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Nebraska
Press Series 2
SOURCES
IN AMERICAN INDIAN ORAL LITERATURE
A Series Published by the University of Nebraska Press
Edited by Douglas R. Parks and Raymond
J. DeMallie
Sources of American Indian Oral Literature
is a series comprising classic collections of native American
folklore and oral traditions from the late nineteenth to the
mid-twentieth century compiled by anthropologists, folklorists,
linguists, and other students of American Indian life. Works
in the series represent efforts intended to preserve records
of nineteenth century American Indian oral literature, depicting
as closely as possible native traditions as they existed before
their transformation by contact with Euro-Americans. Most
of these collections were originally published in museum or
technical monograph series, although some have never been
previously published. Frequently these traditions were recorded
hastily as part of a large salvage program to document, while
it was still possible, nineteenth century tribal cultures
during the early reservation period when those lifeways were
rapidly changing. The traditions, therefore, were usually
recorded either directly from elders who had participated
in tribal life during the pre-reservation period or, less
frequently, from narrators who had learned the stories from
those individuals who had experienced that earlier lifeway.
Because of the sense of urgency at that time
to record material as rapidly as possible, collectors usually
wrote down oral traditions in English translation only, generally
from the dictation of interpreters. Therefore, all the narratives
in the collections included in this series were recorded in
English. Filtered sometimes through direct translations and
sometimes through retellings, those narratives unevenly reflect
native literary styles. Nevertheless, they are primary and
in many cases the only sources of native oral traditions for
particular tribes.
Click on the links below to view specific
books in the Sources in American Indian Oral Literature
series:
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