Born in the Blood: On Native American Translation

17. Translating Context and Situation: William Strachey and Powhatan’s “Scorneful Song”

Translating Context and Situation William Strachey and Powhatan’s “Scorneful Song” William M. Clements One of the earliest references to singing among North American Natives appears in a chronicle of Hernando de Soto’s exploratory expedition of La Florida, during which he and his Spanish cohorts ventured as far west as the Mississippi River after passing through much of what is now the southeastern United States. Soto’s party made their journey between 1539 and 1543. Inevitably, they would have encountered verbal art in the form of oratory as a component of diplomatic courtesies from the Indians they encountered, and they also experienced their singing. As reported by the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega—known as “the Inca”—who based his account on excerpts from manuscripts prepared by participants in Soto’s expedition and perhaps conversations with a few of them, the Native singers used vocal music to synchronize their oar work as they traveled by boat. The Indians, he notes of the occasion in question, pursued the Spanish , “rowing to the sound of their songs, and among many other things that they said (according to the interpretation of the Indians whom the Spaniards had with them) was to praise and aggrandize their own strength and bravery and to condemn the weakness and cowardice of the Castilians .” More precisely, with regard to the latter point, “they said that now the cowards were fleeing from their arms and forces, and that the thieves feared their justice, and that it would do them no good to flee from the country, for all of them would soon die in the water.” Moreover, if the Spanish “would soon be food for birds and dogs on land, in the river they would soon make them food for the fishes and marine animals, and thus 398 their iniquities and the vexation that they were giving the whole world would be ended.” The Inca noted that “at the end of every song they raised a great shout and outcry” (Clayton, Knight, and Moore 1993:508). This chronicle did not see print until 1605, more than half a century after the musical performance it describes, but it may very well be the first (undoubtedly it is among the earliest) record of Native American singing presented as a text in a European language. Though the chronicler did not attempt to capture and translate the words of the song, he did ascertain their gist and implies their function. He also successfully preserved some of the situation and context informing the song’s performance. It was not until after the publication of La Florida by the Inca that the first attempt to represent the words of an American Indian song from a community in what is now the United States occurred, but even then no attempt at translation was made. Moreover, this representation of the song’s words had to wait more than two centuries before seeing print. Interestingly , though, the Powhatan song that William Strachey, secretary of the English colony at Jamestown, wrote out in 1611 and 1612, and which was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1849, seems to have been similar to what the Inca described: a “scorneful song” in which the Indian singers disparage the prowess and manhood of their European counterparts and imply the appropriate repercussions that should befall the interlopers into their territory. The priority of Strachey’s textualization grants it particular importance in the history of European and Euro-American interest in Native American orally performed verbal art. However, appreciating it as fully as allowed by what is available in the textualization and supplementary sources involves more than simply acknowledging its primacy. Like his contemporaries, Strachey held conventional notions about American Indians as representatives of mankind in the state of nature. He also shared the challenges his fellow colonizers in Virginia faced when dealing with the language in which the song he transcribed was performed. Consequently , the ethnopoetic value of his “translation” does not emerge transparently . Nor does it lie principally in Strachey’s representation of the text (what was sung) and texture (how it was sung) of the performance. Instead , the value of Strachey’s documentation of the Powhatans’ “scorneful song” in the early seventeenth century lies in other components of performance : context (what the singer(s) and audience brought to the occasion) and situation (the specific circumstances where and when that occasion Translating Context and Situation 399 occurred). The purpose...