The Cry of the Living Creatures: An Omaha Performance of Blessing

Abstract

Abstract: Performance is a powerful language. It speaks through an ordered syntax of studied action. From action it creates This article presents two sets of ethnographic texts that describe a traditional Omaha ceremonial performance. The first is a reconstruction of the 19th-century ceremony inscribing the tattooed Mark of Honour on a young woman whose father is completing initiation into the Night Blessed Society. The second is an epilogue stimulated by critical readings of the first text and based on interviews Jillian Ridington and I conducted in 1985 and 1986 with three elderly Omaha women who bore the Mark of Honour. The information in this study complements material presented in Blessing for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe (Ridington and Hastings, 1997).Resume: La performance constitue un langage puissant. Elle s'exprime au moyen d'une syntaxe ordonnee d'action etudiee. partir de l'action elle cree la syntaction. Le present article expose deux ensembles de textes ethnographiques qui decrivent une performance ceremonielle traditionnelle omaha. Le premier texte est une reconstruction de la ceremonie du XIXe siecle gravant la marque d'honneur tatouee sur une jeune femme dont le pere termine l'initiation dans la societe de la nuit sacree. Le second texte est un epilogue provoque par des lectures critiques du premier texte et s'appuie sur des entrerues que Jillian Ridington et moi-meme avons menees en 1985 et 1986 avec trois dames agees qui arboraient la >. Les donnees de cet article apportent un complement au materiel presente dans Blessing for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe (Ridington et Hastings, 1997).IntroductionThis article presents two sets of ethnographic texts. The first is a reconstruction of the 19th-century Omaha ceremony inscribing the tattooed Mark of Honour on a young woman whose father is completing initiation into the Night Blessed Society. My account is based on information about the ceremony that Alice C. Fletcher and her Omaha collaborator, Francis La Flesche, collected in the 1880s, augmented by information from Reo Fortune's 1932 book on Omaha Secret Societies. The second text is an epilogue stimulated by critical readings of the first text and based on interviews Jillian Ridington and I conducted in 1985 and 1986 with three elderly Omaha women who bore the Mark of Honour, referred to colloquially as the Blue Spot.I wrote the first text to be an almost filmic reconstruction of the ceremony, relying on Omaha texts and the interpretive language used by Fletcher and La Flesche in their classic 1911 ethnography, The Omaha Tribe. I wrote it when I was on the Omaha reservation in 1991, documenting the tribe's reburial of human remains from the former Omaha village of Ton'wontonga. I was also working with Omaha Tribal Historian, Dennis Hastings, on a book, Blessing for a Long Time: The Sacred Pole of the Omaha Tribe (Ridington and Hastings, 1997). Parts of the reconstruction went into a chapter in the book entitled, A Fragment of Anything to Its Entirety.I submitted my reconstruction of the ceremony as a text that might stand alone; a dramatic reading of pre-modern ethnographic texts that were themselves readings of what Omaha informants told Fletcher and La Flesche. Peer reviewers for the journal made some telling comments that led me to expand the study to include material from the interviews with living bearers of the tattoo. The reviewers felt that the paper touched on issues of gender and power that needed to be addressed further. Following the original text, I will quote from their comments before presenting material from the interviews.The Language of PerformancePerformance is a powerful language. It speaks through an ordered syntax of studied action. From action it creates Its props and actors, sets and blocking, timbre and rhythm, situate both actor and audience in a place where the unfolding of events becomes generative and transformative. …