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Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. Bell & Howell Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 UMI' UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE CEREMONY IN MINIATURE: KIOWA ORAL STORYTELLING AND NARRATIVE EVENT A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By GUS PALMER, JR. Norman, Oklahoma 2001 UMI Number; 9994073 ___ # UMI UMI Microform 9994073 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and beaming Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United S tates Code. Bell & Howell Information and beaming Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 CEREMONY IN MINIATURE: KIOWA ORAL STORYTELLING AND NARRATIVE EVENT A Dissertation APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY BY Copyright by GUS PALMER, JR. 2001 AU Rights Reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to acknowledge the help and kindness of my Kiowa storytelling consultants John Tofpi, Cornelius Spottedhorse, my parents Gus and Alice Palmer, Dorothy Kodaseet, Carol Willis, my thg uncles the late Oscar Tsoodle and the late Parker P. McKenzie, and my ko, grandfather the late Henry Tenadooah. I also wish to acknowledge the support and assistance of the Kiowa Nation of Oklahoma and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. For their generous assistance I am especially indebted to Professors Jason Jackson and Circe Sturm, and members of my dissertation committee Margaret Bender, Loretta Fowler, John Dunn, Alan Velie, and my committee advisor, Morris Foster, and any others whom I may have forgotten to mention. IV TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents V Abstract YÜ Forward viii Chapter I WHAT IS ORAL STORYTELLING? 1 n TALKING STORIES 6 in KIOWAS, KIOWA TEXTS, CEREMONIAL OCCASIONS 37 IV WHEN ANIMALS COULD TALK: CONVERSATIONS 71 WITH JOHN TOFPI V MAGICAL REALISM 83 VI LOOKING BACK AND REMEMBERING, KNOWING 134 WHO YOU ARE v n TELLING STORIES WITHIN STORIES 142 Vm WHO CAN TELL THE BIGGEST FIB? TEASING, JOKING 172 AND TRICKSTER NARRATIVES DC CONTEXTUALIZING & RECONTEXTUALIZING OLD 202 TEXTS INTO NEW TEXTS X LAST WORDS 236 SOUND SYSTEM 249 NOTES 250 WORKS CITED 256 KIOWA LINGUISTICS 262 VI ABSTRACT Everytime Kiowas tell stories they invoke a cultural and tribal framework their audience(s) can relate to in a meaningful way. Like any cultural group, Kiowas recontextualize ideas and themes from earlier contexts that symbolically reproduce and reinforce their way of life everytime they tell stories. In this study, I utilize an ethnographic approach of observation and participation and fundamental anthropological linguistic concepts and theories to understand contemporary Kiowa oral storytelling. I apply a loosely structured narrative as a means of revealing the narratives as a whole, but even more so to allow the consultants to speak their minds freely and move about as they might in every day life. In this way, I believe it is easier to enter the world of Kiowa oral storytelling. Furthermore, it clarifies the process by which Kiowas tell stories and enables one to raise other pertinent questions regarding oral storytelling for its appreciation and understanding. vu FOREWORD Contemporary Kiowa storytelling is accomplished when small, intimate groups of relatives and close friends come together. While many of the stories concern family members, most of the tales told tend to be informative and entertaining. Joking and teasing are at once one of the chief features in Kiowa storytelling. Principally told in English, these contemporary tales are products of storytellers who do not easily fit into the definition ofstoryteller. Indeed, Kiowa storytellers might be characterized as anomalies by modem standards. While it is not easy to categorize Kiowa storytellers, it is even more difBcult to explain how storytelling is achieved. 1 have already pointed out one way. That is, Kiowas tell stories in small, intimate groups of people who know each other. This is done for several reasons. First of all, it is easier for a storyteller to discourse and frame a story with people he or she knows. Secondly, Kiowas, as a rule, do not care to share details about intimate tribal matters with someone outside their own circle. Kiowas tend to tell stories that other Kiowas can respond to and with whom they can dialogue. Because Kiowa storytelling is a highly dialogic event, no one but a Kiowa would be able to participate spontaneously as one is required to in storytelling. Non- participation in storytelling renders storytelling nil. To share details concerning &mily, relatives, and tribal values and themes with strangers is as serious an affront, by Kiowa standards, say, as high treason. By and large, Kiowas like and want to entertain one another and not someone outside of their fold. In my experience, Kiowas will refrain from telling stories at all to a stranger, because it is just not viii becoming a Kiowa person. What I have prepared in this dissertation is a discourse of how Kiowas tell stories. Chapter one is an overview ofKiowa oral storytelling. The second chapter is the storytelling tradition of Kiowas as we have come to know it. Contemporary oral storytelling constitutes chapter three and the remaining six chapters constitute a body of storytelling texts and discourses assembled over two and a half years of fieldwork. While most of these chapters are on the surface conversational and dialogic, they have as their concern, in the main, to understand how Kiowas accomplish storytelling. Furthermore, they comprise what analytic and interpretive considerations I have tried to bring to bear upon the subject ofKiowa storytelling. I should also like to mention that during the course of the fieldwork, sadly, two of my storytelling consultants died, one in 1999 and the other in 2000, and may account for the sometimes somber tone in later sections. But even so, the work overall is sustained by the dignity and high order storytellers bring to Kiowa storytelling. My hope is that storytelling of this kind will persist as an integral part of Kiowa tribal life even as it has over the years. IX CHAPTER I WHAT IS ORAL STORYTELLING? Songs are thoughts, sung out with the breath when people are moved by great forces and ordinary speech is no longer enough. Man is movedjust like the ice floe sailing here and there in the current. His thoughts are driven by a flawingforce when he feels joy, when he feels fear, when he feels sorrow. Thoughts can wash over him like a flood, making his breath come in gasps and his heart throb. Something like a break in the weather will keep him thawed up. And then it will happen that we who always think we are small, will feel still smaller. And we will fear to use words. But it will happen that the words we need will come o f themselves. When the words we want to use shoot up of themselves— we get a new song. “ Orpingalik, Eskimo Shaman of the Netsilik Terms that attempt to define, clarify or explain oral production are many. We hear such terms as verbal performance (Tedlock), oral poetry (Finnegan), ethnopoetics (Rothenberg), oral traditions (Momaday), oral verse or versifying, and many others. I prefer oral storytelling. I choose this term because it is based on both the oral delivery and social context where oral stories and poetry occur. Because storytelling has fi*om its inception been a ‘telling’ rather than written, storytelling is itself a live performance. This distinguishes it firom written forms of literature. Storytelling also occurs in a social context because it requires, insists upon, a listener or audience. Listeners more or less participate in the telling of a story. They do this by nodding their heads or by giving some external sign, verbal or not, that they follow what is being said and give tacit approval. Other times a listener will often participate by simply replying hauyes. In any case, oral storytelling is a live performance and therefore is immediate and generally unrehearsed. In societies where there is no writing, storytelling may be one of the only means of live entertainment and teaching (Rubin 1999; Foley 1997; Ong 1982). Because storytelling is a performative event, it relies on language features that distinguish it from ordinary speech (Finnegan 1977; Tedlock 1983; Hymes 1974; Sarris 1993). Such features include rhyme, alliteration, parallelism, and formulaic openings and closings, rhythm, song, story framing, intertextualizatioin, verisimilitude, and knowing when to tell a story in the midst of ordinary conversation. Because oral storytelling is a process of language, it is found in most human societies.