In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

The question of the origin of prophecy demands attention to a series of related questions for its answer. Perhaps the most obvious is a question that virtually every Choctaw narrator asks during the performance of prophecy: “How did they know?” In performance, this question often functions rhetorically , more important to raise than to answer. The question, particularly when posed after the narration of a prophecy that has in fact been ful¤lled, claims authority for the past and serves not to ask how they knew but to aver that they knew. But “How did they know?” also functions on the more explicit level of a question. Believing irrevocably that they did in fact know does not alleviate the mystery of how such knowledge was possible, nor who “they” are or were. The answer to one implicates the answer to the other, and both implicate the process of how prophecy is created. Turning to prophetic discourse itself, we ¤nd speakers carefully attributing the prophecies they have heard. Often this attribution outlines only the direct lineage of narration (for example, from grandmother to mother to them), and does not address the larger question of the prophecy’s origin. When speakers do, whether in the act of performance or during directed interviews, their answers consistently presume that nobody makes predictions today. Grady John’s comments are typical of most. “There’s some old people, living now, but not like my granddad and them, you know. ’Cause they came through hard ways and they learned, you know, as they go. And they, maybe a few might stick around, but not that many.” Yet a few minutes earlier in our talk, and again a few minutes later, Grady himself makes predictions about the future. “Now let me predict you. Russia is, right now, Russians are down. But once Americans build them up, they going to try something. ’Cause they’re down. In®ation, a lot of their economies is so bad over there.” Why the apparent contradiction? An ethnographic look at Choctaw culture provides two possible answers. There are two reasons immediately apparent . First, there are restrictions placed on people against pride and self4 The Origin of Prophecy promotion. To place oneself on par with the elders of the past is to presume a great deal of authority, a presumption that may be valid but is not acceptable to claim for oneself. Coupled with this is an unwillingness to publicize one’s talents for fear of incurring the jealousy of a neighbor and subsequently someone with the power to harm, such as a bad medicine person. Such taboos and fears are common in many American Indian communities. The second reason derives from a belief that Choctaw culture was stronger in the past, and that the people of that past were stronger too. The reasons given for this shift are fairly straightforward. In the past, before the growth in home, business, and road construction, there were more woods. More woods meant both more room for medicinal herbs to grow and more room for supernatural beings to roam. Many people throughout the community , not just people with specialized roles like doctors or prophets, were familiar with systems of knowledge derived from supernatural power. As the woods have been whittled away, so too the amount and impact of the medicine and the supernatural. Grady John is not merely hesitant to place himself on par with the elders of the past for reasons of humility; he believes there is a distinct difference between the elders of the past and those of today with respect to their connection to the supernatural and ability to know the future. This perception of past divorced from the present has already been recognized in the generic system of oral narratives. Just as stories of the elders are viewed as different from contemporary stories, so too are prophecies of the past whose origins are mysterious and amazing, and modern predictions that are far more mundane though no less important in deciphering the surrounding world. The old prophecies are stories of the elders and are revered. Current predictions are made by men and women who do not claim special power or knowledge but rather see themselves thinking through the events of the past, the present, and subsequently the future as part of their roles as elders and part of their own need to make sense of the world. So although Choctaw narratives, and Choctaw culture in general, are not divided as sacred or secular , there is...

Share