Arapaho Stories, Songs, and Prayers: A Bilingual Anthology by Andrew Cowell et al. (review)

This stunning collection of Arapaho literature includes creation accounts and etiological narratives, trickster stories, legends and myths, animal stories, stories of “wondrous events,” anecdotal stories, prayers and ceremonial speeches, and song texts such as hand-game songs, love songs, war songs, and Sun Dance and Ghost Dance songs. The presentation format of each text comprises its title, its narrator, place, date, collector, manuscript and/or notebook number, other relevant notations, substantial introductory commentary and explanation, and then the text itself set forth in generally couplet format: one line in Arapaho, the next line its English translation. Copious endnotes conclude each section. The book commences with an Arapaho orthography and pronunciation guide and a comprehensive introduction by the authors orienting readers to the Arapaho peoples, to their narrative or poetic genres, to the meta-narrative markers found in the text and other lexical “archaisms,” and to the idiosyncrasies of style and meaning, describing early manuscript collectors and consultants, and outlining their processes of translation, organization, and format. It also contains several appendixes.

The intended audience may be linguists, cultural historians, and ethnographers, but any lay reader interested in trickster tales, songs, and prayers, and especially in Great Plains languages, cultures, lore, and legends, will be well satisfied with this presentation.

The authors remind us that the Arapahos, as legendary bison hunters, “historically occupied the High Plains” in what is now Colorado and Wyoming with “forays” into the Rocky Mountains both west and east of the Continental Divide. They were often allied with the Cheyenne, the Lakota, and the Dakota. The Arapahos were and are well-established denizens of the Great Plains.

Arapaho Stories is a tour de force of collection and translation utilizing, among other sources, heretofore unpublished material collected in the original language but stored in the National Anthropological Archives (naa) since the 1900s. Lisa Conathan at the naa brought this material to Andrew Cowell’s attention, and he enlisted Alonzo Moss Sr. and William J. C’Hair, the cochairs of the Northern Arapaho Language and Culture Commission dedicated to language maintenance and revitalization. Early manuscript recordings of these Arapaho tales and songs were often written in English or made by ethnographers with imperfect knowledge of the language and inaccurate orthographies. This volume “resuscitates” those Arapaho-language recordings and “celebrates” Arapaho oral traditions in all their richness. Every library, scholar, and Great Plains native would be well served to obtain and savor this well-researched, well-documented, well-explained and lively volume!