Occasional Papers and Monographs in Cultural Anthropology and Linguistics

SHOSHONI TEXTS
 

Volume No. 2

Beverly Crum and Jon Dayley
(1997)
 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE:
This monograph is intended as a companion volume to our earlier work, Western Shoshoni Grammar.  It contains eight Shoshoni texts which were first given in oral form by eight different elderly native Shoshoni speakers and then later transcribed from tape-recordings and translated by the authors of the monograph. Seven of the texts are in Western Shoshoni spoken in and around the Duck Valley Reservation straddling the Idaho-Nevada border, and one is in Northern Shoshoni spoken in Eastern Idaho. The texts comprise a variety of genres and topics. One is a narrative on Shoshoni rites of passage; another on medicine, healing practices and healers; three others are prayers; two are folktales; and one is on place names. In addition, several of the texts contain prayer songs. At first glance, it might appear that the texts have little in common with each other except that they are all in Shoshoni. However, all of the texts have to do with Shoshoni spirituality and sacred outlook to one degree or another either directly or indirectly. For the Shoshoni, in some sense everything is sacred: the changes through life, medicine, healing practices and healers, prayers, songs and folktales, and this earth on which we all live, whatever particular place it may be. Songs and mythological stories in particular are regarded as very precious as they are passed down to the next generation of Shoshonis.

In terms of format, each of the texts is presented first entirely in Shoshoni, then followed by an idiomatic English translation, which is then followed by an interlinear word-by-word translation with English equivalents below each of the Shoshoni words.

The first chapter contains the text Nemikkante Newen Nahanna ' Shoshoni Rites of Passage'. Rites of passage are rituals that help people make the transition from one major phase of life to the next. These phases take place in the life cycle of nearly all human beings at birth, puberty , marriage, and death. Rights of passage rituals are performed in cultures throughout the world because these events involve other people, not just the individual undergoing the transition. A baby is born, matures into an adult, marries, and finally dies. However, he or she does so not alone but always with the involvement of other people.

Several years ago, Beverly Crum wrote a library research paper on Shoshoni rites of passage and sent copies to several relatives to critique. To her surprise two cousins sent back a tape in Shoshoni with their version of these rituals, based on the older cousin's personal experience and what she had heard through oral tradition from elder relatives and friends. Nemikkante Newen Nahanna is a transcription and translation of that tape, with only minor editorial changes. It contains a great deal of information on the rites of passage occurring during the major events in the lives of people in traditional Shoshoni culture and to some extent even today.

The second chapter is a narrative by Earl Crum, Beverly Crum's husband, entitled Newe Nattahsu'u(n) 'Shoshoni medicine'. It is about traditional medicine, healing practices and healers called puhakante(n), which literally means 'one having power' or puha. The word puhakante(n) can be variously translated in English as 'healer, medicine person, doctor, shaman'. As Earl mentions in the text, a puhakante(n) can be either a man or a woman. Several songs are included in the narrative, some of which Earl remembered from healing ceremonies held at his aunt's place when he was a boy on the Duck Valley Reservation. Part of the text on Shoshoni medicine is about Earl' s late brother, Ray. In the narrative, Earl gives the reader a sense of his family' s struggle to help Ray before he died of tuberculosis in the 1930s at the age of 21. At that time, highly contagious tuberculosis was a serious health problem for many Indian people.

In the third chapter, Tan Newe Nanisuntehaippeh 'Shoshoni Prayers', three women each offer a prayer. Like people of other cultures, Shoshonis also have a need to call for help beseeching powers beyond themselves, especially in times of stress. It should be mentioned that in the past Shoshonis did not have secret religious societies where sacred prayers were only intended for a limited number of people. Religious expressions and practices were open to the entire group; in other words, they were sacred but not secret. This same spirit of openness still prevails today.

In the winter time, Shoshoni people told folktales or mythological stories. Gifted storytellers related their stories to entertain and help educate the people. The entire family would gather around together to listen to stories like the two presented in chapters four and five: Itsappe Pem Paitem Ma'ai 'Coyote and His Daughter' and Tatapai Paikkappeh 'The One Who Killed the Sun'.

The setting of these folktales is in a mythological era when animals and sometimes inanimate things as well had human-like characteristics. They are often referred to as people, and they may have proper names like people. Beings in the mythological era could talk, boast, laugh, lie, and cheat, and they had human wit, emotions, desires, and shortcomings. They often cooked food, wore clothes, and had hands to make tools and build houses, and in general they did things much like people do. On the other hand, they also had their more normal animal (or thing-like) characteristics: coyotes had sharp teeth and howled, rabbits had long ears, buffalo had horns and fur, cranes had long legs, and the sun gave light and could bum you.

Folktales in the mythological era are in some ways quite different from stories in a literary tradition like that of Europe. This is not because animals and other things have human characteristics. The European tradition has animal tales too, for example, Aesop's fables as well as other folktales. But there are other reasons.

First, the tales don't necessarily build up to a major climax or have one central point. They tend to relate a series of incidents, one not necessarily more important than another. Very often a particular incident may explain how or why things got to be the way they are today; for example, why squirrels are scattered allover , why cottontails have brown blotches on certain parts of their bodies, why woodticks are flat, or why the sun makes enough light and goes down after a certain amount of time. There may also be a certain amount of subtle and indirect moralizing. For example, both Coyote and Cottontail are at once Tricksters and Culture Heros. They deceive other beings, may injure or kill them, and may disrupt the status quo in the mythological era. But in doing these things, often out of self-interest, greed, envy, vengeance or lust, they bring the world into the form that we know it as human beings today. So, they create our world, and at the same time they display the more negative as well as humorous aspects of human existence. People tend to empathize with them despite the fact that they are not perfect, benevolent, omniscient creators. They are very earthy creators full of the frailties that we all know so well.

Second, in some sense the tales do not always have fIXed beginnings and endings. That is, no one ever relates a complete tale. To a certain degree these kinds of stories are like a TV series in which the main characters and general setting remain more or less constant but each episode is different. Storytellers have a great deal of freedom within certain limits, much like TV scriptwriters. They only have to maintain the general form of the story , not the details, and they can improvise and innovate where they see fit, some being I;nOre creative than others. Also storytellers like scriptwriters of TV series presume that the audience already knows a good deal about the setting, characters, and so on. That is why a nonlndian hearing or reading stories like Itsappe Pem Paitem Ma'ai and Tatapai Paikkappeh for the fIrst time may come away with the feeling that they have missed something, that all of the background details are not filled in.

Third, mythological folktales are not literature per se. They are not out of a written tradition. Rather, they are oral narrative from a culture where literature and written works did not exist. They are more like the Iliad and the Odyssey before Homer wrote them down, or like European folktales before they were put in books by people like the Grimm brothers. Oral narrative is very different from written narrative. In oral narrative there is no editing, no revising, no fiXing up what didn't come out right the fIrst time. Writers have the luxury of either editing themselves or having someone else do it. Raconteurs have no such luxury. Once they say something it is said and then is gone forever. The spoken word just comes out and then disappears, it is ephemeral and incorrectable at once. Oral narrative also tends to be repetitious and metrical or rhythmic in one way or another. The repetition is for the listener's benefit, since, unlike readers, listeners cannot go back and "relisten" (cf. reread) what they didn't hear or understand the fIrst time. The rhythm is both for aesthetics and to help the storyteller recall things. Oral narrative, then, is more like drama than writ-ten literature. The storyteller is a one-man or one-woman actor acting out each character's part with voice changes, idiolectical differences, facial expressions, and gestures. And since the audience is right there, the storyteller can point to things using this's and that's, here's and there's, and also get immediate feedback from the audience varying the tale in response to the audiences reactions. Storytellers are not inert like printed words on paper but living, making subtle voice changes for each character, moving their bodies mimicking a character' s gestures, and giving facial expressions indicating pain, grief, delight and other feelings and emotions that the characters experience.

The most important functions of folktales are entertainment and education. For thousands of years for the vast majority of human existence, there were no TVs, radios, movies, videos, or even written literature.2 Most of humankind's (not just the Shoshoni's) home entertainment in the past, and still in many areas of the world, has come through countless tales, not unlike Itsappe Pem Paitem Ma'ai and Tatapai Paikkappeh.

The character of Coyote has been interpreted in many ways by different people. Someone once said that in Shoshoni stories, Coyote is "bigger than life", meaning probably that he is exempt from proper behavior expected of mere mortals. But Coyote stories like Itsappe Pem Paitem Ma'ai show that what he does is sometimes tragic, with negative consequences for himself and others. That is, his self-centeredness often brings grief and pain to those closest to him. Wise storytellers knew this. For example, one elderly Shoshoni storyteller would prepare his listeners for stories by saying, "Kai pemme Itsappe wa'i naakkante!" 'Don't be like Coyote!'.

Finally, Shoshoni myths often teach the listeners how they ought to behave, but they do this without being preachy, even when the topic of the story is a serious one, such as child abuse and incest in Itsappe Pem Paitem Ma'ai. Since the stories are told to the whole family at the same time, different people may respond differently. The young children may find the stories completely entertaining. However, the adult listeners may be reminded again through the stories that, for example, proper Shoshoni adults do not treat their children as Coyote treats his daughter.

And furthermore, even when the topic is serious, the stories can be extremely hilarious. They teach listeners that it is OK to laugh at themselves. In real life, most of us know that a sense of humor makes stressful situations bearable. In this sense, humor is man's best friend --not the dog!

The Shoshoni tale Tatapai Paikkappeh 'The One Who Killed the Sun', also known as 'Cottontail and the Sun', was told to Dayley in 1968 at Fort Hall, Idaho, by the late Myrtle Nevada. He recorded the tale on tape and later transcribed, translated, and linguistically analyzed it with the aid of Lillian Vallely, Myrtle Nevada's niece. Mrs. Nevada was a well-known storyteller and had been telling tales like this for many years. She was in her late 70's in 1968. and unfortunately, like most of the other great Shoshoni natekwinawoppinnee ' storytellers' , she has since passed away. The tale was told in Tukku Tekka'a 'Sheep Eater' Shoshoni, the variety of Northern Shoshoni spoken by Mrs. Nevada and Mrs. Valley.

Tatapai Paikkappeh is a tale in the same tradition as the Coyote Trickster stories. The main character, Tatapu(ppeh) 'Cottontail', is a Culture Hero and Trickster like Coyote, although he is not as important or famous (or infamous) as Coyote. In fact, the motif of Cottontail and the Sun is found only in the Great Basin and Plateau region among Numic speakers like the Shoshoni, although the more general Sun Snare motif occurs elsewhere in North America, Polynesia, and Africa.3

As noted above, at an earlier period in time, myths played a very important role in the lives of the Shoshoni people as they were passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. But this oral tradition was almost broken around the turn of the century .At that time, government officials separated Indian children from their families and sent them far away to government boarding schools in which the children were forbidden to speak their own native languages and were often severely punished if they did.

It was during those years of forced separation and acculturation that Indian children almost lost touch with the oral traditions of their ancestors. Despite the prolonged separation knowledge of the myths was not completely lost since some children managed to learn the stories in one way or another anyway. Like other Shoshoni children, Beverly Crum also experienced physical separation from her parents and community starting when she was five years old. But before she was sent off to a government institution (in her case, a TB sanatarium), she had already heard about the special animals that talked and acted like human beings. Listening to adult family members and friends tell their stories was an enjoyable experience for her. Years later memories of the myths and the warm environment in which they were told served as one of the stabilizing forces in her life.

The final chapter in this book is a list and discussion of some 60 Western Shoshoni place names, Newen Tepian Nanihanna, provided by Earl Dean Barney, an elderly member of the Duck Valley tribe, along with comments and questions by Earl and Beverly Crum. Mr. Barney begins his narration starting from Elko, Nevada, and moves northward, giving place names of various springs, canyons, hills and mountains in and around the Duck Valley Reservation. Be also provides place names for parts of Idaho north of the reservation.

The format of the chapter on place names is somewhat different from that of the other chapters. The place names are given in Shoshoni in boldface followed by idiomatic English translations of their Shoshoni meanings. Then, if known, the actual English name of the place is given after an equal sign ' = '. Then, sometimes brief remarks are made in English about noteworthy aspects of the place. After that, a literal word-for-word (or morpheme-by-morpheme) translation of the Shoshoni name is given following an arrow sign ' < '. Then with most of the place names, a discussion with commentaries and questions follows. The discussion, commentaries and questions are presented in running text first in Shoshoni in boldface type. Then after that, the place names are repeated with their translations followed by the discussion, commentaries and questions in a figurative English translation. Then after the figurative translation, the place names and their translations are repeated again followed by discussion, commentaries and questions but this time with literal word-for-word interlinear translations. All of the material pertaining to each place name and following it is indented so that it is clear what material belongs with each place name.

Most of Earl Dean Barney's discussion is in Shoshoni, but sometimes he switches to English or uses some English words and phrases within the discussion in Shoshoni. Similarly, most of the comments and questions by Earl and Beverly Crum are in Shoshoni, but sometimes they switch to English or use English words and phrases within their comments and questions in Shoshoni. When English is used within Shoshoni text, it is marked with Italics in the transcription given here. It should be noted that switching between Shoshoni and English is not uncommon at all today among native speakers of Shoshoni and is done with ease in a natural manner. This text is a good example of switching between the two languages.

For Beverly Crum, hearing the place names as she sat and talked triggered fond memories of earlier times. For example, happy memories of a particular spring named Pa'ohaa'an Kappai 'Water Baby Place' came flooding back. This spring is located in the mountains that run on the south side of the Duck Valley Reservation. The meadow below it is a place where her and her siblings often found bits and pieces of obsidian chippings left over from life before the reservation was established. Pa'ohaa'an Kappai provided them, as kids, with a link to the myth of Pa'ohaa 'Water Baby', the mythological being from Shoshoni tales that lived in and around springs.

As children, they were often completely preoccupied with just being outdoors in the mountains. They came to know the mountains, hills, canyons, and springs through their senses seeing, hearing, smelling and touching. They saw the flowering chokecherry trees in the spring and watched them turn into hard green berries during the summer, then into heavy clusters of dark red berries in the fall. When they camped in the mountains, they could hear the hooting of the owl and the wailing of the porcupine during the night. All around them was the wonderful smell of the different kinds of plants. And, some plants they had to rub before they let off their good mountain smell. Earl Dean Harding's knowledge of Shoshoni place names and his remarks about some of the things that happened in those areas have added a nice dimension about the actual land on which the Western Shoshoni have lived for countless generations.

Taken together, the texts presented in this book, with narratives on rites of passage, healing practices, and places, along with songs, prayers, and folktales can provide a great deal of insight into Shoshoni worldview and culture. This worldview comprises the values, customs and beliefs that constitute the very heart and soul of the Shoshoni people. It is our hope that having these things recorded in written form will be a valuable legacy for the Shoshoni people themselves.

Before the coming of the white man and the onslaught of European culture, the Shoshoni had an equitable and egalitarian society in which the people lived close to the earth and at one with the land and appreciated and celebrated beauty , life, the integrity of the individual, and dignity of the human spirit. Learning about Shoshoni rites of passage, healing practices, prayers, songs, folktales, and places, as well as about their particular modes of expression might allow non-Indians to have a new and different perspective on life and might actually provide them with some valuable lessons.

Finally, the glossary at the end of the book contains several thousand Shoshoni words, including all of the words in the texts presented here, all of the words in Western Shoshoni Grammar, as well as many more that we have encountered in the last several years. The words are given with their English translations, their parts of speech, any variant pronunciations, and usually with their important grammatical or paradigmatic forms.