Dennis Tedlock

Finding the center : narrative poetry of the Zuni Indians

A brilliant gathering of Zuni narrative poetry collected by anthropologist Dennis Tedlock in New Mexico...Tedlocks Zuni narrators seem like singers of some pueblo Beowulf, orchestrating oral traditions with voices they use like instruments, and whose inflections Tedlock captures in differing type faces. - Newsweek. Dennis Tedlocks splendid translations of ten tales from the Zuni represent the first fresh gathering of Zuni narrative material (he recorded 100) since the work of the 1930s Boasians, Ruth Benedict and Ruth Bunzel. But Tedlocks versions represent a great deal more, and mark nothing less than an epoch in translation by anthropologists...Tedlock has represented pauses in the Zuni with line and strophe breaks, and degrees of pitch and intensity with a handful of standard typographic devices. The text that results is one that we recognize, of course, as poetry scored for voicing; but we also recognize - and this is the kingpin - that an oral tradition has emerged in its own proper character. - The Nation. Tedlocks poetic gifts combine with his perceptions as an anthropologist to bring us narratives which reenact in their own way what is at once a form of social life and a way of understanding society and nature in dramatic terms. - New York Times, Book Review. Tedlock, using devices taken over from Concrete Poetry ..., has managed to recapture for us not only the communal spirit of the stories but also, because the stories are alive and poetry, at least some feeling of what its like to be a Zuni, something anthropological monographs cant seem to tell us. - Harpers Magazine. An Associate University Professor of Anthropology and Religion at Boston Universitv, where he edits Alcheringa, a magazine of oral poetry, Dennis Tedlock is the coauthor, with Barbara Tedlock, of Teachings from the Indian Earth: Indian Religion and Philosophy.

On the Translation of Style in Oral Narrative

A DISCRIMINATING READER, hoping to find collections of American Indian narratives which are at one and the same time thoroughly authentic and respectable as literature, is likely to be disappointed. When he explores the narratives published before the field methods of Franz Boas were widely employed, he may decide that their style seems more Victorian than Indian. If he then turns to modern collections but still avoids publications intended only for the use of scholars, he may find his prospective reading described, as in the case of Jaime de Angulos Indian Tales, as suitable fare for both children and adults. Such a volume will seem about as promising to him as a movie rated G for general audiences.

Toward an Oral Poetics

WE SHALL NEVER DEVELOP an effective oral poetics if we begin by reading Homer. The Iliad and Odyssey come to us already written down, edited, and recopied an unknown number of times. They belong to an era, stretching right up through the Middle Ages, when large quantities of written literature were memorized and recited aloud. Some of this literature escaped into folk tradition, as bits and pieces of literature always do. The Yugoslav guslar may well be, in effect, a sort of distant, humbled descendant of the ancient upper-class Athenian schoolchild (described by Eric Havelock) who was taught to recite a written Homer but not to read it. If so, the guslar has elevated verse epic to an oral art it may not have been when it started: he is no memorizer, but is instead able to compose on his feet. To memorize a story is not the same as to remember it. A metrical framework fitted out with matching formulas may facilitate memorization, as Havelock suggests, but it does not follow from this that the preliterate cultures of the eastern Mediterranean (or anywhere else) were heavily invested in metrical expression. There may be verse epics in semiliterate cultures, whether ancient Greek or modern Yugoslavian, but when we turn to what Walter Ong calls primary oral cultures, the verse epic does not exist. The quasi-metrical patterns suggested by West African riddles and some North American Indian song texts are never sustained for more than two or three lines. There are sung epics in non-Islamic Africa, but their texts are not metrical. If we turn back to the ancient written records, we find that the oldest known literary documents are Sumerian tablets antedating the earliest Greek writing by a thousand years, and they are not metrical.2 Claims that Homeric and Vedic verse forms come straight out of a nonliterate past rest largely on Classical and Brahmanical tradition, and are to be taken in the same light as the genealogical lore of royal families. For the most part, the narrators in primary oral cultures do not sing stories but speak them. They do not memorize stories, but remember them. They are not talking digital computers, programmed to retrieve stored formulas in the right order. The digital computer lacks what we call in English the minds eye: a good narrator sees his story, and such ready-made phrases as he may use are not the substance of his thought but an aid in the rapid verbal expression of that thought, not the internal equivalent of a written text but a bag of tricks.3 Even taken by themselves, these ready-made phrases are highly vari-

Text and Textile: Language and Technology in the Arts of the Quiché Maya

A partir des travaux linguistiques, semiotiques et du concept dintertextualite developpe par J. Kristeva, analyse de la relation entre langage et culture chez les Maya Quiche du Guatemala : origine mythique des arts et des artisanats selon le Popol Vuh, structures sous-jacentes aux differents phenomenes culturels dont le tissage a motifs des echarpes et ceintures

From Voice and Ear to Hand and Eye

Standard practices in the textualization, translation, and interpretation of the spoken arts are called into question by our use of tape and film. Further questions arise when we realize that the peoples whose verbal arts we study have their own distinct notions and habits with respect to the reproduction and explication of discourse. The case in point here is that of Mayan discourse, Quiche in particular, explored by way ofa narrative account of the telling ofa story and the offering of a prayer.

Teachings from the American earth : Indian religion and philosophy

This collection of writings is from authors who are either Indians who have tried to make themselves heard, or whites who have tried to hear Indians. The first part of the book emphasizes the practical and includes Isaac Tenss Career of the Medicine Man. The second section concentrates on the theoretical and contains Benjamin Lee Whorfs American Indian Model of the Universe and chapters on Indian metaphysics, among other things. In addition to an introductory essay on the Indians stance towards reality, the editors have contributed chapters entitled The Clowns Way and An American Indian View of Death.

Learning to Listen: Oral History as Poetry

A line change indicates a short pause, about 1/2 to 1 second; a double space between lines, marked by , indicates a long pause, about 2 seconds; CAPITALS are loud; small type is soft; split-level lines indicate a chant-like delivery, with each level at a separate pitch; long dashes indicate lengthened vowels, short ones at the ends of lines an interrupted delivery; repeated consonants are lengthened; other instructions are in (parenthecized italics).

Beyond Logocentrism: Trace and Voice among the Quiche Maya

When an anthropologist asks a Quiche, Tell me a story, chances are that he or she will be unable to think of a story, given no reason to tell a story other than that someone wants to hear a story, any story. At least one anthropologist decided that there were no stories among the Quiche Maya.1 A Quiche story does not begin with a series of formal opening announcements that call a halt to conversation and point only into the story, and it does not end with a series of formal closures that call a halt.2 The story may include or refer back to bits of the previous conversation, and when it is over, bits of the story are caught up in the conversation that follows.

The Witches Were Saved: A Zuni Origin Story

BEHIND EVERY COLLECTION of oral narratives are stories that didnt get into the book. Some of these might be stories that wouldnt have added that much if they had been included, but others, as time goes by, begin to look like missing chapters. I offer the present story as a missing chapter of Finding the Center: Narrative Poetry of the Zuni Indians (Tedlock 1978). I would place it at the end of the book, not because its the final chapter but because the events recounted are recent. As it stands now, the book stays safely within ancient times, or what Zunis call inoote, though three men ride horses in the story titled The Boy and the Deer and a man herds sheep in The Shumeekuli. The book is not without politics-The Sun Priest and the Witch-Woman is a story about legitimacy in public office-but nowhere do politics break out of ancient times and jump into the lap of the polite reader, as they do here. Writing also makes an appearance here, and it does so as an instrument of power. Andrew Peynetsa told this story at toya or Nutria, a farming hamlet northeast of Zuni, New Mexico, on the evening of 26 March 1965. We were in his farmhouse, with kerosene lamps lit and a fire in the corner fireplace. Also present were his wife, one of their sons, a couple of their grandchildren, and Walter Sanchez, a clan brother of Andrews who was himself telling stories that same evening. Andrew said the events took place around 1898. He seems to have combined incidents from two separate U.S. Army interventions in Zuni internal affairs, one of which took place in 1891 and the other of which involved a six-month military occupation in 1897-98 (see Smith and Roberts 1954:4547; Crampton 1977:150-151). Earlier in this same evening Andrew had told the first of three consecutive installments of his version of the Zuni origin story, which is called chimikyanakowa, literally When Newness Was Made; he told the other two parts on 29 and 31 March. I included the first two parts in Finding the Center (1978:223-298); the third part, which concerns the origin of the medicine so-

The Problem of k in Zuni Phonemics

cross-sectioning, with mapping, might need to increase without bound in order to describe linguistic phenomena. Since I do share with Mr. Hockett and Mr. Lamb the credentials of a non-mathematician,4 I am unable to prove this necessity of an infinite number of levels (read strata) but at the moment am convinced of its validity. This, I think, is the telling argument against Mr. Lambs model as well as an explanation of the proliferation of strata as his work has expanded. In short we should entreat Mr. Lamb to give us not merely a finite grammar but a finite model for grammar. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS