Tues., Dec. 21, 2004
native
american arts daily news, presented by
amerindianarts.us
Tour
underground vault of Iowa's past
DesMoinesRegister.com
- Des Moines,IA,USA
... As for decorative arts,
the vault houses items from Native Americans and American
immigrants alike, moccasins as well as furniture. ...
Nancy
Churnin Check these not-too-hyped DVDs, CDs for kids
Dallas Morning News (subscription) - Dallas,TX,USA
...
from different cultures, including Spanish, Jewish, Irish, French and
Native American numbers. ... 4-20; Kathy Burks Theatre
of Puppetry Arts' Frog Prince, March 4 ...
Belfast
fot tourists
Belfast Telegraph
(subscription) - Belfast,Northern Ireland,UK
... and
the museum has an extensive international reach - until March 2005 there
is a good exhibition on native American art ... Arts
and crafts are thriving in Belfast ...
COLLEGE
CHOOSES A NEW PRESIDENT
Albuquerque
Journal (subscription) - Albuquerque,NM,USA
... in social
work, computer science, engineering, business administration and industrial
arts.". ... Web-based offerings and bring in more Native
American students. ...
This once a day Google Alert is brought to you by Google.
Returning to a Home on the Range
Buffalo Being Moved from Calif. Island to S.D. Land of Ancestors
By Amy Argetsinger
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 16, 2004; Page A01
Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand
Early tribal artifacts put in spotlight
Little-known items focus of exhibit in Chicago
CHICAGO - A translucent, larger-than-life hand with long, tapering fingers lends an air of mystery to a new exhibit of ancient and little-known tribal art at the Art Institute of Chicago.
"Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand" opened Nov. 20 and runs through Jan. 30, 2005. It is scheduled to be shown at The St. Louis Art Museum from March 4 to May 30, 2005, and at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History from early July to late September.
Indigenous Peoples Literature: Book of the Month
Anti-Indianism in Modern America: A Voice from Tatekeya's Earth
by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn
Editorial Reviews
In this powerful and essential work, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn confronts the politics and policies of genocide that continue to destroy the land, livelihood, and culture of Native Americans. Anti-Indianism in Modern America tells the other side of stories of historical massacres and modern-day hate crimes, events that are dismissed or glossed over by historians, journalists, and courts alike. Cook-Lynn exposes the colonialism that works both overtly and covertly to silence and diminish Native Americans, supported by a rhetoric of reconciliation, assimilation, and multiculturalism. Comparing anti-Indianism to anti-Semitism, she sets the American history of broken treaties, stolen lands, mass murder, cultural dispossession, and Indian hating in an international context of ethnic cleansing, "ecocide" (environmental destruction), and colonial oppression.
Cook-Lynn also discusses the role Native American studies should take in reasserting tribal literatures, traditions, and politics and shows how the discipline has been sidelined by anthropology, sociology, postcolonial studies, and ethnic studies. Asserting the importance of a "native conscience"--a knowledge of the mythologies, mores, and experiences of tribal society--among American Indian writers, she calls for the __expression in American Indian art and literature of a tribal consciousness that acts to assure a tribal-nation people of its future.
Passionate, eloquent, and uncompromising, Anti-Indianism in Modern America concludes that there are no real solutions for Indians as long as they remain colonized peoples. Native Americans must be able to tell their own stories and, most important, regain their land, the source of religion, morality, rights, and nationhood. As long as public silence accompanies the outlaw maneuvers that undermine tribal autonomy, the racist strategies that affect all Americans will continue.
It is difficult, Cook-Lynn concedes, to work toward the development of legal mechanisms against hate crimes, in Indian Country and elsewhere in the world. But it is not too late.
Blessings
Brenda
Navajo artist Teddy Draper Workshops
Chinle, Arizona (Canyon DeChelly)-
Seminars and workshops have limited capacity and usually require enrollment months in advance.
Workshop information for 2005
March 15-19, instructor Elmer Yazzie, "cut yucca brush" watercolor technique.
May 16-20, instructor Teddy Draper, Jr., pastel techniques, insights into art, culture, and connecting to nature.
June 7-11, Indian Jewelry Basics (class limited to 4 students).
June 7-11, instructor Teddy Draper, Jr., pastel techniques, insights into art, culture, and connecting to nature.
Contact Teddy Draper atdechelly2000@yahoo.com
Web Sites: Literacy in Indigenous Communities by L. David van Broekhuizen, Ph.D. (2000)
Indigenous Peoples Literature
Wisdom of the Old People
HTML Format (70K)
PDF Format(117K)
Essay on the Zuni World View
Excerpt (Complete article is available in PDF)
Cushing also cited an incidence where he showed a pole that accompanies a theodolite to an old Zuni man and asked him what he thought the name of it was. In response the old man inquired as to the use of the item. After briefly describing the implementation of the device the old man provided a rather lengthy sentence-word that Cushing translated as "heights of the world progressively measuring stick". The next day Cushing took the pole to the extreme corner of the pueblo and began "to flourish it around" until a middle-aged man relented to curiosity and asked what it was. Cushing then provided the Zuni name he had learned the day before and the man promptly requested, "Can they actually tell how far up and down journeying the world is?" [105].
Notices:
Indian band seeks to regain its birthright
By David Whitney
Members of the Winnemem band of Wintu Indians are downcast after discovering
that a memorial plaque for a local angler had been placed at the foot
of Children's Rock, one of their sacred sites.
Photo
Wintu Indians
At War Against Dam, Tribe Turns to Old Ways
Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
Warriors of the Winnemem Wintu Indians performing a ceremonial dance
in which the tribe had not engaged for more than a century.
Petition in Support of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe
Registration for the 31st Annual 2005 Bilingual Multicultural Education
and Equity Conference is now
available online
Teaching and Learning
Through a Cultural Eye
February 9-11, 2005
Sheraton Anchorage Hotel, Anchorage, Alaska
Sponsored by
Alaska Association for Bilingual Education
Native Educators' Association
Alaska State Department of Education and Early Development
For more information contact:
The Coordinators, Inc.
329 F Street, Suite 208, Anchorage, AK 99501
Phone: 907/646-9000 * Fax: 907/646-9001
Haidu Language Project
Currently, only seven Kasaan Haidas speak the Kasaan Haida dialect with
varying degrees of fluency--all elders over the age of 75. This summer, I urged the Kasaan Haida
Heritage Foundation (KHHF) to allow me to utilize the foundation's nonprofit
status to seek funding and conduct projects that preserve our elders'
knowledge.
In September, we created the position of Media Specialist in which I intend
to raise money and interview our elders, especially in regards to the Haida
language. I will produce, direct, and coordinate a video documentary to raise
awareness and archive the language. I plan to make the results available in
digital formats on the KHHF website.
Donations received from now until December 31, 2004 will earn the donor
a Grassroots Founder designation. I ask for a relatively small gift of 25 to 100
dollars. Donor's names will appear in the KHHF newsletter and donations
will be eligible for a tax deduction for this year. Grassroots Founders get
special on-screen mention in the documentary.
Please send checks (payable to "KHHF") to:
Kasaan Haida Heritage Foundation
600 University Street, Suite 3010
Seattle, WA 98101-1129
Write in the memo area on your check or include a note designating funds for
"Media Specialist/Projects".
Sincerely,
Frederick Olsen, Jr.
For more information, email me or go to
http://kavilco.com/pages/
aboutkhhf.html
KHHF is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (EIN 92-0169568).
Who Should Tell History: The Tribes or the Museums?
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: December 21, 2004
CHICAGO - Museums always make use of the past for the sake of the present. They collect it, shape it, insist on its significance. When that past is also prehistoric, when its objects come to the present without written history and with jumbled oral traditions, a museum can even become the past's primary voice.
But what if that prehistoric past is also claimed by some as a living heritage? Then disagreements about interpretation develop into battles over the museum's very function.
That was the result, for example, at the Smithsonian Institution's $219 million National Museum of the American Indian, which opened in September in Washington and calls itself a "museum different." George Gustav Heye's extraordinary collection of 800,000 tribal American objects is put in service of contemporary Indian cultures with tribal guest curators determining how their heritage is to be presented. The result is homogenized pap in which the collection is used not to reveal the past's complexities, but to serve the present's simplicities.
There are, however, other ways in which the prehistoric past can be revealed, as two exhibitions in Chicago suggest. At the Field Museum, "Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas," is remarkable not just for its careful exploration of the famed archeological site high in the Peruvian Andes, but also for demonstrating an almost devotional care to exhuming a lost past. At the Art Institute of Chicago, "Hero, Hawk and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South" is no less remarkable in its display of objects created by ancient American cultures, but it is subject to many of the same forces that molded the National Museum of the American Indian. Here though, rather than overturning the museum's enterprise, they merely distract from it.
First, the Machu Picchu exhibition. Created by the Peabody Museum at Yale, it offers the largest collection of Incan artifacts ever shown in the United States, including robust three-foot-high jugs for corn beer (which was fermented by the saliva of women who chewed the maize before brewing it); samples of bright, geometrically ornamented 500-year-old fabrics; and a corded "quipu," a linked collection of knotted strings used to record events and numerical accounts. The curators are Richard L. Burger, a Yale anthropologist, and Lucy C. Salazar, a Peruvian archaeologist.
The major question about Machu Picchu has not been who speaks for its past, but what that past actually was. The site, with its terraced, mountainous landscape and stone structures, was known to only a few local inhabitants when it was discovered by Hiram Bingham III, who led Yale's Peruvian Expedition in 1911. As Mr. Berger and Ms. Salazar explain various hypotheses by Bingham, including one that the site was a sacred nunnery for Incan "Virgins of the Sun," have been conclusively disproved. The curators established, instead, that it was a summer retreat for a ruling Incan family, built between 1450 and 1470 and used only for about 80 years before being abandoned in the face of the Incas' defeat by Pizarro's Spanish armies.
The exhibition also makes it clear what an extraordinary site Machu Picchu is. Nestled in the cloud-decked mountains of the Andes, its architecture serves as a kind of cosmic clock, the sun and constellations appearing in certain stone windows at specific times of the year. The exhibition shows how scientists have used bone fragments to analyze the Incan diet (60 percent maize), and demonstrates how Incan skulls were deliberately elongated by molds placed on infants' heads, presumably for aesthetic effect. One emerges astonished by this lost world.
Still, there are subtle traces of contemporary claims evident in the portrayal of this prehistoric culture. After all, Machu Picchu is now a national symbol in Peru; in 2001, it was used for the inauguration of the president, Alejandro Toledo. It is also the object of almost mystical devotion. Hundreds of thousands of tourists climb its ruins every year.
In response, perhaps, there are hints of overly tactful delicacy in the exhibition's descriptions of Incan society. Incan aesthetic and cosmological preoccupations become clear, but other aspects do not, including a rigid social structure that involved forms of slavery, a religious culture that incorporated human sacrifice, and a military organization powerful enough to conquer 2,500 miles of the South American coastline and build 25,000 miles of roads. Mr. Berger, in an e-mail message, said that for the Peruvians, the Incans looked good compared to the Spaniards. The exhibition wants us to admire, and we do. But we know less about what we might admire less.
At the Art Institute of Chicago more explicit pressures are at work, and they nearly derail the considerable achievements of "Hero, Hawk and Open Hand." The exhibition is devoted to products of societies that thrived along the Ohio, Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers as early as 5,000 B.C. Their remnants can still be seen in landscapes near Newark, Ohio, or St. Clair County, Ill., in enormous earthen mounds and geometric shapes outlined by raised ground.
These structures testify to a highly organized society barely glimpsed by European settlers. Some sites had already been abandoned by the time the Europeans arrived. Others were devastated by diseases brought by the settlers, which wiped out as much as 90 percent of their Indian populations.
But as Richard F. Townsend, the curator of the department of African and Amerindian art at the Art Institute, shows, these cultures' mastery can be sensed in the objects produced: a haunting 2,000-year-old elongated face smoothed out of stone found in Kentucky; a graceful, elegant hand cut out of mica from about the same era in Ohio; a 500-year-old wooden figure - half human, half feline - found in Florida.
Such a display, along with historical commentary, would once have been sufficient. But contemporary Indian tribes, supported by some scholars, have argued that they have an ancestral connection to these cultures. And since museums have not traditionally displayed much sensitivity toward living cultures, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act now obliges them to consult with tribes about their holdings. In preparation for the exhibition, four years were spent consulting with tribal leaders. But to what end?
Joyce Bear, the cultural preservation officer of the Muscogee Nation, has the exhibition's first word, declaring on the wall leading to the galleries, that it will "make our tribal people realize that we are descendants of a wonderful and great culture." In the catalog, she proudly announces that the exhibition proves that "I come from kings and queens." The exhibition ends with a statement about a "new, sweeping movement of cultural preservation" among Indians, including a film showing their renewal of traditions.
But all this has little to do with the objects on display and makes it seem as if the exhibition's purpose were to boost tribal pride. Also, while there may indeed be ancient traditions that have found their way into contemporary practices, the nature of these connections, at the very least, demands closer scrutiny.
One anthropologist's assertion that contemporary Indian beliefs are "analogous" to those of these ancient cultures is challenged by others in the catalog. Mr. Townsend writes that these earthworks were "built by peoples whose achievements and ancestral connections to present day tribes are at best only vaguely surmised." Robert L. Hall, an anthropologist, points out that Cahokia, an imposing culture on the Mississippi that was already in decline in the 14th century, "left no written records and no native peoples possess oral traditions that specifically identify Cahokia or even recognize its existence." In the 18th century, another writer says, Indians encountered by settlers "did not construct mounds, nor did any of them have oral traditions relating to these earthworks."
Even the exhibition's explanations of these societies' workings seem idealized, skewed by contemporary sensitivities. In the catalog, for example, an anthropologist, David H. Dye, explores warfare among the Mississippi Indians, but it is barely alluded to in the exhibition, despite the presence of objects like a pipe (1200-1500 A.D.) sculpted as a bound captive and a vase whose decorations are "trophy scalps stretched in a starlike pattern." The exhibition gives so refined a picture of these societies that there is no way of knowing how important such images were, or where historical evidence of slavery and human sacrifice fits in.
This is also, of course, what happened in the Smithsonian's Indian museum. Since almost no tribes had a written culture and oral traditions were disrupted by disease, massacre, government policy and assimilation, the tribal curators often seem to know less about their history than do scholars. Yet scholars' assessments are ignored in favor of self-promotional platitudes.
All this is a form of guilty overcompensation for past museum sins
that themselves need re-examination and assessment. In the meantime,
exhibitions like the one on Machu Picchu serve as reminders of what is
possible. And the objects at the Art Institute can still be heard
straining to speak for themselves, despite the layers of promotional
and political gauze in which they are wrapped.
Glenn Welker
Editor, List Manager, and Web Master
for
Indigenous Peoples Literature
Chitimacha History
Location:
The delta of the Mississippi River and the adjoining Atchafalaya Basin of
south-central Louisiana. According to their tribal tradition, the boundary
of the Chitimacha homeland was originally defined by four sacred trees: the
first was at Maringouin, Louisiana; the second southeast of New Orleans;
another at the mouth of the Mississippi; and the last a great cypress
located in present-day Cypremort Point State Park. Of the four tribes
associated with this group, the Washa in 1699 had in a single village on
Bayou Lafourche in Assumption Parish, with the Chawasha just to the south.
However, hunters from either of these tribes could be encountered as far
south as the mouth of the Mississippi River.With the exception of the
Yagenechito (apparently an eastern band of the Chitimacha), the Chitimacha
villages were farther west near Grand Lake, lower Bayou Teche, or the
natural levees of the Atchafalaya Basin. The Chitimacha's name occurs
regularly on the early French maps of Louisiana. Grand Lake was once called
Lac des Chetimacha, and Bayou Lafourche was known either as Lafourche des
Chetimachas or La Rivire des Chetimachas. The Chitimacha's attachment to
their homeland has proven to be unbelievably strong over the years.Although
forced to surrender almost all of their land to whites, they are the only
one of Louisiana's original tribes that has retained a portion of their
ancestral lands. Most Chitimacha today still live on or near their
reservation at Charenton, Louisiana.
Population:
As a group, the four tribes of the Chitimacha may have numbered as many as
20,000 in 1492. While their direct contact with Europeans during the next
two centuries was virtually nil, Old World epidemics spread west from the
Spanish mission system of northern Florida and devastated native populations
in the lower Mississippi Valley. In some areas of the Southeast during this
period, the numbers of Native Americans dropped to ten percent of their
former levels.Based on losses incurred by neighboring tribes, the Chitimacha
appear to have fallen to half of their original size when the French first
began to settle the lower Mississippi Valley in 1699. Even then, there is no
clear indication of exactly how many Chitimacha there actually were.Because
their villages were remote, the initial estimates by Bienville and Beaurain
were little more than guesses. Depending on whose figures are accepted, the
Chawasha and Washa together numbered somewhere between 700 and 1,400, while
the Chitimacha are thought to have had a little more than 4,000. No separate
estimate seems to have been made for the Yagenechito. Hostilities after 1706
made more accurate estimates impossible, and the French apparently did not
become aware of the western groups of Chitimacha until 1727.During a
twelve-year war (1706-18), the French almost exterminated the eastern
Chitimacha. No figures are available for the western Chitimacha, but by 1718
a battered remnant of 400 was all that remained of the eastern bands. The
French resettled them along the Mississippi under the watchful eyes of the
250 Washa and 200 Chawasha that had served as French allies during the war.
The new location exposed all three tribes to disease and alcohol, and by
1758 their combined populations had fallen below 400. Only 135 remained in
1784, and shortly after 1805, the Mississippi band of Chitimacha
disappeared. The survivors, if any, are thought to have been become part of
the Houma.The United States Indian agent that year noted five Chawasha-Washa
living among the French settlers in the area, but this was their last
mention. Only the western Chitimacha have managed to preserve their tribal
identity, but it was "touch and go." By 1880 only six families (less than
100 persons) remained. The 1910 census listed 69 Chitimacha, 19 of which
were children at the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania. After federal
recognition and the placement of their last 260 acres under trust in 1917,
the Chitimacha began a slow recovery. By 1950, 89 Chitimacha were living on
the reservation with another 400 residing in the immediate area. Current
tribal enrollment is 900.
Names:
Chawasha (Chaouacha, Chauocha) - a Mobilian or Choctaw for "raccoon place."
Chitimacha (Chetimacha, Chettimanchi, Chitamacha, Chittamacha, Shetimasha,
Shyoutemancha, Tchetimanchan) - sometimes said to come from a Choctaw word
for "they have cooking pots," but this explanation seems suspect since just
about every tribe in the region used cooking pots. The Chitimacha (who
should know something about this) say that their name is taken from their
own language "Pantch Pinankanc" meaning "men altogether red."
Washa (Ouacha) - from a Choctaw word for "hunting place."
Yagenechito (Yaknachitto, Yaknechito) - "big earth or "big country."
Language:
Tonikan. However, the relationship of Chitimacha to Tunica, for whom the
entire group is named, is distant and indicates that the separation between
them was quite ancient. Chitimacha (as well as the related dialects spoken
by the Atakapa, Chawasha, Opelousa, Washa) has so many distinctive
characteristics that for many years, most linguists considered it an
isolate. The Chitimacha have lost their language over the years, and there
are no longer any fluent speakers. Many of their elders, however, speak
Cajun French
Sub-Tribes:
Chawasha, Chitimacha, Washa, and Yagenechito. The French in 1699 noted that
the Chitimacha were a confederation of approximately 15 villages. By the
time their war with the French ended in 1718, the Chitimacha had divided
into two divisions: the Mississippi (or eastern) band on Bayou Lafourche;
and a western band on lower Bayou Teche, Grand Lake, and the Atchafalaya
River.
Villages:
Amatpannamu (2), Bitlarouges, Grosse Tetenamu, Hachita, Hipinimshnamu,
Kamenakshtcatnamu, Kennipessa, Kushuhnamu, Mahe Hala, Mino, Namukatsi,
Nekuntsisnis, Nepinunsh, Okunkiskin, Shatshnish, Shetinamu,
Shoktangihanehetcinsh, Tanxibao, Tcatikutinginamu, Tcatkasitunshki,
Tsahtsinshupnamu, Waitinimsh, and Yghilbssa.
Culture:
Officially recognized in 1917 after many years of being ignored by the
United States government, the Chitimacha were, until recently, the only
tribe in Louisiana to achieve federal status. However, their claim to being
the oldest tribe in Louisiana can be extended far beyond the last hundred
years. Their occupancy of the region appears to be very ancient, and they
may well be the original residents of Louisiana. Human occupation of the
lower Mississippi Valley has been traced back to 12,000 B.C., but the
earliest artifacts found in the Chitimacha's homeland are only 6,000 years
old. The reason for this is that the region is an archeological nightmare.
Sea levels rose after the last ice age and inundated most of the probable
coastal sites. In the interim, floods, changing drainage patterns, and
countless tons of silt deposited by the Mississippi River radically altered
the adjacent inland topography. Acidic soil destroyed all but the most
durable objects, and without an underlying bedrock, artifacts sank ever
deeper into the ground through a phenomena known as "subsidence." All this
of which combined to make a precise identification of Louisiana's earliest
residents almost impossible. However, it can also be said that nothing has
been discovered thus far to indicate that the first people to live in
Louisiana were not the ancestors of the Chitimacha. When the first
anthropological studies were made during the late 1800s, a researcher
finally got one of the Chitimacha to admit that his people had originally
come from somewhere east of the Mississippi. This might actually have been
true for this one individual, since the Chitimacha by this time had absorbed
remnants of several tribes from east of the river. However, the Chitimacha
themselves have no memory of having lived anywhere else, and their tradition
simply states "We have always been here." In any case, there seems little
doubt that the Chitimacha have lived in south-central Louisiana for a very,
very long time. Bayou Teche has been continuously occupied since at least
800 B.C. by native peoples with cultural characteristics similar to the
Chitimacha, and almost no one disputes the Chitimacha occupation of the area
after 500 A.D.
When the French arrived in 1699, the Chitimacha, in combination with their Chawasha, Washa, and Yagenechito allies, were probably the most powerful tribe on the Gulf Coast west of Florida. Politically, the Chitimacha were organized into a confederacy of approximately 15 semi-autonomous villages whose central authority was vested with a Grand Chief who lived at the main village near Charenton, Louisiana. Surrounded by a natural fortress of swamps and rivers, the Chitimacha were virtually invulnerable to an attack or invasion by their neighbors. Villages were fairly large (averaging more than 500 people) and were located along the natural levees of streams or lake shores. Fortification was usually unnecessary since nature had already provided them with a natural defense. Housing varied somewhat according to what was available at the location: walls were a framework of poles covered with either mud or palmetto leaves; roofs were thatched or palmetto.
Agriculture was the responsibility of the women and easily provided the majority of the Chitimacha diet. Corn was introduced into the southeast United States from Mesoamerica sometime around 300 B.C. Blessed with several hundred feet of top soil and a 320 day growing season, the Chitimacha had little trouble raising enough for their needs and, unlike some of their neighbors, rarely went hungry. Beans, pumpkins, melons and several varieties of squash were also part of the bounty. The women supplemented this by gathering wild fruits, vegetables, and nuts, while the men provided meat from hunting (deer, buffalo, turkey, alligator) and fishing. The huge shell mounds discovered near former village sites attest to a heavy dependence on shellfish.
For the winter months, each village maintained an elevated community granary to protect their dried corn from rodents and other pests. Beside the granary and chief's house, the typical Chitimacha village had one other public building. Unlike many neighboring tribes, the Chitimacha did not have dedicated temples. Instead, their religious ceremonies and public meetings were held in a building that the French referred to as the "dance house."
In an area crisscrossed with rivers and swamps, dugout canoes were their primary means of transport. Size varied according to purpose, but some Chitimacha canoes were hollowed from huge cypress logs and could hold more that 40 people.The one essential resource that was lacking in their homeland was stone needed for tools and arrowheads, and to acquire this, the Chitimacha frequently exchanged a portion of their agricultural surplus with the Avoyell and other tribes to the north. However, they never seemed to have enough and were forced to compensate. Besides utilizing cane arrows (a shaft without an arrowhead), they also made good use of the blowgun and cane darts for birds and other small game. Fishbones and garfish scales were also effective substitutes as projectile points. The Chitimacha (or more likely, the Washa and Chawasha) also employed the atlatl (spear thrower) long after its use had been abandoned by other tribes in the region.
To enhance their appearance, the Chitimacha flattened the foreheads of their male children. Most men wore their hair long, but there were occasional reports of some of their warriors having a scalplock. With the mild climate, male clothing was limited to a breechcloth which allowed a display of their extensive tattooing of the face, body, arms and legs. Women limited themselves to a short skirt. Their hair was also worn long but usually braided. Socially, the Chitimacha were divided into matrilineal (descent traced through the mother) totemic (named for an animal) clans. The most distinctive characteristic of Chitimacha society was their strict caste system of two ranked groups: nobles and commoners. The separation between them included the use of two distinct dialects with commoners required to address nobles in the proper language.
The Chitimacha were unique among Native Americans with their practice of strict endogamy (a person can only marry someone from their own group). A noble man or woman who married a commoner forfeited their higher status.
Work was divided along gender lines with most of the labor falling to the women. Men usually held all the hereditary chiefships. However, the Chitimacha were strict monogamists, and women exercised considerable authority in the tribe's day-to-day affairs. Many were healing shamans, and some women ruled as Chitimacha queens. Men also dominated the Chitimacha religion that the French chose to describe as sun worship. Before contact the Chitimacha built both effigy (animal shaped) and platform (flat on top to accommodate a building) mounds. However, this practice had been discontinued by 1700 . . . presumably because the weight of the mounds caused them to sink into the underlying mud almost as fast as they were built.During the historic period, the Chitimacha continued to use the simple burial mounds that still dot the region. The dead were initially buried but disinterred a year later so their bones could be stripped by designated "turkey buzzard men." When this task was completed, the remains were placed in a communal burial mound.
After 1719 most Chitimacha adopted the Roman Catholicism and Cajun language
of their French neighbors. As a result, most of their culture and language
has been lost. However, one especially noteworthy craft that has survived is
their renown split-cane basket.The unique "double weave" technique employed
results in an intricately woven basket with a different design on the inside
and outside. Unfortunately, the creation of these treasures is extremely
tedious and is still practiced by only a few Chitimacha women.The result is
an object of great utility and beauty, and Chitimacha baskets have the
reputation of being in the southeastern United States ... perhaps in all of
North America.
From Blue Panther Keeper of Stories.
posted by Amerindian Arts at 4:56 PM
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