Choctaw Prophecy: A Legacy for the Future

Note on the Texts

Note on the Texts I have used the term “prophetic discourse”—rather than “prophetic narrative ,” for example—because of the conversational nature of this genre. While there is clearly a form to how prophecy is performed, there is no simple term to de¤ne it accurately. In this way, the notion of “text” is already problematic. Whether we identify these performances as texts, conversation, stories, or discourse, the problem remains of how to usefully and accurately display them on the page. The majority of the prophecies I recorded were told in English, so the major translation problem is one from oral to written rather than language to language. For those prophecies recounted in the Choctaw language, I have worked extensively with native speakers and translators Pam Smith, Jesse Ben, and Roseanna Nickey to render translations as accurately as possible. In these cases, I have included transcripts in both languages. These translators worked by ¤rst translating the discourse word-for-word and only then moving to a sentence-by-sentence translation. By doing the ¤rst, they minimized the tendency to summarize rather than translate; by doing the second, they rendered Choctaw sentence structure into comparable English syntax. Despite the careful work of the translators, both the translated texts and those texts told originally in English may seem awkward. What sounded rhythmic, natural, and coherent in performance can seem repetitive, stilted, and confused when rendered only in words on a page. There are numerous solutions; none of them universally applicable, none of them wholly satisfactory . In keeping with the conventions of folkloric study, I have not “cleaned up” these performances to make them ¤t the standards of written discourse. This necessarily narrows the available options. To a great extent, I rely on the reader to treat these passages as they were intended to be encountered— aurally. I encourage readers to read them aloud. Often what seems odd to the eye is perfectly clear to the ear. For my part, I have employed one of the most powerful and simple tools of written language: punctuation. I have used commas and dashes in particu- lar to help convey the shifts in voice and topic and train of thought so quick and common in spoken discourse. More generally, I have followed two basic tenets in rendering spoken words on the page. The ¤rst is one fairly well agreed upon by linguists, folklorists, and anthropologists: to employ only those forms, styles, and markers addressed in analysis, apart from basic punctuation . In other words, no special marker is needed for places where one speaker overlaps another, nor the many markers used to indicate exactly where the overlap begins and ends and the duration. While useful for conversation analysis, a simple dash is suf¤cient here. The second is that everyone speaks differently and every genre has its own forms and styles. While etic formats are desirable for comparative analysis, they are less so for the kind of analysis attempted here: the study of the artistry of a verbal genre within a speci¤c community. No single format for putting the spoken word to paper will work for all texts. In fact, no single format will do justice to a single text. There are always other aspects of a narrative one might wish to highlight; it is impossible to accommodate all of them. Accordingly, I have followed two basic styles for most texts as outlined below, but I often adapt this form to address particular features of a text. When I do so, I say so. The two basic forms are as follows: For most texts and general conversation, I have used basic paragraph format . Each new paragraph indicates a new thought. Often these paragraphs are only a sentence long. For some texts, I have indicated the various voices involved in performing prophetic discourse with a line break and a ¤ve-space indention. These generally include the speaker, the elder or elders who told the prophecy to the speaker, and direct quotes of these elders. Within these direct quotes, there are often voices of people within the narrative. Further, commentary by the current speaker can exist in the past as they report their feelings when they were younger and in the present speech event (sitting with me and my tape recorder). A line break and indention indicates all of this embedding; the text aligned to the left is the least embedded (usually the voice of the speaker in the present, speaking to me), the text farther and farther...