Parsons, Elsie Clews. Notes on the Caddo, Memories of the American Anthropological Association. Supplement to American Anthropologist, Volume 43, No. 3, Part 2. 1921.
There was one witch (naiiti), the most powerful of all. He was an old man and he always wanted to marry young girls. The old people were afraid of him. The chief had a pretty daughter. This witch asked for her. The chief said, “You are too old.” That night the girl died. The chief […]
In the war dance (R. GucuuwiGaocan, Gu, where, cuuwi, men, braves, Gaocan, dance), the men bunch around the drum and move dancing around the dance floor. They carry a tomahawk or a scalp on a stick, and wear the typical war bonnet of eagle feathers fastened to a strip of cloth. On the face is
There was a village. They would gather the boys to wrestle. One boy was an orphan. He went from place to place. When he found a family good to him he would stay with them. An old man gave him a gun and he went hunting. He brought in a turkey. One evening he did
The spirit stays Six days before starting on its way. During these six days a fire must be kept up at the east end of the grave. Anybody in the family, man or woman, old or young, may keep up this fire. All the possessions of the deceased, clothes, etc. are kept by this fire,
Before the night meetings everyone takes a bath in the creek “to wash away sins,” or a sweat bath. For sweat bath is made a dome-shaped frame of willows, over it a canvas wagon-cover. At the fire outside, the stones are heated, taken into the house and a little water poured over them to make
There were two little boys playing all the time together. They were tesha. The folks of one lived away at some distance. The other was the chief’s son. One day they went bird hunting. The chief’s son came back without his friend. On a mountain they had found a big hole. The chief’s son threw
There was a mean boy; his mother’s brother, a chief, wanted to kill him. His mother begged him off. The chief said he must not fight at home, but go out to strange Indians to fight. One day the boy disappeared. He came back and shot off his gun .221 He brought in two scalps
There was a girl, a pretty girl, the boys came courting her. The girl would not listen to them. One day she went after water, she saw a boy across the creek, she went across and talked to him. He was a handsome boy in a fine buckskin suit. She went back to the river.
The Beaver (t’ao) doctor is the “strongest” (i.e. most powerful) (Ingkanish). He is a daitino (mescal-bean) doctor. He held a medicine dance in early spring. He would throw fire up onto the “grass house” and get it down without the house catching fire. He would shoot another doctor through the heart so that he bled
Grandfather or Father Sun, Earth (wadat’ina: wadat’, earth, ĭn’ă, mother), Fire (ibat’niko: ibat, grandfather, niko, fire), Lightning (ika adinin: ika, grandmother, adinin, lightning), Thunder (R. iGahabaGanswa, grandmother, noise maker, see p. 16), Winds, Cyclone, God, all are referred to by White Moon as supernatural beings, but so vaguely that in his mind, at least, they
Exorcism By Fumigation This rite is performed, as we shall note, in Peyote ceremonial–when a participant returns to the ceremonial tipi after having had to leave it during the night, and, by all the participants at the close of the ceremony. Any one who would enter the room where a patient is being cured has
The following data were recorded in New York City in the winter of 1921-22 with the cooperation of White Moon, a recent Caddo graduate of Carlisle who in New York shrewdly called himself Chief Silver Moon. In Oklahoma he was generally known as Mike Martin. In December, 1927, at Anadarko, Oklahoma, while collecting folk tales
The localized family groups of which I have information are all in the northern division, to which White Moon belongs. He is less familiar with the family groupings in the southern division; he opines that in the southern division there is less concentration by family. Kuhaiyu Here there are four houses occupied by several descendants
Of any clanship system White Moon had never heard, and, whatever approach to the subject we made, he remained consistently unaware of clan groups. White Moon was born in 1897, and it seemed not improbable that his ignorance of clanship was characteristic of the younger generation of the tribe; but Ingkanish20 and Pardon were equally
Gen. II, 63 > Gen. II, 59 parallel cousin removed Gen. III, 37 > Gen. III, 48 father’s sister’s son Du’wi’} Du wi t iti} younger brother, parallel cousin of a male (?) Gen. II, 8 > Gen. II, 12 younger brother Gen. I, 42 > Gen. I, 44 younger half brother Gen. III,
Sickness may be caused by a witch who has sent something into your body-horse hair, an insect, a bit of cloth, an arrow. Your doctor (konah’) would draw out this thing and send it back into the witch who sent it. Then a fight would be on “between the two witches,” i.e. your doctor and
White Moon related a set of “funny stories” told him by old man Grasshopper, some of which are “tall stories” or stories of Spanish picaresque type like those recorded by Handy at Zuni. Grasshopper said that once he lost his horse, it was gone almost a year. And one day he lost his hogs, they
Stories were told at night, in winter (Pardon). The boys had to bathe in the creek early in the morning before the night of story telling. While listening to the story they had to sit straight. If the story was not told right it would turn cold. Caddo Creation Story The Caddo Tale of Lion
Turkey Dance The Caddo Turkey dance (R. nu’Gano’caniya’: nu’, turkey, cano’caniya’, going to dance) is danced by women only, circling two by two around the centre pole, their step a turkey trot. To sing for them is a choir of three or four men, who sit down around their drum, anywhere convenient. There is no
Adultery in American law is a good cause for divorce; but divorce for adultery as far as it might be a public display of jealousy runs counter to Caddo standards of decency. People would think it “an awful disgrace” for a husband to show jealousy in public, to do anything to the other man like
