Arapaho Historical Traditions.

John Stanley is a policy advisor at the Ontario Ministry of Colleges and
Universities.

The Arapaho are an Algonquian-speaking people who traditionally lived a short distance south of what is now the Canadian border along the Prairies. Today there are three main descendant groups: the Northern Arapaho, who live on Wind River Reservation, Wyoming; the Southern Arapaho; and the Gros Ventre or Atsina.

This book is based on the narratives spoken by elder Paul Moss (1911–1995) of the Northern Arapaho to his son (and co-writer of this work), Alonzo Moss Sr., and the Arapaho high school class taught by the younger Moss.

Arapaho Historical Traditions is the product of obvious hard work and passion for the subject. In the general introduction and in the introduction to each of the 12 narratives, the authors have done a good job of contextualizing the stories. We learn, for example, that these narratives are more local, individual tales informed by traditional Arapaho themes than they are national stories or myths.

There is much for different audiences to appreciate in this book. Archaeologists will appreciate the significance of the “Buffalo Wheel” story, which shows one people’s cultural use and relationship to the one of the stone medicine wheels found in the northern Plains and the southern Prairies. Algonquianists will appreciate comparative data from a neglected related language and cultural tradition. As a linguist, I appreciate that the rhythm and general sensibility of the translation adheres more closely to the original language than to the English target language, and as an anthropologist I especially like the “Key Terms” in the Arapaho section.

However, a general audience merely interested in the Arapaho or in Aboriginal peoples will find little that speaks to them here. The “Grammatical Sketch” is “intended … for the use of linguists or advanced students of the language.” And the minutiae of rhetorical terminology and the narratives’ overall lack of accessibility will tend to alienate most readers. Further, if the first two narratives had a free-flowing translation, and if the remainder of the narratives had been presented in easy-to-read paragraphs, readers could be drawn into the stories. Unfortunately, the accessibility needed to have more generally known about this seldom-recorded people is absent from this book.