The Calendar History of Kiowa Indians (Illustrated Edition). James Mooney
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Название: The Calendar History of Kiowa Indians (Illustrated Edition)
Автор: James Mooney
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Документальная литература
isbn: 9788027245888
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Aboriginal American Calendars
The peculiar and elaborate systems by means of which the more cultivated ancient nations of the south recorded their histories are too well known to students to need more than a passing notice here. It was known that our own tribes had various ways of depicting their mythology, their totems, or isolated facts in the life of the individual or nation, but it is only within a few years that it was even suspected that they could have anything like continuous historical records, even in embryo.
The fact is now established, however, that pictographic records covering periods of from sixty to perhaps two hundred years or more do, or did, exist among several tribes, and it is entirely probable that every leading mother tribe had such a record of its origin and wanderings, the pictured narrative being compiled by the priests and preserved with sacred care through all the shifting vicissitudes of savage life until lost or destroyed in the ruin that overwhelmed the native governments at the coming of the white man. Several such histories are now known, and as the aboriginal field is still but partially explored, others may yet come to light.
The Walam Olum of the Delawares
East of the Mississippi the most important and best known record is the Walam Olum or "red score" of the Delawares, originally discovered in 1820, and published by Dr D.G. Brinton in 1885. It consists of a series of pictographs designed to fix in memory the verses of a genesis and migration chant which begins with the mythic period and comes down to the advent of the whites about the year 1610. It appears to be genuine and ancient, although the written chant as we find it contains modern forms, having of course been reduced to writing within a comparatively recent period.
It is said that the Cherokee seventy years ago had a similar long tribal tradition which was recited by the priests on ceremonial occasions. If so, it was probably recorded in pictographs, but tradition and record alike are now lost.
The Dakota Calendars
West of the Mississippi the first extended Indian calendar history discovered was the "Lone-dog winter count," found among the Dakota by Colonel Garrick Mallery, and first published by him in 1877. This history of the Dakota was painted on a buffalo robe by Lone-dog, of the Yanktonai tribe of that confederacy, and extends over a period of seventy-one years, beginning in 1800. Subsequent investigation by Colonel Mallery brought to light several other calendars in the same tribe, some being substantially a copy of the first, others going back, respectively, to 1786, 1775, and the mythic period.
In all these Dakota calendars there is only a single picture for each year, with nothing to mark the division of summer and winter. As they call a year a "winter," and as our year begins in the middle of winter, it is consequently impossible, without some tally date from our own records, to know in which of two consecutive years any event occurred, i.e., whether before or after New Year. In this respect the Kiowa calendars here published are much superior to those of the Dakota.
Other Tribal Records
Clark, in his book on Indian sign-language, mentions incidentally that the Apache have similar picture histories, but gives no more definite information as concerns that tribe. He goes on to say that the Santee Sioux claim to have formerly kept a record of events by tying knots in a string, after the manner of the Peruvian quipu. By the peculiar method of tying and by means of certain marks they indicated battles and other important events, and even less remarkable occurrences, such as births, etc. He states that he saw among them a slender pole about 6 feet in length, the surface of which was completely covered with small notches, and the old Indian who had it assured him that it had been handed down from father to son for many generations, and that these notches represented the history of his tribe for more than a thousand years, going back, indeed, to the time when they lived near the ocean (Clark, 1).1 In this case the markings must have been suggestive rather than definite in their interpretation, and were probably used in connection with a migration chant similar to that of the Walam Olurn.
The Kiowa Calendars
The Annual Calendars of Dohásän, Poläñ´yi-katón, Set-t'an, and Anko
So far as known to the author, the Dakota calendars and the Kiowa calendars here reproduced are the only ones yet discovered among the prairie tribes. Dodge, writing in 1882, felt so confident that the Dakota calendar of Mallery was the only one ever produced by our Indians that he says, "I have therefore come to the conclusion that it is unique, that there is no other such calendar among Indians.... I now present it as a curiosity, the solitary effort to form a calendar ever made by the plains Indians" (Dodge, 1). Those obtained by the author among the Kiowa are three in number, viz: the Sett'an yearly calendar, beginning with 1833 and covering a period of sixty years; the Anko yearly calendar, beginning with 1864 and covering a period of twenty-nine years; and the Anko monthly calendar, covering a period of thirty-seven months. All these were obtained in 1892, and are brought up to that date. The discovery of the Anko calendars was an indirect result of having obtained the Sett'an calendar.
A fourth Kiowa calendar was obtained in the same year by Captain H. L. Scott, Seventh cavalry, while stationed at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on the Kiowa reservation, and was by him generously placed at the disposal of the author, together with all his notes bearing on the subject. This calendar was procured from Dohásän, "Little-bluff," nephew of the celebrated Dohásän who was head chief of the Kiowa tribe for more than thirty years. The nephew, who died in 1893 at an advanced age, told Captain Scott that the calendar had been kept in his family from his youth up, having originally been painted on hides, which were renewed from time to time as they wore out from age and handling. The calendar delivered by him to Scott is drawn with colored pencils on heavy manila paper, as is also the Sett'an calendar obtained by the author. In both, the pictographs are arranged in a continuous spiral, beginning in the lower right-hand corner and ending near the center, the rows of pictographs being separated from each other by a continuous spiral. In both, the winter is designated by means of an upright black bar, to indicate that vegetation was then dead, while summer is represented by means of the figure of the medicine lodge, the central object of the annual summer religious ceremony. The leading event of the season is indicated by means of a pictograph above or beside the winter mark or medicine lodge. In a few instances, in the earlier years, when the medicine dance was omitted, the event recorded for the summer is placed between the consecutive winter marks, without anything СКАЧАТЬ