Author: Curtis, Edward Sheriff (1868-1952)
Title: Arikara Medicine Ceremony - the Ducks. The North American Indian, Portfolio V, Plate No. 163... First Edition of the Photogravure
Description: Cambridge, MA: 1908. Image/paper: 39.9 × 28.1 cm (15 3/4 × 11 1/8 in.); Mount: 55.7 × 45.7 cm (21 15/16 × 18 in.)..The North American Indian, Portfolio V, Plate no. 163.. Photogravure by John Andrew and Sons, plate no. 163 on Hollande Van Gelder paper, title, copyright and plate number printed in the margin. Photo-engraving by John Andrew and Sons, plate no. 163 on Hollande Van Gelder paper, title, copyright, board number printed in the margin.. The Arikara developed the legerdemain of their all-summer medicine ceremony to such an extent that other tribes, far and near, learned of their wonderful and potent magic- This remarkable ceremony of the medicine fraternity of the Arikara has long been dormant, the agency officials having suppressed it about 1885. The writer, desiring to learn as much as was possible of a rite that had such unusual recognition among all the northern plains Indians, made arrangements with the remnant of the fraternity for a performance of it; not of course presuming to make it an all-summer one, or hoping to revive the sleight-of-hand, the secrets of which they admit have been lost, but to reproduce the ritualistic features- In former times it was the custom, in the early spring before the planting season, to open one of the medicine bundles fabled to have been left with the several bands by Mother (the Corn). The act was accompanied by a repetition of the myth of the genesis and migration of the Arikara, and there followed a dramatic enactment in the nature of a prayer for bounteous crops. .

Keywords:


See more books from our catalog: Art