Table of Contents
From Ceremony of Sending - A Simultaneity for Twenty Choruses
Overview
These two overlapping pieces, one written in plain text and one written in italics, came from the initiation ceremony for a new chief of the Osage people. The pieces were recited during the ceremony by two of the many tribes in attendance. Other prayers, not included in this entry, were chanted by all but three of the twenty-three tribes that celebrated the initiation ceremony together. This entry includes only two of the twenty prayers recited during one of these ceremonies, which are meant to be chanted or sung in unison or with an overlap of at least two parts at a time. The entry was taken from the literal translation written by Francis La Flesche, titled: The Osage Tribes: Rite of the Chiefs.
Context
The Osage Nation, called 𐓁𐓣 𐓂𐓤𐓘𐓯𐓤𐓘͘ (Ni-u-kon-ska) in the Osage language, translates to “Children of the Middle Waters” in English. This Plains Tribe historically settled in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys. They later migrated to the Missouri and Mississippi rivers as a result of the Iroquois' invasions of Ohio. The Osage language is a Siouan language in the Dhegiha branch, which also includes the languages of the Omaha, Ponca, Kansa, and Quapaw people.
During the initiation ceremony of a new Osage chief, twenty of the twenty-three tribes in attendance would chant their respective prayers of the ceremony, usually intentionally overlapping one another's lines. This overlap of chanting was shown in the Barbara Tedlock version with the use of italics representing the chanting done by one tribe (The Star People), and the normal font representing the chanting of another (The Hidden People). Tedlock also chose to use the indentation of the italicized lines to represent the delay of The Star People's chanting in relation to the timing of the Hidden People's chant during the oral performance. To further mimic the structure of the oral performance and the spoken prayers' timing in relation to one another, in the second half where the italicized text disappears, the chanting part of The Star People had already been sung in its entirety before The Hidden People's chant ended.
Commentary
Bibliography
“Dhegihan Languages.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 2 Feb. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhegihan_languages.
Hunter, Andrea A. “Osage Cultural History.” Osage Nation, 10 Dec. 2019, https://www.osagenation-nsn.gov/who-we-are/historic-preservation/osage-cultural-history.
La Flesche, Francis. 1921. “The Osage tribe: Rite of the chiefs; sayings of the ancient men.” in Thirty-sixth annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1914-1915, 37–597. Bureau of American Ethnology.
“Osage Nation.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 14 Mar. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osage_Nation.
“The Plains Indians (U.S. National Park Service).” National Parks Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-plains-indians.htm.
Shade, Karen. “Karen Shade, Native American Times.” Native American Times, 14 July 2012, https://www.nativetimes.com/life/entertainment/7451-wahzhazhe.
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