Arapaho Women's Quillwork
Arapaho Women's Quillwork

Author: Jeffrey D. Anderson

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2013-02-11

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0806188855

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More than a hundred years ago, anthropologists and other researchers collected and studied hundreds of examples of quillwork once created by Arapaho women. Since that time, however, other types of Plains Indian art, such as beadwork and male art forms, have received greater attention. In Arapaho Women’s Quillwork, Jeffrey D. Anderson brings this distinctly female art form out of the darkness and into its rightful spotlight within the realms of both art history and anthropology. Beautifully illustrated with more than 50 color and black-and-white images, this book is the first comprehensive examination of quillwork within Arapaho ritualized traditions. Until the early twentieth century and the disruption of removal, porcupine quillwork was practiced by many indigenous cultures throughout North America. For Arapahos, quillwork played a central role in religious life within their most ancient and sacred traditions. Quillwork was manifest in all life transitions and appeared on paraphernalia for almost all Arapaho ceremonies. Its designs and the meanings they carried were present on many objects used in everyday life, such as cradles, robes, leanback covers, moccasins, pillows, and tipi ornaments, liners, and doors. Anderson demonstrates how, through the action of creating quillwork, Arapaho women became central participants in ritual life, often studied as the exclusive domain of men. He also shows how quillwork challenges predominant Western concepts of art and creativity: adhering to sacred patterns passed down through generations of women, it emphasized not individual creativity, but meticulous repetition and social connectivity—an approach foreign to many outside observers. Drawing on the foundational writings of early-nineteenth-century ethnographers, extensive fieldwork conducted with Northern Arapahos, and careful analysis of museum collections, Arapaho Women’s Quillwork masterfully shows the importance of this unique art form to Arapaho life and honors the devotion of the artists who maintained this tradition for so many generations.

Hide, Wood, and Willow
Hide, Wood, and Willow

Author: Deanna Tidwell Broughton

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2019-06-13

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 0806163194

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For centuries indigenous communities of North America have used carriers to keep their babies safe. Among the Indians of the Great Plains, rigid cradles are both practical and symbolic, and many of these cradleboards—combining basketry and beadwork—represent some of the finest examples of North American Indian craftsmanship and decorative art. This lavishly illustrated volume is the first full-length reference book to describe baby carriers of the Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and many other Great Plains cultures. Author Deanna Tidwell Broughton, a member of the Oklahoma Cherokee Nation and a sculptor of miniature cradles, draws from a wealth of primary sources—including oral histories and interviews with Native artists—to explore the forms, functions, and symbolism of Great Plains cradleboards. As Broughton explains, the cradle was vital to a Native infant’s first months of life, providing warmth, security, and portability, as well as a platform for viewing and interacting with the outside world for the first time. Cradles and cradleboards were not only practical but also symbolic of infancy, and each tribe incorporated special colors, materials, and ornaments into their designs to imbue their baby carriers with sacred meaning. Hide, Wood, and Willow reveals the wide variety of cradles used by thirty-two Plains tribes, including communities often ignored or overlooked, such as the Wichita, Lipan Apache, Tonkawa, and Plains Métis. Each chapter offers information about the tribe’s background, preferred types of cradles, birth customs, and methods for distinguishing the sex of the baby through cradle ornamentation. Despite decades of political and social upheaval among Plains tribes, the significance of the cradle endures. Today, a baby can still be found wrapped up and wide-eyed, supported by a baby board. With its blend of stunning full-color images and detailed information, this book is a fitting tribute to an important and ongoing tradition among indigenous cultures.

The Four Hills of Life
The Four Hills of Life

Author: Jeffrey D. Anderson

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780803260214

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For more than a century, the Northern Arapaho people have lived on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming—the fourth largest reservation in the country. In The Four Hills of Life, Jeffrey D. Anderson masterfully draws together aspects of the Northern Arapahos’ world—myth, language, art, ritual, identity, and history—to offer a vivid picture of a culture that has endured and changed over time. Anderson shows that Northern Arapaho unity and identity from the nineteenth century on derive primarily from a shared system of ritual practices that transmit vital cultural knowledge. He also provides an in-depth study of the problems that Euro-American society continues to impose on reservation life and of the responses of the Northern Arapahos.

Encyclopedia Of American Indian Costume
Encyclopedia Of American Indian Costume

Author: Josephine Paterek

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1996-03-05

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 9780393313826

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A beautifully produced and illustrated (bandw) reference that offers complete descriptions and cultural contexts of the dress and ornamentation of the North American Indian tribes. The volume is divided into ten cultural regions, with each chapter giving an overview of the regional clothing. Individual tribes of the area follow in alphabetical order. Tribal information includes men's basic dress, women's basic dress, footwear, outer wear, hair styles, headgear, accessories, jewelry, armor, special costumes, garment decoration, face and body embellishment, transitional dress after European contact, and bibliographic references. Appendices include a description of clothing arts and a glossary. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Greater Plains
The Greater Plains

Author: Brian Frehner

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2021-07

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 1496225074

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This collection of essays represents an attempt to move beyond degradation and exploitation as the defining ecological narratives of the Great Plains by examining the region through the interrelated themes of water, grasses, animals, and energy.

The Arapaho Way
The Arapaho Way

Author: Sara Wiles

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2019-10-31

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0806166096

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“The sun, the moon, the seasons, our Arapaho way of life,” writes foreworder Jordan Dresser. “When you look around, you see circles everywhere. And that includes the lens Sara Wiles uses to capture these intimate moments of our Arapaho journeys.” In The Arapaho Way, Wiles returns to Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation, whose people she so gracefully portrayed in words and photographs in Arapaho Journeys (2011). She continues her journey of discovery here, photographing the lives of contemporary Northern Arapaho people and listening to their stories that map the many roads to being Arapaho. In more than 100 pictures, taken over the course of thirty-five years, and Wiles’s accompanying essays, the history of individuals and their culture unfold, revealing a continuity, as well as breaks in the circle. Mixing traditional ways with new ideas—Catholicism, ranching, cowboying, school learning, activism, quilting, beadwork, teaching, family life—the people of Wind River open a rich world to Wiles and her readers. These are people like Helen Cedartree, who artfully combines Arapaho ways with the teaching of the mission boarding schools she once attended; like the Underwood family, who live off the land as gardeners and farmers and value family and hard work above everything; and like Ryan Gambler and Fred Armajo, whose love of horses and ranching keep them close to home. And there are others who have ventured into the non-Indian world, people like James Large, who brings home tenets of Indian activism learned in Denver. There are also, inevitably, visions of violence and loss as The Arapaho Way depicts the full life of the Wind River Indian Reservation, from the traditional wisdom of the elder to the most forward-looking youth, from the outer reaches of an ancient culture to the last-minute challenges of an ever-changing world.

Arapaho Stories, Songs, and Prayers
Arapaho Stories, Songs, and Prayers

Author: Andrew Cowell

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2014-08-25

Total Pages: 571

ISBN-13: 0806147814

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Many of these narratives, gathered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were obtained or published only in English translation. Although this is the case with many Arapaho stories, extensive Arapaho-language texts exist that have never before been published—until now. Arapaho Stories, Songs, and Prayers gives new life to these manuscripts, celebrating Arapaho oral narrative traditions in all the richness of their original language.

Naming the World
Naming the World

Author: Andrew Cowell

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2018-11-13

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0816539065

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Naming the World examines language shift among the Northern Arapaho of the Wind River Reservation, Wyoming, and the community’s diverse responses as it seeks social continuity. Andrew Cowell argues that, rather than a single “Arapaho culture,” we find five distinctive communities of practice on the reservation, each with differing perspectives on social and more-than-human power and the human relationships that enact power. As the Arapaho people resist Euro-American assimilation or domination, the Arapaho language and the idea that the language is sacred are key rallying points—but also key points of contestation. Cowell finds that while many at Wind River see the language as crucial for maintaining access to more-than-human power, others primarily view the language in terms of peer-oriented identities as Arapaho, Indian, or non-White. These different views lead to quite different language usage and attitudes in relation to place naming, personal naming, cultural metaphors, new word formation, and the understudied practice of folk etymology. Cowell presents data from conversations and other natural discourse to show the diversity of everyday speech and attitudes, and he links these data to broader debates at Wind River and globally about the future organization of indigenous societies and the nature of Arapaho and indigenous identity.

God's Red Son
God's Red Son

Author: Louis S. Warren

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2017-04-04

Total Pages: 477

ISBN-13: 0465098681

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The definitive account of the Ghost Dance religion, which led to the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 Winner of the Bancroft Prize in American History In 1890, on Indian reservations across the West, followers of a new religion danced in circles until they collapsed into trances. In an attempt to suppress this new faith, the US Army killed over two hundred Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek. In God's Red Son, historian Louis Warren offers a startling new view of the religion known as the Ghost Dance, from its origins in the visions of a Northern Paiute named Wovoka to the tragedy in South Dakota. To this day, the Ghost Dance remains widely mischaracterized as a primitive and failed effort by Indian militants to resist American conquest and return to traditional ways. In fact, followers of the Ghost Dance sought to thrive in modern America by working for wages, farming the land, and educating their children, tenets that helped the religion endure for decades after Wounded Knee. God's Red Son powerfully reveals how Ghost Dance teachings helped Indians retain their identity and reshape the modern world.

Wives and Husbands
Wives and Husbands

Author: Loretta Fowler

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2012-10-01

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 0806185597

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In Wives and Husbands, distinguished anthropologist Loretta Fowler deepens readers’ understanding of the gendered dimension of cultural encounters by exploring how the Arapaho gender system affected and was affected by the encounter with Americans as government officials, troops, missionaries, and settlers moved west into Arapaho country. Fowler examines Arapaho history from 1805 to 1936 through the lens of five cohorts, groups of women and men born during different year spans. Through the life stories of individual Arapahos, she vividly illustrates the experiences and actions of each cohort during a time when Americans tried to impose gender asymmetry and to undermine the Arapahos’ hierarchical age relations. Fowler examines the Arapaho gender system and its transformations by considering the partnerships between, rather than focusing on comparisons of, women and men. She argues that in particular cohorts, partnerships between women and men — both in households and in the community — shaped Arapahos’ social and cultural transformations while they struggled with American domination. Over time Arapahos both reinforced and challenged Arapaho hierarchies while accommodating and resisting American dominance. Fowler shows how, in the process of reconfiguring their world, Arapahos confronted Americans by uniting behind strategies of conciliation in the early nineteenth century, of civilization in the late nineteenth century, and of confrontation in the early twentieth century. At the same time, women and men in particular cohorts were revamping Arapaho politico-religious ideas and organizations. Gender played a part in these transformations, giving shape to new leadership traditions and other adaptations.