A01=Louis F. Burns
American Indians
archaeology
artifacts
Author_Louis F. Burns
Category=JBGB
Category=JBSL11
ceramics
ceremonial complex
climate
Early Archaic
Eastern United States
environment
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
excavations
farming
fauna
fishing
geology
habitats
hunting
Indigenous societies
material culture
Middle Archaic
Middle Woodland
migration
mounds
Native Americans
Paleoindians
plants
Pleistocene
pottery
projectile points
public archaeology
settlement
shell middens
shellfish
southeastern archaeology
subsistence
violence
warfare
water transportation
Woodland period
Product details
- ISBN 9780817351816
- Weight: 400g
- Dimensions: 145 x 241mm
- Publication Date: 02 Jan 2005
- Publisher: The University of Alabama Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Slouan peoples who migrated from the Atlantic coastal region and settled in the central portion of the North American continent long before the arrival of Europeans are now known as Osage. Because the Osage did not possess a written language, their myths and cultural traditions were handed down orally through many generations. With time, only those elements deemed vital were preserved in the stories, and many of these became highly stylised. The resulting verbal recitations of the proper life of an Osage - from genesis myths to body decoration, from star songs to child-naming rituals, from war party strategies to medicinal herbs - constitute this comprehensive volume. Osage myths differ greatly from the myths of Western Civilization, most obviously in the absence of individual names. Instead, ""younger brother,"" ""the messenger,"" ""Little Old Men,"" or a clan name may serve as the allegorical embodiment of the central player. Individual heroic feats are also missing because group life took precedence over individual experience in Osage culture. This volume supplements the work of noted ethnographer Francis La Flesche who devoted most of his professional life to recording detailed descriptions of Osage rituals. Louis Burns's unique position as a modern Osage - aware of the white culture's expectations but steeped in the traditions himself and able to write from an insider's perspective - makes this work valuable to scholar and layperson alike.
Louis F. Burns, of Osage-French-Scottish heritage, is a member of the Mottled Eagle Clan and author of 6 books, including A History of the Osage People.
