The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought: Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-DayChamberlain, Alexander Francis
Science
The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought: Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-Day
Chamberlain, Alexander Francis
Child rearing; Children -- Folklore; Folklore and children
"Some tribes have regular story-tellers, men who have devoted a great
deal of time to learning the myths and stories of their people, and who
possess, in addition to a good memory, a vivid imagination. The mother
sends for one of these, and, having prepared a feast for him, she and
her little 'brood,' who are curled up near her, await the fairy stories
of the dreamer, who, after his feast and smoke, entertains them for
hours. Many of these fanciful sketches or visions are interesting and
beautiful in their rich imagery, and have been at times given erroneous
positions in ethnological data."
Knortz refers in glowing terms to the _adisoke-winini_, or
"storyteller" of the Chippeway Indians, those gifted men, who entertain
their fellows with the tales and legends of the race, and who are not
mere reciters, but often poets and transformers as well (_Skizzen_,
294).
So, too, among the Andaman Islanders, "certain mythic legends are
related to the young by _okopai-ads_ [shamans], parents, and
others, which refer to the supposed adventures or history of remote
ancestors, and though the recital not unfrequently evokes much mirth,
they are none the less accepted as veracious" (498. 95).
_Morals._
Among some of the native tribes of California we meet with
_i-wa-musp_, or "men-women" (519. 132). Among the Yuki, for
example, there were men who dressed and acted like women, and "devoted
themselves to the instruction of the young by the narration of legends
and moral tales." Some of these, Mr. Powers informs us, "have been known
to shut themselves up in the assembly-hall for the space of a month,
with brief intermissions, living the life of a hermit, and spending the
whole time in rehearsing the tribal-history in a sing-song monotone to
all who chose to listen."
Somewhat similar, without the hermit-life, appear to be the functions of
the orators and "prophets" of the Miwok and the peace-chiefs, or
"shell-men," of the Pomo (519. 157, 352). Of the Indians of the Pueblo
of Tehua, Mr. Lummis, in his entertaining volume of fairy-tales, says:
"There is no duty to which a Pueblo child is trained in which he has to
be content with the bare command, 'Do thus'; for each he learns a fairy-
tale designed to explain how people first came to know that it was right
to do thus, and detailing the sad results which befell those who did
otherwise." The old men appear to be the storytellers, and their tales
are told in a sort of blank verse (302. 5).
Mr. Grinnell, in his excellent book about the Blackfeet,--one of the
best books ever written about the Indians,--gives some interesting
details of child-life. Children are never whipped, and "are instructed
in manners as well as in other more general and more important matters."
Among other methods of instruction we find that "men would make long
speeches to groups of boys playing in the camps, telling them what they
ought to do to be successful in life," etc. (464. 188-191).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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