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Perhaps once in a generation a great book appears on the life of a people--less than a nation, more than a tribe--that reflects in a clear light the epic strivings of men and women everywhere, since the beginnings of time. The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters is such a book. Drawing from the oral history of his people before the coming of Europeans, the recorded history since, and his own lifetime among them, John Joseph Mathews created a truly epic history. This account of the Osages, a Siouan tribe once centered in the area now occupied by St. Louis, later on small streams in southwestern Missouri and southeastern Kansas, then in northeastern Oklahoma, is a spiritual one. Their quest in the centuries-long record was for the meaning of Wah'Kon-Tah, the Great Mysteries. In war, in peace, in camps and villages, in their land of the Middle Waters, the Osages met all of the changes and hardships people are likely to meet anywhere. Mathews tells the Osages' story with rare poetical feeling, in rhythms of language and with dramatic insights that surpass even his first book, Wah'Kon-Tah: The Osage and the White Man's Road, which was selected by a major book club when published in 1932. Mathews managed his vast canvas with consummate skill, marking him as one of the major interpreters of American Indian life and history.
Siouan peoples who migrated from the Atlantic coastal region and settled in the central portion of the North American continent long before the arrival of Europeans are now known as Osage. Because the Osage did not possess a written language, their myths and cultural traditions were handed down orally through many generations. With time, only those elements deemed vital were preserved in the stories, and many of these became highly stylized. The resulting verbal recitations of the proper life of an Osage—from genesis myths to body decoration, from star songs to child-naming rituals, from war party strategies to medicinal herbs—constitute this comprehensive volume. Osage myths differ greatly from the myths of Western Civilization, most obviously in the absence of individual names. Instead, “younger brother,” “the messenger,” “Little Old Men,” or a clan name may serve as the allegorical embodiment of the central player. Individual heroic feats are also missing because group life took precedence over individual experience in Osage culture. Supplementing the work of noted ethnographer Francis La Flesche who devoted most of his professional life to recording detailed descriptions of Osage rituals, Louis Burns’s unique position as a modern Osage—aware of the white culture’s expectations but steeped in the traditions himself is able to write from an insider’s perspective.
Louis Burns draws on ancestral oral traditions and research in a broad body of literature to tell the story of the Osage people. He writes clearly and concisely, from the Osage perspective. First published in 1989 and for many years out of print, this revised edition is augmented by a new preface and maps. Because of its masterful compilation and synthesis of the known data, A History of the Osage People continues to be the best reference for information on an important American Indian people.
The author recounts his experiences living alone for ten years in the northeastern part of Oklahoma, and shares his observations on nature
Francis La Flesche (1857-1932), Omaha Indian and anthropologist with the Bureau of American Ethnology, published an enormous body of work on the religion of the Osage Indians, all gathered from the most knowledgeable Osage religious leaders of their day. Yet his writings have been largely overlooked because they were published piecemeal over the course of twenty-five years and never adequately collected or analyzed. In this book, Garrick A. Bailey brings together in a clear, understandable way La Flesche’s data for two important Osage religious ceremonies--the "Songs of Wa-xo’-be," an initiation into a clan priesthood, and the Rite of the Chiefs, an initiation into a tribal priesthood. To put La Flesche’s work into perspective, Bailey offers a short biography of this prolific Native American scholar and an overview of traditional Osage religious beliefs and practices.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Osage Indians were traditional tribal people who owned Oklahoma's most valuable oil reserves. During the 1920s, they became members of the wealthy oil population. Tracing the experiences of John Grayeagle, a young Osage, Charles Red Corn, describes the Osage experience of the 1920s.
Challenge Windzer, the mixed-blood protagonist of this compelling autobiographical novel, was born at the beginning of the twentieth century "when the god of the great Osages was still dominate over the wild prairie and the blackjack hills" of northeast Oklahoma Territory. Named by his father to be "a challenge to the disinheritors of his people," Windzer finds it hard to fulfill his destiny, despite oil money, a university education, and the opportunities presented by the Great War and the roaring twenties. Critics have praised Sundown generously, both as a literary work and a vignette into the Native American past.
Located in the Oklahoma Collection.
The grandson of an Osage Indian, author Louis Burns wrote this primer to help persons of Osage descent trace their paternal lineage and to introduce researchers to Osage culture and the nuances of its language. The book opens with a discussion of the Osage dispersion from Missouri to Oklahoma and Kansas from about 1800 to 1870. Mr. Burns provides very helpful maps showing the concentration of the various tribal bands in each state. Next comes a summary of the richest sources of 19th-century Osage heritage, namely, Jesuit records, a great source of information concerning baptisms, marriages and interments; U.S. Government Annuity Rolls; and Osage Mission records, the best source of Osage family data. The aforementioned is followed by a list of tribal towns, as extracted from Jesuit records, and a list of Osage bands as found in the Annuity Rolls of 1878. When these sources are used in conjunction with the author's detailed listing of clans and their members, which furnishes names in both phonetic Osage and English, researchers stand a good chance of tracing their Native American heritage from about 1800 to the present. The balance of this carefully crafted volume focuses on aspects of the language, some knowledge of which is indispensable for successful research. Featured are an index to Osage names in Osage and in English, a listing of and indexes to kinship terms, a critical pronunciation key to Osage, and a conversion table for Osage Indian syllables. Mr. Burns' seminal work concludes with a bibliography of tribal literature.
Richly combines many aspects of Osage life: their livelihood, social organization, and spirituality just prior to white contact.