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Sometime in August of 1913, two Sioux warriors, Old Buffalo and Swift Dog, met with Frances Densmore at a makeshift recording site in McLaughlin, South Dakota. What Old Buffalo and Swift Dog said that day, about life as they knew it before the reservation era began, lives on in the pages of this fascinating book. Densmore went on to interview numerous Sioux (or Lakota) men and women, collecting both their songs and their stories. The present version is an abridged edition of Teton Sioux Music, which according to William Powers is “one of the few monographs universally regarded as a true classic of Lakota culture.” It has been skillfully edited to focus less on musical technicalia and more on the cultural value of Densmore’s work.
The subjects covered in the book include the Sun Dance, dreams, treatment of the sick, military societies, buffalo hunts, and social dances. Also included are over 130 color and black-and-white illustrations which further bring to life the world of the Teton Sioux. The book includes a Foreword by Charles “Chuck” Trimble, who is an American Indian author, journalist, and advocate, as well as a national leader in Indian affairs. Trimble was born and reared on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe.
Awards
- Winner in the “Multicultural: Non-Fiction” category of the 2016 USA “Best Book” Awards
- Silver Medal in the “History” category of the 2016 Midwest Book Awards
About the Author(s)
Frances Densmore
Frances Theresa Densmore spent nearly 60 years working for the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology. She visited some 35 American Indian tribes, recorded more than 2,500 songs, collected hundreds of artifacts, and transcribed a wealth of first-person narrations. Her work remains highly valued by scholars and by many members of the first nations she studied. One of her studies has been abridged and illustrations added by editor Joseph A. Fitzgerald in the World Wisdom edition World of the Teton Sioux Indians: Their Music, Life, and Culture, which includes a Foreword by Charles Trimble.
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Joseph A. Fitzgerald
Joseph Fitzgerald has authored or edited several books on diverse world religions and philosophy that have won more than ten awards, including the prestigious Benjamin Franklin Award. The subjects include Buddhism, Hinduism, the American Indians, Christianity, the ecological crisis and the Perennial Philosophy. Fitzgerald studied Comparative Religion at Indiana University, where he also earned a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree. He is an adopted grandson of Thomas Yellowtail, one of the most honored American Indian spiritual leaders of the last century. For more than thirty years, Joseph has traveled extensively throughout the American Indian, Oriental and Islamic worlds. He has edited the following books for World Wisdom:
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Charles Trimble
Charles “Chuck” Trimble is an American Indian author, journalist, and advocate, and a national leader in Indian affairs. He has written the Foreword to four World Wisdom books: Spirit of the Indian Warrior (June 2019), an illustrated book of quotations; Black Elk, Lakota Visionary: The Oglala Holy Man and Sioux Tradition (April 2018); an abridged and illustrated edition of Frances Densmore’s Teton Sioux Music, retitled World of the Teton Sioux Indians: Their Music, Life, and Culture (September 2016); and an illustrated edition of Charles Eastman’s Indian Boyhood: The True Story of a Sioux Upbringing (June 2016). Mr. Trimble is the author of the book Iveska (Dog Ear Publishing, 2012), a collection of his own memories of his childhood and life, as well as reflections on matters of interest to those who follow American Indian affairs. Charles Trimble was born and reared on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Charles was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2013 and is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. He is now retired and lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with his wife, Anne.
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Reviews
- Frances Densmore’s World of the Teton Sioux Indians paints a vivid picture of much of pre-reservation tribal life through firsthand accounts of traditional Lakota social life — including its religion, dreams, gatherings, songs and dances, buffalo hunts, treatment of the sick, and care for the poor — as recorded by her on the Standing Rock and Lake Traverse Reservations in North and South Dakota.…Densmore’s work to collect and preserve the music, life, and culture of American Indian tribes was done at a time when everything possible was being done to ensure that they would be obliterated and forgotten. Conquered tribes, decimated by diseases to which they had no immunity, were forced onto reservations; native religions and ceremonies were prohibited; and children were taken from their homes and made to attend special Indian schools where they were punished for speaking their tribal language. To preserve what it could, the Smithsonian Institution sent ethnologists and anthropologists to record tribal languages and songs; as the Smithsonian’s first ethnomusicologist, Densmore worked nearly sixty years to produce thousands of wax cylinder recordings of songs and stories from about thirty-five Indian tribes. Many of these have now been rerecorded with current technology and given to the tribes of their origin to aid in the resurgence of tribal cultures.
An intimate look at Indian life through the memories of those who lived it, Densmore’s book is richly illustrated with over 130 full-color and black-and-white photographs that bring the Lakota people and their ways to life. Now considered a classic of Lakota culture, it is an excellent guide for those who wish to understand the heart of these people, for whom the greatest reward was that their names and deeds be remembered.ForeWord Reviews
