Research Catalog

Title

Touching the fire : buffalo dancers, the sky bundle, and other tales / Roger Welsch.

Author

Welsch, Roger L.

Publication

New York : Villard Books, 1992.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxvi, 270 pages; 22 cm

Summary

An arrowhead and a potsherd lie in a museum case. We look but see only flint and clay, cleverly worked but still only stone and soil. Who fashioned them? What were their thoughts as they flaked the stone and molded the soft mud? What of their lives and worlds did they give to the products of their lands? The Sacred Sky Bundle of the Nehawkas lay for generations in a museum drawer, almost forgotten by the people to whom it had meant life itself, neglected by those who had collected it as a valuable artifact. A nugget of native copper, a pair of clam shells, a desiccated bird skin, bits and pieces of the past, fated to be a part of the Nehawkas' future. The Sacred Sky Bundle is not so much an assembly of artifacts as it is an anthology of stories - stories from tribal history and tradition, stories from the lives of men and women with names - Silver Mapateet, LaVoi Antler, Ghost Elk. Touching the Fire is a fictional archaeology of a tribe's traditions, an insistence that an ancient object, on display in a museum or still at rest in the soil beneath our feet, is far more than the material of which it is made. It is the spirit of those from whom it came and to whom it was given. Its secrets may be obscure, but perhaps they are not lost. Roger Welsch maintains that far from stealing too much from the first Americans, Western culture has not stolen enough, leaving the very best and most valuable philosophical treasures undiscovered. Touching the Fire is a treasure map to that lost trove.

Subject

• Indians of North America > Fiction
• Indians of North America

Genre/Form

• Short stories.
• short stories.
• Fiction
• Short stories
• Nouvelles.

Contents

The story of the winter the people came home again -- The story of LaVoi Antler and the Jefferson Peace Medal -- The story of Luke and the roadrunners -- The story of Grandma Pipe -- The story of Seeks Wood Mapateet -- The story of Black Deer -- Beginnings.

ISBN

• 0679408878
• 9780679408871

LCCN

92001411

OCLC

• ocm25316676
• 25316676
• SCSB-1962345

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library