Proverbs

[Koontz John E]

On Wed, 19 Dec 2001 rlarson at unlnotes01.unl.edu wrote:
> I concede that the Mississippian cultures might be problematic to
> my hypothesis.  I can think of at least three possible defenses:
>
> 1) They might not have been around long enough to have developed
>    a tradition of proverbs.
>
>    But they did flourish for over half a millennium, which ought
>    to be plenty of time if the hypothesis is really any good.  I
>    don't want to go this route.

It's conceivable that enough time and trouble passed between, say, 1600
and 1850 or so, in cultures without written traditions, to forget some
important things, though I rather doubt this would hold water either.
Proverbs are intended to be remembered, and oral cultures have good
memories for some kinds of things.  Many of the traditional stories are
very widespread.

> 2) The languages with which we are familiar when we say we do not
>    find much in the way of proverbs in aboriginal North America may
>    be of peoples who did not participate centrally in the Mississippian
>    chiefdoms.  Siouan is questionable in this regard.  What about
>    the situation in Muskogean, Cherokee and Natchez?  If they are
>    equally non-proverbial, that would pretty well settle this doubt.

Mississippi Valley Siouan is perhaps questionable as a central
participant, but it was clearly immediately peripheral and interacting.

> 3) At the risk of reopening an argument I had with my North American
>    Archaeology professor last spring, which turned unexpectedly ugly,
>    I'd like to register my doubt that the Mississippian societies
>    were necessarily chiefdoms in the sense that we usually think of
>    when we use that term.

I've noticed that there's a good deal of argument about what chiefdoms (in
a technical sense) are and whether given cultures, directly observed and
indirectly (e.g., archaeologically) observed, are chiefdoms in this sense
or that.  I think there's a lot of argument specifically about whether
particular Mississippian cultures were chiefdoms.  I really just meant
that it's clear that the contact period seems to have been something of a
dark age (maybe depression or interregnum would be safer terms!) as far as
indigenous culture and industries are concerned.  Eastern North American
and Plains cultures before contact seem to have been more complexly
organized, more sedentary, more horticultural, more populous, better
"capitalized," and so on.

I agree that there are levels and kinds of chiefdoms, and that a great
deal of the culture of Native America in the contact period must preserve
the past, but I suspect that the relative paucity of proverbs is more
likely to be either chance or a matter of linguistic or literary dynamics
we haven't hit upon yet, because, even without a comprehensive survey of
the existence of proverbs, it's pretty clear that they exist across a wide
variety of social organization patterns in Europe, Africa and the Near
East, and very likely over a time depth of millenia.  Of course, they may
be like tones - once you catch them, it may be hard to get rid of them.

JEK