Tribal traditions, languages, ethnography are integral to research on the cultures of tribes. These are part the libraries of tribal knowledge that are somewhat preserves and lost over the past 200 or more years. Elders have stated that whenever an … Continue reading Freely given: Ethnographic collections and their Informants
Much is still not known about how marriages were arranged among the Kalapuya-Mollala-Clackamas tribes. Hints appear in ethnographic literature that still needs to be tracked down to greater specificity. Generally, it is known that many marriages were arranged by the tribal chiefs and headmen. These arranged marriages were along political and economic lines of reasoning. It was considered preferable to marry your daughter to the son of a Chief of the Clackamas tribe, so that trade for dried salmon would be assured to include good prices and perhaps added benefits. Such marriages cemented relationships in the region so that they … Continue reading Marriage Kinship among the Willamette Valley Tribes
[This is a portion of a developing essay.] My original presentation on the subject was at the Arlington Club in Portland on January 29, 2015. I was invited to do a poetry reading by the State’s Poet Laureate Peter Sears. The event is a annual poetry reading in Honor of William Stafford. The videotape of my presentation is on Youtube, David Lewis Expanding Voices Presentation, 1/29/15 Over the last half century, one of Mose Hudson’s accounts “A Kalapuya Prophecy” was reanalyzed by Jerold Ramsey using ethnopoetics (developed by Dell Hymes) to draw out context and emotion in the original story. … Continue reading Darkening and Enlightening Santiam Kalapuya Prophecy