's abuse of power: 'Try to benefit your people,' I said to him. 'Take away and own their desirable property,' I did not 'Kill them continually,' I did not say. However, in principle, this is merely the way a Crow Indian speaks in daily life. On my first visit to the reservation (1907), I encountered the term Dog, which denotes a man tired of life who sought death at the hands of the enemy. However, the phrase has two additional meanings. It designates a chapter of the Tobacco Planting Society and also a modern organization patterned on the old military clubs. I recall approximately the phrasing of a relevant question by my interpreter in pumping an old informant: Tobacco Crazy Dogs-those not; The Crazy Dog Societythat not; the Crazy Dogs who want to die-those I want to know about. Similarly, in giving directions to a wayfarer, a Crow speaks exactly like a Dakota described by Ella Deloria.2 He will not say, Go until you come to the third road branching off to the left. Instead, he says, You will go on for a while, and soon there will be a road branching off to the left; but

Genealogy · Archaeology and Natural History · Botany, Ecology, and Taxonomy Studies · History

• The way of winds

  Sari Breitenfeldt Dersam, Scott W Dersam•Hunter Gatherer Research•2019

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