Research Catalog

The wolves of heaven : Cheyenne shamanism, ceremonies, and prehistoric origins

Title: The wolves of heaven : Cheyenne shamanism, ceremonies, and prehistoric origins / by Karl H. Schlesier ; drawings by Wah-pah-nah-yah, Dick West.
Author: Schlesier, Karl H.
Publication: Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, ©1987.

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	E99.C53 S2313 1987	Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

West, W. Richard (Walter Richard), 1912-1996

Description

xviii, 214 pages : illustrations; 22 cm.

Summary

"The Wolves of Heaven is a most unusual and challenging work. Published more than half a century after the classic Cheyenne studies of George Bird Grinnell and G. A. Dorsey, it is a singular reinterpretation of the Cheyennes' world view, shamanism, and major cultural features. It is the product of the author's blending of the principles of action anthropology with those of cognitive anthropology, his long field association with the Southern Cheyennes, and his close personal relationship with Edward Red Hat, the Cheyenne Keeper of the Sacred Arrows, who instructed him in Cheyenne religion for more than ten years. Along with important oral testimony, the book makes use of the great volume of works in the ethnography, ethnohistory, prehistory, and linguistics of the northern plains, the Subarctic, and northern Siberia. The core of the book is a reconstruction of the Massaum, the most elusive of Cheyenne tribal ceremonies, extinct since 1927. In a detailed interpretation of the ritual, provided here for the first time, the author defines the Massaum as an earth-giving ceremony. The gift of this ceremony between 500 and 300 B. C. in what is now South Dakota brought about the formation of the Cheyennes as a tribal unit with the right to occupy a large region of the grasslands."--Book jacket.

Series Statement

The Civilization of the American Indian series ; [v. 183]

Uniform Title

Wölfe des Himmels. English
Civilization of the American Indian series ; v. 183.

Alternative Title

Wölfe des Himmels.

Subject

Note

Translation of: Die Wölfe des Himmels.
At head of title: "Nanēhov meohotoxc" ("I am the star of dawn").
Series numbering from book jacket.
Includes index.

Bibliography (note)

Bibliography: p. 193-205.

ISBN

0806125772
9780806125770
0806120576
9780806120577

LCCN

86027252

OCLC

ocm15017177
15017177
SCSB-1174163

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library