Oratory in Native North
America
William M. Clements
In Euroamerican annals of contact with
Native Americans, Indians have consistently been portrayed as master orators
who demonstrate natural eloquence during treaty negotiations, councils, and
religious ceremonies. Esteemed by early European commentators more than indigenous
storytelling, oratory was in fact a way of establishing self-worth among Native
Americans, and might even be viewed as their supreme literary achievement.
William Clements now explores the reasons
for the acclaim given to Native oratory. He examines in detail a wide range
of source material representing cultures throughout North America, analyzing
speeches made by Natives as recorded by whites, such as observations of treaty
negotiations, accounts by travelers, missionaries’ reports, captivity narratives,
and soldiers’ memoirs. Here is a rich documentation of oratory dating from
the earliest records: Benjamin Franklin’s publication of treaty proceedings
with the Six Nations of the Iroquois; the travel narratives of John Lawson,
who visited Carolina Indians in the early 1700s; accounts of Jesuit missionary
Pierre De Smet, who evangelized to Northern Plains Indians in the nineteenth
century; and much more. The book also includes full texts of several orations.
These texts are comprehensive documents
that report not only the contents of the speeches but the entirety of the delivery:
the textures, situations, and contexts that constitute oratorical events. While
there are valid concerns about the reliability of early recorded oratory given
the prejudices of those recording them, Clements points out that we must learn
what we can from that record. He extends the thread unwoven in his earlier study
Native American Verbal Art to show that the long history of textualization of
American Indian oral performance offers much that can reward the reader willing
to scrutinize the entirety of the texts. By focusing on this one genre of verbal
art, he shows us ways in which the sources are—and are not—valuable
and what we must do to ascertain their value.
Oratory in Native North America is a panoramic
work that introduces readers to a vast history of Native speech while recognizing
the limitations in premodern reporting. By guiding us through this labyrinth,
Clements shows that with understanding we can gain significant insight not only
into Native American culture but also into a rich storehouse of language and
performance art.
William M. Clements is Professor of English
and Folklore at Arkansas State University and the author of Native American
Verbal Art: Texts and Contexts, also published by the University of Arizona
Press.
August. 200 pp. 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
ISBN 0-8165-2182-4 $40.00s cloth
Salado Archaeology of the Upper Gila, New Mexico
Stephen H. Lekson
Salado is an enigma of the past. One of
the most spectacular cultures of the ancient Southwest, its brilliant polychrome
pottery has been subjected to varied interpretations, from religious cult to
artistic horizon. Stephen Lekson now uses data from two Salado sites—a
large pueblo and a small farmstead—to clarify long-standing misconceptions
about this culture. By combining analysis of the large whole- vessel collection
at Dutch Ruin with the scientific excavation of Villareal II, a picture of Salado
emerges that enables Lekson to evaluate previous competing theories and propose
that Salado represents a major fourteenth-century migration of Pueblo peoples
into the Chihuahuan deserts.
Lekson demonstrates that late, short-lived Salado farmsteads—difficult
to identify archaeologically in areas with larger Mimbres concentrations—coexisted
with larger Salado towns, and he argues that Salado in the Upper Gila region
appears as a substantial in-migration of Mogollon Uplands populations into what
was a vacant river valley. Throughout the fourteenth century, Salado communities
in the Upper Gila were integrated into the larger Salado horizon and were closely
connected to Casas Grandes, as indicated by the export of serpentine to the
city of Paquimé and the occurrence of Casas Grandes pottery at Upper
Gila Salado sites. The book includes illustrations of 71 vessels from Dutch
Ruin plus a full-color frontispiece.
Through analysis of these two sites, Lekson
has taken a large step toward clearing up the mystery of Salado. His work will
be welcomed by all who study the movements of peoples in the prehispanic Southwest.
“The Salado puzzle is a key problem in Southwest archaeology. This book
offers important substantive information and helps fill a major gap in our knowledge.”
—James M. Bayman, University of Hawaii
Stephen H. Lekson is Curator of Anthropology
at the University Museum, University of Colorado.
Anthropological Papers of the University of Arizona, No. 67
103 pp., 50 illustrations with color frontis
8-1/2 x 11
ISBN 0-8165-2222-7 $16.95s paper
Spanish American civilization developed over
several generations as Iberian-born settlers and their "New World"
descendants adapted Old World institutions, beliefs, and literary forms to diverse
American social contexts. Like their European forebears, criollos—descendants
of Spanish immigrants who called the New World home—preserved the memory
of persons of extraordinary Roman Catholic piety in a centuries-old literary
form known as the saint’s Life. These criollo religious biographies reflect
not only traditional Roman Catholic values but also such New World concerns
as immigration, racial mixing, and English piracy.
Ronald Morgan examines the collective function of the saint’s Life from
1600 to the end of the colonial period, arguing that this literary form served
not only to prove the protagonist’s sanctity and move the faithful to veneration
but also to reinforce sentiments of group pride and solidarity. When criollos
praised americano saints, he explains, they also called attention to their own
virtues and achievements. Morgan analyzes the printed hagiographies of five
New World holy persons: Blessed Sebastián de Aparicio (Mexico), St. Rosa de
Lima (Peru), St. Mariana de Jesús (Ecuador), Catarina de San Juan (Mexico),
and St. Felipe de Jesús (Mexico). Through close readings of these texts, he
explores the significance of holy persons as cultural and political symbols.
By highlighting this convergence of religious and sociopolitical discourse,
Morgan sheds important light on the growth of Spanish American self-consciousness
and criollo identity formation.
By focusing on the biographical process itself, Morgan demonstrates the importance
of reading each hagiographic text for its idiosyncrasies rather than its conventional
features. His work offers new insight into the Latin American cult of saints,
inviting scholars to look beyond the isolated lives of individuals to the cultural
and social milieus in which their sanctity originated and their public reputations
took shape.
Ronald J. Morgan is Assistant Professor of History at Biola University in La
Mirada, California.
March
250 pp., 15 illustrations
6 x 9
ISBN 0-8165-2140-9 $45.00s cloth
One of the largest archaeological projects
ever undertaken in North America, Peabody Coal Company’s Black Mesa Archaeological
Project conducted investigations in northeastern Arizona from 1967 to 1983.
This mammoth undertaking recognized and recovered the remains of ephemeral camps,
early agricultural sites, Puebloan villages, and Navajo settlements stretching
over nearly ten millennia of human occupation.
Now a single comprehensive work summarizes the results of this intensive survey,
excavation, and analysis. Prehistoric Culture Change on the Colorado Plateau
offers the only complete synthesis of Kayenta-area archaeology as well as the
single most intensive study of the ancestral Puebloan and Navajo occupation
of the Four Corners region. It also provides the human context for more than
two decades of theoretical, methodological, and empirical work.
The authors—all associated with the Black Mesa project—synthesize
previous analyses of faunal, lithic, ceramic, chronometric, and human osteological
data, weaving a coherent and compelling story of the prehistory and ethnohistory
of northern Arizona. Through these data, they provide a summary of culture history
which emphasizes that organizational variation and other aspects of culture
change are largely a response to a changing natural environment.
The volume provides a systematic overview of human occupation on and around
Black Mesa through time, beginning with the Paleoindian period, moving through
the Archaic and Basketmaker periods, considering the Puebloan dispersion and
the magnificent remains of the Pueblo III period, and culminating with Hopi
and Navajo perspectives on their history. The authors examine relationships
among population density, subsistence strategies, and social organization, and
use these data to identify the regional context within which the Black Mesa
people may have operated during different time periods.
Broad in scope with a wealth of supporting detail, Prehistoric Culture Change
on the Colorado Plateau offers a basic reference on this important project that
collects twenty years of analysis into one volume. It is a unique touchstone
in Southwest archaeology that will stand as the last word on Black Mesa.
Shirley Powell directed the Black Mesa Archaeological Project between 1978 and
1987 and is currently a principal investigator with Archaeological Consulting
Services in Tempe, Arizona. Francis E. Smiley is Professor and Chair of Anthropology
at Northern Arizona University.
April
240 pp., 10 halftones, 68 line illus.
8 1/2 x 11
ISBN 0-8165-1439-9 $50.00s cloth
Dan L. Fischer
With its colorful landscape and wonderful diversity of plant and animal communities, the southwestern borderlands have attracted naturalists for centuries. As Col. Thomas Henry noted in 1853, there “are to be found many curious birds, peculiar to the country.” This book identifies more than 100 early ornithologists and explorers who entered the Southwest from 1528 to 1900, all of whom have contributed in significant ways to our understanding of the region’s avian life.
Dan Fischer identifies those individuals who documented the natural history of the Southwest and summarizes their contributions to our knowledge about the region’s birds—particularly through discovering and naming them. He tells why the ornithologists came to the region, what they saw, who described and named the new discoveries, and who were the first to sketch or paint new birds.
Beginning with accounts of the earliest Spanish explorers such as Cabeza de Vaca and Coronado, Fischer considers all who visited the region through the end of the nineteenth century, including such renowned naturalists as William Gambel, John McCown, Adolphus Heermann, Elliott Coues, Charles Bendire, and Henry Henshaw. In between, he recalls English mining speculators, French traders, army explorers, railroad surveyors, and more—all of whom contributed to ornithological knowledge.
Although focusing on ornithologists, Fischer’s text reveals the wonderful variety of avian species in the region and their relationship with human history. Featuring a comprehensive bibliography, illustrations, and maps that portray the westward march of exploration, it is a major sourcebook for southwestern ornithology and an essential volume for anyone interested in birds.
For more than fifty years, Dan Fischer has traveled the Southwest, pursuing and photographing birds. He lives in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona.
Southwest Center Series
November
280 pp., 20 illus., 1 map
6 x 9
ISBN 0-8165-2149-2 $45.00s cloth
Edited by David A. Gregory
Excavations in the Santa Cruz floodplain in 1995 provided important new data concerning the latter centuries of the Early Agricultural period (ca. 1500 B.C.?A.D. 150) in southern Arizona. This volume describes investigations at Los Pozos, an extensive distribution of pit structures and associated extramural features occupied in the interval immediately preceding the arrival of pottery in the southern Southwest. The materials reported here provide important new perspectives on the lifeways of these preceramic foragers-farmers.
Forty-two pit structures and numerous extramural features were excavated at the site, the latter including several remarkable wells for which the site is named. Nineteen AMS radiocarbon determinations firmly bracket the occupation between 300 B.C. and A.D. 100.
The volume includes detailed analyses of the extensive material culture assemblages recovered from the site—including flaked stone, ground stone, bone tools, and rare "incipient plain ware" ceramics. Subsistence practices are revealed through analyses of hundreds of flotation samples, as well as examination of the abundant and varied faunal assemblage. The current chronology for the Early Agricultural period is evaluated and revised in light of the new data from Los Pozos, and a summary chapter examines trend and variation during the period.
David A. Gregory is a staff archaeologist
at Desert Archaeology, Inc. He has thirty years experience in Arizona archaeology
and has directed numerous projects in the Phoenix and Tucson basins.
Distributed for the Center for Desert
Archaeology
Anthropological Papers No. 21
375 pp., 157 illus.
8-1/2 x 11
ISBN 1-886398-33-X $24.95s paper
July 26, 2002