The Preservation of Native American Folklore: Analyzing Archives of the Kiowa Tribe

 

The Preservation of Native American Folklore: Analyzing Archives of the Kiowa Tribe

            Collective memory, in respect to social memory (sociology), is how a group remembers. Through the process of preservation (what kind of things get preserved, stored, and saved), stories and rituals are able to be told for generations. Communicative memory is folklore that is told and retold without artifactual figures. Communicative memory is more adaptive, prone to getting lost, and prone to getting changed because there is no institution to archive said folklore (Edy, 03-14-22). This raises the question of how indigenous cultures go generations of preserving folklore, stories, and rituals through the word of mouth. According to David L. Moore in “Rough Knowledge and Radical Understanding: Sacred Silence in American Indian Literature”,

The four literary elements (myth, relationality on the land, mundane cultural description, and rhetorical silence) have worked for generations against a contextual historical problem in relation to reading Native American literature: the conflation of colonialism and capitalism, which has commodified and fetishized American Indians beyond recognition. The forces of this history work so powerfully on both readers and writers of American Indian self-representations that it takes persistent effort to elude the nuanced pressures of that perennial American icon, the “vanishing Indian.” The incongruous perseverance of this tragic figure eclipses the cultural survival of many Indian communities and identities which would give the lie to the “vanish” stereotype (American Indian Quarterly, 1997).

Native American cultures have the historical context of experiencing genocide and being silenced through the process of colonization. The importance of folklore, stories, rituals, and practices have preserved the communicative memory in Native American cultures, despite the attempt of silence. This paper will concentrate on the Kiowa Tribe as it looks at how the Native American stories told in the present effects the past, how Native American folklore has been archived, and how Native American cultures are portrayed. The qualitative process of conducting research for this paper contains one on one interviews from members of the Kiowa Tribe, Cheryl Bearbow Dezell and Miles Pocowatchit, as well as, analyzing Kiowa literature to provide a better understanding of the Native American practices and rituals of the Kiowa Tribe.

            To begin, it is important to consider the historical context of the Kiowa Tribe. Dennis W. Zotigh of Indian Country Today interviewed the Kiowa Business Committee Chairman of the Kiowa Tribe, Amber C. Toppah, where she states, “My Kiowa name is Ay-Keen-Geh-Ah-Lay, meaning Charging after the Enemy. It was given to me by my grandfather Frank Kaubin and grandmother Georgia Duppoint in 1994. I am a great-great-great granddaughter of Chief Satanta (White Bear), and Ay-Keen-Geh-Ah-Lay was the name of his eldest daughter” (Zotigh, 2018). Toppah explained, “The Kiowas were originally from the Yellowstone National Park area. Our history says that the tribe broke in two with some members remaining there and others traveling south to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma” (Zotigh, 2018). As the Kiowa tribe is now spread out throughout the nation, primarily the southwest region of Oklahoma; Elgin, Oklahoma was the first location to teach Native American curriculum in their public schools. Originally taught and offered by Rita Quoetone Gaddy, grandmother of Amber C. Toppah and Miles Pocowatchit, mother of Cheryll Bearbow Dezell, students at Elgin Public School have the privilege to learn about the Native American culture. “Kiowa Voices: Myths, Legends, and Folktales”, written by Maurice Boyd, is a Kiowa Literature book used to teach students about Kiowa history. Miles Pocowatchit, current educator of Native American history at Elgin Public Schools, claims he utilizes Kiowa Voices in his lesson plans often to provide an engaging class discussion. Author Maurice Boyd introduces Kiowa Voices with the history of preserving the Kiowa stories, stating:

In 1970 some Kiowa elders, headed by James Auchiah and Linn Pauahty, expressed concern over the permanent loss of Kiowa folklore and history as the tribal elders passed away. Observing that much Kiowa lore was recorded only in the minds of tribal society to preserve a permanent record of their cultural heritage. The project for the preservation of Kiowa history and culture was approved by the Tribal Council in 1974, and the Kiowa Historical and Research Society was officially incorporated in 1975 by the State of Oklahoma (Boyd, 1983).

Through the collection of stories shared from family members and compacted in Kiowa Voices, insight is given to the Kiowa rituals and practices. Considering that many of the Kiowa folklore resembles a mythic past (not real in fact but real in consequences), in addition to the non-fictional historical stories, presentism is applicable to Native American folklore. Presentism is the idea that the morals and values in the present gets applied to the past. Pocowatchit describes the stories in Kiowa Voices as sometimes “silly”, but it is the moral message in the context of these stories that teaches a lesson of consequence for adolescents to interpret. In “Migration as Creation. The Case of Two Native American Creation Stories”, written by Codrut Serban, Serban suggests the “creation myths represented the cultural and historical foundation of traditional Native American cultures” and later explains that “the main function of creation stories was to teach and to instruct rather than to entertain, so retelling or passing on the fundamental truth(s) was the main motivation behind the didactic role of storytelling which was always imbued with sacred elements” (Serban, 2020). Most importantly, Serban states that “The community”, Native American tribes, “felt the need to reassert the originary pillars upon which it had evolved, find symbolic shelter in that common body of knowledge, and use the story as an instrument of cultural and historical resistance and/or survival. Creation stories form of sacred truth which, was believed, could guarantee survival when history seemed to come to its end” (Serban, 2020). These stories represent the cultural identity of the Kiowa tribe. In the search for identity in Kiowa Voices, it is said that “The Kiowa person had no existence apart of the tribal community. The person was spiritually interdependent upon the language, folk history, ceremonial ritual, and the sacred tribal relation to nature. No one and nothing existed in isolation” (page 273, Kiowa Voices). Amber Toppah brings perspective to this while discussing her life experience, stating “I never knew as I was growing up, being raised by my grandma and grandpa, that I was being groomed to have a role in leadership in the government sector” (Zotigh, 2018). Toppah continues, “I thought I knew where I was going. I said I would never go back to Meers, Oklahoma, never work for a tribe, and never be in politics. Today I live in Meers, I’ve worked for the Kiowa Casino, and I am in tribal politics” (Zotigh, 2018). The strong connection that Kiowa tribal members have to their culture forever links the present to the cultural lore of their past as a moral compass in navigating their life experiences.

            All things considered, the process of archiving Native American stories and histories have shifted to a more tactile process compared to the abstract word-of-mouth storytelling. The very publication of Kiowa Voices, amongst other Native American literature, is a significant shift to preserving Kiowa lore and has expanded the ability to learn about Kiowa culture if one chooses to engage with the literature. It is stated, “observing that much Kiowa culture was recorded only in the minds of tribal storytellers, and handed down as oral tradition, the Kiowas formed a society to preserve a permanent record of their cultural heritage” (page 2, Boyd, 1983). However, the traditional communicative memory will always be the main process of sharing Kiowa folklore. By the means of ceremonies, rituals, or storytelling, Kiowa tribal members are the gatekeepers of Kiowa history and preserve the information to transfer the message amongst others. Pocowatchit recalls always being taught about his Kiowa culture from family members and compares this process of deliberation to resemble the “telephone game”. Stories can be passed from individual but is susceptible to being misinterpreted along the lines of spreading a message through the word of mouth. Cheryll Bearbow Dezell, World History educator at Elgin Public Schools, tells a similar narrative of the process of sharing stories. Dezell mentioned that if information were to be shared, an individual would be sent off to share that information or story. That said, as gatekeepers of the Kiowa culture, tribal members had the advantage to inform whom they choose and misdirect individuals with faulty information, if necessary, in order to protect their land, culture, and heritage. In Kiowa Voices, the importance of interpreting and preserving Kiowa history explains the emotional response to colonization of European culture:

The growth and evolution of the Kiowa tribal character is reflected in the myths and folktales, and tribal psychology is especially reflected through the mythic Saynday. The existence of Saynday (Sendi) stories was first recorded by James Mooney in the Calendar History of the Kiowa Indians, Bereau of American Ethnology Annual report 17, pt. 2. (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1892), following his studies on the Oklahoma reservation. Thirty-five years later, in November and December of 1927, Elsie Clews Parsons collected several Saynday (Sendeh) tales. These were published in 1929 in Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, Volume XXII (New York G. E. Stechert and Company, 1929). From 1934 through 1936, Alice Marriott recorded native Kiowa stories and eventually published some Saynday tales in her Winter-Telling Stories (New York: Tomas Y. Crowell, 1947): they were reprinted in 1963, together with some previously published Plains Indian lore, under the title of Saynday’s People in the Bison Book Series (Lincon: University Nebreska Press, 1963). In American Indian Mythology (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1968), Alice Marriott and Carol K. Rachlin recorded an isolated Saynday story about the origin of death. Other versions of the same tales have occasionally appeared in newspapers and journals. The foregoing publications about Saynday were recorded and published by white people. Each is a version taken orally from an individual Kiowa. Some of the tales were either abbreviated or embellished by the teller, and often the cultural significance was not made clear (xxvi, Boyd, 1983).

This is an important, informative chronological understanding of how Kiowa stories were preserved by some individuals. Most significantly, the last sentence in the passage proclaims the embellished interpretations from white people. The gatekeeper of the archive tells a narrative from their perspective and when the perspective is detached from the cultural roots, it loses saliency in authenticity. The story of the mythic Saynday represents the Kiowa culture hero as a beacon of light to help the Kiowa tribe process the trauma of genocide to Native American. It is mentioned in Kiowa Voices that “the tribal frustrations and depression, the grasping for new hope through the Feather (Ghost) Dance, and the struggle for identity are revealed in their folktales. New Saynday stories reflected the Kiowa response to their confrontation with the white man and his culture, and peyote stories suggest the outcome” (xxvi, Boyd, 1983). Pocowatchit even recalls his earliest tribal meeting was a Peyote meeting at age 8. Peyote is a cactus that is “both used as a sacrament and as a medicine for many kinds of illness” (page 276, Boyd, 1983). The importance of conducting ceremonies and rituals connects the Kiowa community to embrace their cultural identity, pass down folklore, and mourn the historical trauma of their ancestors. It is essential for the authenticity of the stories, rituals, and folklore stays true to the Native American culture and each of the tribe’s history. As Native American literature continues to be published in effort to archive and preserve Native American cultures, representing these stories in a way that illuminates the contexts of the emotional trauma, ways to live, and ways to cope will allow future generations to conceptualize the hardships that Native Americans faced.

            Furthermore, the narrative of how Native American stories are told can bring perspective of Native American cultures to members of different ethnicities and cultural identities. As mentioned prior, Native Americans are often fetishized and misrepresented. In modern day media, there is little Native American representation and when there is representation, Native Americans are commonly represented as caricatures. For example, Kenzie Allen, a descendant of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin, expresses her opinion of the media’s portrayal of Native Americans, stating:

I’ve struggled with Disney’s Pocahontas as a source of pain and stereotype. Both Pocahontas and Sacagawea are often held up as heroines in the Western perspective, their stories reduced to kinder details rather than serving the interest of the dominant culture. Yes, there is visibility in telling their stories, but it is a tainted visibility, a false reality rendered through the dominant culture, which seeks to ameliorate, always, the horrific methods by which they came to occupy an entire nation’s worth of landmass (Bodenner, The Atlantic, 2015).

This is problematic for Native American cultures because representation in popular culture is what becomes salient in what people commemorate (Edy, 04-08-22). John Coward, a professor at the University of Tulsa, examined how Native American life is portrayed in literature, The Good Red Road (published in 1987) and Rez Life (published in 2012) where he asked “How did these writers approach Native Americans and Native American life? How did they portray Native Americans? What stories did they emphasize or ignore? Finally, how successfully did these writers make sense of the Native American people?” (Coward, 2018). What Coward found was that “non-Native Americans have been mostly wrong about Native Americans and Native American lives since the English settlement of Jamestown in 1607. From then to now, Euro-American ideas about Native Americans have been shaped by racial myths and misinformation, most of which have been produced and perpetuated by media and popular culture” (Coward, 2018). The Good Red Road mentions the sociological problems in Native American communities involving alcoholism, economic poverty, and racial discrimination in which Native Americans are represented as “a dirty Indian” (Coward, 2018). In Rez Life, it is mentioned that “most often rez life is associated with tragedy. We are thought of in terms of what we have lost or what we have survived. What one finds on reservations is more than scars, tears, blood, and noble sentiment. There is beauty in Indian life, as well as meaning” (Coward, 2018). Anne E. Pettinger confronts these disparities through her journalistic field research observing Native American cultures at the Rocky Boy’s Reservation in Montana. Pettinger discovers that “we expected that stories of racially motivated conflicts and tension would be dew and far between on our first visit to Rocky Boy’s Reservation. What we found instead is that everyone spoke with had a story to tell about local racism. Joe Big Knife recounted an incident at a Havre store that he felt humiliated his family” (Pettinger, 2005). As modern media and film break the barriers of ethnic representation and authentically portray Native Americans true to their heritage, non-Native American individuals can remove their blinders of racial discrimination and stereotypes and become enriched with the cultural foundation of the American soil. In addition, representing Native American cultures authentically in modern day media shapes how future generations preserving Native American life. 

            In conclusion, as Treuer proclaims in Writing from the Indigenous Edge: Journeys into the Native American Experience, “to understand American Indians is to understand America, Indians, after all, were the first Americans and they have something to contribute to the larger American story” (Coward, 2018). It is incredibly valuable, salient, and sacred to preserve Native American cultures. Communicative memory through the process of folklore, ceremonies, rituals, and stories represents the Native American cultural identity. Future generations experience the practices of their tribe, they can interpret the contexts of the messages within the stories as a moral compass grounding them to the roots of their heritage. The process of archiving these stories should be diligent to the story’s authenticity. For generations, stories, and lore were passed by word-of-mouth and preserved as Native Americans were the gatekeepers of their culture’s historical information. Unfortunately, as tribal elders pass, their internal archive passes along with them. The movement to tactically archive Native American lore allows permanent perceptions of history to be stored for future generations to learn. In addition, properly archiving Native American stories (in that, it appropriately portrays Native American life) in literature and media has consequences of how Native Americans are perceived. Portraying Native Americans as caricatures fuels negative stereotypes with repercussions of discrimination against the Native American community. According to the Migration Memorials Project, “a poll released by NPR revealed that 55% of Native Americans living in tribal communities say they have been discriminated against when interacting with police and 54% when applying for jobs” (Recognizing the Marginalization of indigenous people, 2017). Pettinger even encounters this while conducting her field research, stating “where some Native Americans felt they were treated unfairly because of the color of their skin. Those tensions were most evident at retail stores, bars, and restaurants” (Pettinger, 2005). Forevermore, the American soil belongs to the Native American history first and foremost. It crucial that the historical American archive represents the Native American cultures respectfully as such.

References

Bodenner, C. (2015, June 30). Does Disney's Pocahontas do more harm than good? The Atlantic. Retrieved May 5, 2022, from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/06/pocahontas-feminism/397190/

Boyd, M., & Pauahty, L. (1981). Kiowa voices. Texas Christian University Press.

Coward, J. M. (2018). Writing from the (Indigenous) Edge: Journeys into the Native American Experience. Literary Journalism Studies, 10(1), 26–35.

Moore, D. L. (1997). Rough Knowledge and Radical Understanding: Sacred Silence in American Indian Literatures. American Indian Quarterly, 21(4), 633–662. https://doi.org/10.2307/1185717

Pettinger, A. E. (2005). A Student’s Most Memorable Story. Nieman Reports, 59(3), 38–41.

Recognizing the marginalization of indigenous people. Recognizing the Marginalization of Indigenous People | Duke Migration Memorials. (n.d.). Retrieved May 5, 2022, from https://migrationmemorials.trinity.duke.edu/recognizing-marginalization-indigenous-people

ŞERBAN, C. (2020). Migration as Creation. The Case of Two Native American Creation Stories. Meridian Critic, 35(2), 75–81.

Zotigh, D. W. (2013, November 27). Amber C. Toppah, Committee chairman: Nmai's meet Native America Series. Indian Country Today. Retrieved May 5, 2022, from https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/amber-c-toppah-committee-chairman-nmais-meet-native-america-series