New Voices for Old Words: Algonquian Oral Literatures (Studies in the Anthropology of North American Indians)

New Voices for Old Words is a collection of previously unpublished Algonquian oral traditions featuring historical narratives, traditional stories, and legends that were gathered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The collection presents them here in their original languages with new English-language translations. Accompanying essays explain the importance of the original texts and their relationships to the early researchers who gathered and, in some cases, actively influenced these texts. Covering the northeast United States, eastern Canada, the Great Lakes region, and the Great Plains, the Algonquian languages represented in New Voices for Old Words include Gros Ventre, Peoria, Arapaho, Meskwaki, Munsee-Delaware, Potawatomi, and Sauk. All of these languages are either endangered or have lost their last speakers; for several of them no Native text has ever been published. This volume presents case studies in examining and applying such principles as ethnopoetics to the analysis of traditional texts in several languages of the Algic language family. These studies show how much valuable linguistic and folkloric information can be recovered from older texts, much of it information that is no longer obtainable from living sources. The result is a groundbreaking exploration of Algonquian oral traditions that are given a new voice for a new generation. Foreword -- Introduction / David J. Costa -- Editing A Gros Ventre (white Clay) Text / Terry Brockie And Andrew Cowell -- Gros Ventre Text : The Gros Ventres Go To War -- Redacting Premodern Texts Without Speakers : The Peoria Story Of Wiihsakacaakwa / David J. Costa -- Peoria Text : Wiihsakacaakwa Aalhsoohkaakani (wiihsakacaakwa Story) / Obtained By Albert Gatschet From George Finley, Circa 1895 -- Editing And Using Arapaho-language Manuscript Sources : A Comparative Perspective / Andrew Cowell -- Arapaho Texts : A Name-changing Prayer / Collected By A.l. Kroeber From Cleaver Warden, 14 August 1899, Darlington, Oklahoma -- Highlighting Rhetorical Structure Through Syntactic Analysis : An Illustrated Meskwaki Text By Alfred Kiyana / Amy Dahlstrom -- Meskwaki Text : A Man Who Fasted Long Ago / Written By Alfred Kiyana, Ca. 1912 -- Three Nineteenth-century Munsee Texts : Archaisms, Dialect Variation, And Problems Of Textual Criticism / Ives Goddard -- Munsee Delaware Texts : A Youth And His Uncle / Written By Nelles Montour Of Hagersville, Ontario (ca. 1899) -- On Editing Bill Leaf's Meskwaki Texts / Lucy Thomason -- Meskwaki Text : Bill Leaf's Story Of Red-leggins -- Challenges Of Editing And Presenting The Corpus Of Potawatomi Stories / Told By Jim And Alice Spear To Charles Hockett / Laura Welcher -- Potawatomi Text : Jejakos Gigabé (crane Boy) / Told By Alice Spear To Charles Hockett, Forest County, Wisconsin, 13 May 1940 -- The Words Of Black Hawk : Restoring A Long-ignored Bilingual / Gordon Whittaker -- Sauk Text : The Nekanawîni ('my Words') Of Mahkatêwimeshikêhkêhkwa. Edited By David J. Costa. Published In Cooperation With The American Indian Studies Research Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington. Text In Various Algonquian Languages And In English Translation. Includes Index. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Covering the northeast United States, eastern Canada, the Great Lakes region, and the Great Plains, the Algonquian languages represented in New Voices for Old Words include Gros Ventre, Peoria, Arapaho, Meskwaki, Munsee-Delaware, Potawatomi, and Sauk. All of these languages are either endangered or have lost their last speakers; for several of them no Native text has ever been published. This volume presents case studies in examining and applying such principles as ethnopoetics to the analysis of traditional texts in several languages of the Algic language family. These studies show how much valuable linguistic and folkloric information can be recovered from older texts, much of it information that is no longer obtainable from living sources. The result is a groundbreaking exploration of Algonquian oral traditions that are given a new voice for a new generation."--Pub. desc A collection of previously unpublished Algonquian oral traditions featuring historical narratives, traditional stories, and legends that were gathered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They are presented in their original languages with new English-language translations. Accompanying essays explain the importance of the original texts.