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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>This is completely unrelated to Siouan linguistics,
but I figured I'd share it with you anyhow.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>In a strange turn of Jungian synchronicity, most of
the big Siouan List topics this week seem to me to center
around an old professor of mine from the University of Oklahoma.
Geary Hobson, who wrote the novella "The Last Ofos", also
wrote the foreword to an R. A. Lafferty book called
"Okla Hannali" about a fictional Choctaw character. Now, I know
only two or three Choctaws, so this book was really the first
introduction I ever had to anything like unto Choctaw culture.
Nowadays I always think of this book and subsequently Professor Hobson
whenever I think of the Choctaws. Furthermore, for one of his
Native American Literature classes back in the day, I had
to read from a book called "The Sky Clears: Poetry of the American Indian,"
wherein traditional Native songs, counts, recitations, and stories were
translated into English (often from another intercessory European
language), and arranged in verse form. If I recall correctly, some
of these "poems" were even made to rhyme in English. I remember
him talking in class about how such literary devices are less than
universal, and how our seemingly fundamental notion of rhyming
is absent in some if not all the Native languages that he knew
of. This is of course no earth-shattering revelation, but I'd never
really considered it before, and so it stuck with me. Oh, and Professor
Hobson was a Quapaw, so he coincidentally hails from Siouan
stock.</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I'll leave you with a silly memory from the same
time. One old Native song in this poetry book had been
translated first into a Scandinavian language, where it had obviously been
embellished with some Nordic imagery. This song must have
been discovered during the compilation process, translated into
English, and then arranged to look more familiar to the book's
anglophonic readers. It was such a strange thing for me
to read a very modern looking song about fjords, skiffs, and
the sea-faring life attributed a Native from a Northeast Woodlands
culture!</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>-jtm</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>