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Dice (the plural of Die, from Old French dé, from Latin datum "something given or played") are small polyhedral objects, usually cubic, used for generating random numbers or other symbols. This makes dice suitable as gambling devices, especially for craps or sic bo, or for use in non-gambling tabletop games.
A traditional die is a cube (often with corners slightly rounded), marked on each of its six faces with a different number of circular patches or pits called pips. All of these pips have the same appearance within a pair, or larger set of dice, and are sized for ease of recognizing the pattern formed by the pips on a face. The design as a whole is aimed at each die providing one randomly determined integer, in the range from one to six, with each of those values being equally likely.
More generally, a variety of analogous devices are often described as dice, but necessarily in a context, or with a word or two preceding "die" or "dice", that avoids the assumption that traditional dice are intended. Such specialized dice may have cubical or other polyhedral shapes, with faces marked with various collections of symbols, and be used to produce other random results than one through six. There are also "loaded" or "crooked" dice (especially otherwise traditional ones), meant to produce skewed or even predictable results, for purposes of deception or amusement.
The common dice are small cubes 1 to 2 cm along an edge (16mm being the standard), whose faces are numbered from one to six (usually by patterns of dots called pips). It is traditional to assign pairs of numbers that total seven to opposite faces (it has been since at least classical antiquity); this implies that at one vertex the faces 1, 2 and 3 intersect. It leaves one other abstract design choice: the faces representing 1, 2 and 3 respectively can be placed in either clockwise or counterclockwise order about this vertex.
The pips on traditional European-style dice are arranged in specific patterns. The face with two usually has the dots in opposite corners, with the third face containing one between these two. The fourth face has one in each corner, and the fifth adds one in the centre, forming a quincunx. The final face has two rows of three pips along opposite edges of the face. Pips on Asian-style dice are in a similar pattern, but are typically closer to the centre of the die, and the "one" pip is larger than the others. A unique feature about Asian dice is the fact that the pips for both "one" and "four" are colored red. Why this is so is unknown. But it is suggested that an entirely black and white color combination on the one side would be unlucky and red (a lucky colour in Chinese culture) would counteract this. Several legends also mention that the "four" side is colored red because a Chinese emperor (one legend said it was a Ming dynasty emperor, while another stated it was Chung Tsung) ordered it as "fours" helped him win a dice game ( sugoroku) against his empress. This story, however, is questionable at best, as it is also probable that "red fours" are also of common Indian origin.
Dice are thrown to provide random numbers for gambling and other games, and thus are a type of hardware random number generator. The result of a die roll is random in the sense of lacking predictability, not lacking cause. Exactly how dice are thrown determines how they will land according to the laws of classical mechanics. However, dice also can exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions, making it difficult to predict the outcome of a die roll even with good information about exactly how it is thrown. Also, because the numbers on typical dice are marked with small indentations, slightly more material is removed from the higher numbered faces. This results in a small bias, and they do not provide fair (uniform) random numbers. The bias is reduced somewhat in the Japanese die with its oversized single pip (pictured). Casino dice have markings that are flush with the surface and come very close to providing true uniformly distributed random numbers.
Dice are thrown, singly or in groups, from the hand or from a cup or box designed for the purpose, onto a flat surface. The face of each die that is uppermost when it comes to rest provides the value of the throw. A typical dice game today is craps, wherein two dice are thrown at a time, and wagers are made on the total value of up-facing pips on the two dice. They are also frequently used to randomize allowable moves in board games, usually by deciding the distance through which a piece will move along the board; examples of this are ludo and backgammon.
Precision casino dice, used for the game of craps, may have a polished finish, making them transparent, or a sand finish, making them translucent. Casino dice have their pips drilled, and then filled flush with a paint of the same density as the acetate used for the dice, such that the dice remain in balance. In casino play, a stick of 5 dice are used, all stamped with a matching serial number to prevent a cheat from substituting a die.
Precision backgammon dice are also made with the pips filled in as with casino dice. While casino dice are noticeably larger than common dice, with sharp edges and corners, precision backgammon dice tend to be somewhat smaller. Their corners and edges are beveled to allow greater movement inside the dice cup and prevent chaotic rolls from damaging the playing surface.
Dice were probably originally made from the ankle bones (specifically the talus or "astragalus") of hoofed animals (such as oxen), colloquially known as " knucklebones", which are approximately tetrahedral. Modern Mongolians still use such bones, known as shagai, for games and fortunetelling. In addition to bone, ivory, wood, metal, and stone materials have been commonly used. Recently, the use of plastics, including cellulose acetate and bakelite, is nearly universal. It is almost impossible to trace clearly the development of dice as distinguished from knucklebones, because ancient writers confused the two. It is certain, however, that both were used in prehistoric times.
Dice have been used throughout Asia since before recorded history.
The oldest known dice were excavated as part of a 5000-year-old backgammon set, at the Burnt City archeological site in south-eastern Iran. Excavations from ancient tombs in the Harappan civilization, seem to further indicate a South Asian origin. Dicing is mentioned as an Indian game in the Rig Veda, Atharva Veda and Buddha games list. It is also mentioned in the great Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, where Yudhisthira plays a game of dice against the Kauravas for the northern kingdom of Hastinapura. In its primitive form knucklebones was essentially a game of skill played by women and children. In a derivative form of knucklebones, the four sides of the bones received different values and were counted as with modern dice. Gambling with three or sometimes two dice was a very popular form of amusement in Greece, especially with the upper classes, and was an almost invariable accompaniment to symposia.
The Romans were passionate gamblers, especially in the luxurious days of the Roman Empire, and dicing was a favorite form, though it was forbidden except during the Saturnalia. Horace derided what he presented as a typical youth of the period, who wasted his time amid the dangers of dicing instead of taming his charger and giving himself up to the hardships of the chase. Throwing dice for money was the cause of many special laws in Rome. One of these stated that no suit could be brought by a person who allowed gambling in his house, even if he had been cheated or assaulted. Professional gamblers were common, and some of their loaded dice are preserved in museums. The common public-houses were the resorts of gamblers, and a fresco is extant showing two quarrelling dicers being ejected by the indignant host.
Tacitus states that the Germans were passionately fond of dicing, so much so, indeed, that, having lost everything, they would even stake their personal liberty. Centuries later, during the Middle Ages, dicing became the favorite pastime of the knights, and both dicing schools and guilds of dicers existed. After the downfall of feudalism the famous German mercenaries called landsknechts established a reputation as the most notorious dicing gamblers of their time. Many of the dice of the period were curiously carved in the images of men and beasts. In France both knights and ladies were given to dicing. This persisted through repeated legislation, including interdictions on the part of St. Louis in 1254 and 1256.
While the terms ace, deuce, trey, cater, cinque and sice are hardly common today having been replaced with the ordinary names of the numbers one to six, they are still used by some professional gamblers to describe the different sides of the dice. Ace is from the Latin as, meaning "a unit" ; the others are the numbers 2–6 in old French. (The dice game marketed as Kismet uses ace, deuce, and trey.)
In many modern gaming contexts, the count and number of sides of dice to be rolled at any given time is reduced to a common set of notations. Typically this involves the lower-case letter "d", preceded by a die count and followed by (optionally) the number of sides of the dice. For example,
2d6; the former meaning "six eight-sided dice," and the latter meaning "two six-sided dice." Addition or various other arithmetic operations are often added at the end as well, e.g.
3d6+4 "three six-sided dice plus four to the outcome thereof".
"Crooked dice" refers to dice that have been altered in some way to change the distribution of their outcome.
A loaded or gaffed die is a die that has been tampered with to land with a selected side facing upwards more often than it otherwise would simply by chance. There are methods of creating loaded dice, including having some edges round and other sharp and slightly off square faces. If the dice are not transparent, weights can be added to one side or the other. They can be modified to produce winners ("passers") or losers ("miss-outs"). "Tappers" have a drop of mercury in a reservoir at the centre of the cube, with a capillary tube leading to another mercury reservoir at the side of the cube. The load is activated by tapping the die on the table so that the mercury leaves the centre and travels to the side. Often one can see the circle of the cut used to remove the face and bury the weight. In a professional die, the weight is inserted in manufacture; in the case of a wooden die, this can be done by carving the die around a heavy inclusion, like a pebble around which a tree has grown.
A variable loaded die is hollow with a small weight and a semi-solid substance inside, usually wax, whose melting point is just lower than the temperature of the human body. This allows the cheater to change the loading of the die by breathing on it or holding it firmly in hand, causing the wax to melt and the weight to drift down, making the chosen opposite face more likely to land up. A less common type of variable die can be made by inserting a magnet into the die and embedding a coil of wire in the game table. Then, either leave the current off and let the die roll unchanged or run current through the coil to increase the likelihood that the north side or the south side will land on the bottom depending on the direction of the current.
Plastic dice can be biased to roll a certain number by heating them (for example in an oven) with the desired face upward, so that the plastic will soften slightly and "pool" at the opposite (bottom) side of the die without showing much, if any, visible distortion.
Transparent acetate dice, used in all reputable casinos, are harder to tamper with.
Cheat dice (see below) are often sold as loaded dice but usually are not technically loaded.
A die can be "shaved" on one side i.e. slightly shorter in one dimension, making it slightly rectangular and thus affecting its outcome. One countermeasure employed by casinos against shaved dice is to measure the dice with a micrometer.
Dice with faces other than digit sequences
As noted, the faces of most dice are labeled using an unbroken series of whole numbers, starting at one (rarely zero), expressed with either pips or digits. Common exceptions include:
- colour dice (e.g., with the colors of the playing pieces used in a game)
- Poker dice, with labels reminiscent of playing cards. Several varieties exist, but the most common contain the following pattern: 9♣, 10♦, Jack (blue), Queen (green), King (red), A♠
- dice with letters (e.g. in Boggle)
- average dice (2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5) (In some war games, units are identified as regulars or irregulars. Because regulars are more predictable, the strength of a regular unit is multiplied by an average die. For this reason, average dice are jocularly called regular dice.)
- cheat dice, such as:
- one face each with two through five, and two with sixes, or
- for craps, a pair of dice in which one die has five on each face, and its mate has a mixture of twos and sixes, guaranteeing rolls of seven or 11.
- dice with a single sequence of markings repeated multiple times, for example:
- a cubical die numbered twice from 1 to 3, or thrice from 1 to 2.
- icosahedral dice numbered twice from 1 to 10 (commonly used in Dungeons & Dragons before the popularization of ten-sided dice).
- Fudge dice, numbered twice from −1 to 1, represented as −, blank, +.
- random direction dice, also known as scatter dice. The dice have arrows on each side; the outcome of a roll is a random direction. Scatter dice are used in tabletop wargames such as Warhammer Fantasy Battle to determine random movements of troops, wind direction or direction of misfired arms. Note that this is an unusual case where the majority of the time the die is read not according to which symbol is shown on its uppermost face, but its compass orientation.
- A doubling cube with the numbers 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and 64 is used in backgammon and some other boardgames. This die is not actually rolled; it is used to denote the current stakes of the game. There is also a doubling octahedron with 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, and 128.
- Some board games use dice with positive and negative numbers for use in gain or loss of something.
- Sicherman dice, a pair having the same odds of rolling a given sum as a pair of standard six-sided dice, but with different markings: one die has 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8, and the other has 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, and 4. Sicherman dice are the only such alternative arrangement if positive whole numbers are used.
- I Ching dice such as
- Eight-sided dice bearing the eight trigrams
- Six-sided dice bearing yin and yang twice each, and old yin and old yang once each
- "Projector dice" which are clear and marked only on one of each pair of opposing faces. For a "six"-sided die, e.g., a clear twelve sided-shape is used. Rolled on an overhead projector such a die will have the top or bottom marking equally readable.
Some dice are polyhedral other than cubical in shape. They became popular around the early 1950s among players of wargames and have since been used extensively in trading card games, German-style board games, and role-playing games. Although polyhedral dice are a relative novelty during modern times, some ancient cultures appear to have used them in games (as evidenced by the presence of two icosahedral dice dating from the days of ancient Rome on display in the British Museum). Such dice are typically plastic, and have faces bearing numerals rather than patterns of dots. Reciprocally symmetric numerals are distinguished with a dot in the lower right corner (6. vs 9.) or by being underlined (6 vs 9).
The platonic solids are commonly used to make dice of 4, 6, 8, 12, and 20 faces. Other shapes can be found to make dice with other numbers of faces, but other than the 10 sided, they are rarely used. (See Zocchihedron.) The 4 sided platonic solid is difficult to roll, and a few games like Daldøs use a 4 sided rolling pin instead.
A large number of different probability distributions can be obtained using these dice in various ways; for example, 10-sided dice (or 20-sided dice labeled with single digits) are often used in pairs to produce a uniform distribution of random percentages. Summing multiple dice approximates a normal distribution (a "bell curve"), while eliminating high or low throws can be used to skew the distribution in various ways. Using these techniques, games can closely approximate the real probability distributions of the events they simulate.
There is some controversy over whether manufacturing processes create genuinely "fair" dice (dice that roll with even distributions over their number span). Casino dice are legally required to be fair; those used by others hold no such requirement.
Spherical dice also exist; these function like the plain cubic dice, but have an octahedral internal cavity in which a weight moves which causes them to settle in one of six orientations when rolled. However, these dice are somewhat awkward in use because they require a flat and level surface to roll properly — an uneven surface often causes them to stop partway between two numbers, while a sloped surface will obviously cause the dice to keep rolling.
Cowry shells or coins may be used as a kind of two-sided dice. (Because of their shape, cowry shells probably do not yield a uniform distribution.)
The most common non-cubical dice — often sold in sets of five or six that are each differently shaped but with the same pair of background and marking colors — include one each of the five Platonic solids, which are highly symmetrical. The six-die versions add the pentagonal trapezohedron, in which the faces (identical to one another as to angles and edge lengths) each have two different lengths of side, and three different sizes of angle; the corners at which multiple faces meet are also of two different kinds.
|4||tetrahedron||Each face has three numbers: they are arranged such that the upright number (which counts) is the same on all three visible faces. Alternatively, all of the sides have the same number in the lowest edge and no number on the top. This die does not roll well and thus it is usually thrown into the air instead.|
|6||cube||A common die. The sum of the numbers on opposite faces is seven.|
|8||octahedron||Each face is triangular; looks something like two Egyptian pyramids attached at the base. Usually, the sum of the opposite faces is 9.|
|10||pentagonal trapezohedron||Each face is kite-shaped; five of them meet at the same sharp corner (as at the top of the diagram in this row), and five at another equally sharp one; about halfway between them, a different group of three faces converges at each of ten blunter corners. The ten faces usually bear numbers from zero to nine, rather than one to ten (zero being read as "ten" in many applications), and often all odd numbered faces converge at the same sharp corner, and the even ones at the other.|
|12||dodecahedron||Each face is a regular pentagon.|
|20||icosahedron||Faces are equilateral triangles. Typically, opposite faces add to twenty-one. A 2nd century CE Roman icosahedron die is in the collection of the British Museum, though the game it was used for is not known.|
|1||sphere||Most commonly a joke die, this is just a sphere with a 1 marked on it. There exist spherical dice constructed of a spherical weight glued between two hemispherical pieces, which have been hollowed to create a certain number places where the weight can rest. The weight effectively pins one side of the sphere down, revealing the number directly opposite.|
|2||cylinder||This is nothing more than a coin shape with 1 marked on one side and 2 on the other. While some tasks in roleplaying require flipping a coin, it is usually referred to as such, and not as rolling a two-sided die. It is possible, however, to find dice of this sort for purchase, but they are rare, and can typically be found among other joke dice.|
|3||Rounded-off triangular prism||This is a rounded-off triangular prism, intended to be rolled like a rolling-pin style die. The die is rounded-off at the edges to make it impossible for it to somehow land on the triangular sides, which makes it look a bit like a jewel. When the die is rolled, one edge (rather than a side) appears facing upwards. On either side of each edge the same number is printed (from 1 to 3). The numbers on either side of the up-facing edge are read as the result of the die roll. Another possible shape is the "American Football" or " Rugby ball" shape, where the ends are pointed (with rounded points) rather than just rounded.|
|5||Triangular prism||This is a prism that is thin enough to land either on its "edge" or "face". When landing on an edge, the result is displayed by digits (2–4) close to the prism's top edge. The triangular faces are labeled with the digits 1 and 5.|
|7||Pentagonal prism||Similar in constitution to the 5-sided die. When landing on an edge, the topmost edge has pips for 1–5. The pentagonal faces are labeled with the digits 6 and 7. This kind of die is particularly odd since it has pips for five of its results and digits for two of them. Seven sided dice are used in a seven-player variant of backgammon. Some variants have heptagonal ends and rectangular faces.|
|12||rhombic dodecahedron||Each face is in the shape of a rhombus.|
|14||heptagonal trapezohedron||Each face is in the shape of a kite.|
|16||octagonal dipyramid||Each face is in the shape of an isosceles triangle.|
|24||tetrakis hexahedron||Each face is in the shape of an isosceles triangle.|
|24||deltoidal icositetrahedron||Each face is in the shape of a kite.|
|30||rhombic triacontahedron||Each face is in the shape of a rhombus (diamond-shaped). A thirty sided die is the largest multi-faced die that is a symmetrical polyhedron. It is considered to have the highest rate of generating random numbers due to its large array of numbers and natural spherical shape. Although it is not included in most dice kits, 30 sided die can be found in most hobby and game stores.|
|34||heptadecagonal trapezohedron||Each face is in the shape of a kite.|
|50||icosakaipentagonal trapezohedron||Similar to the 14- and 16-sided dice, the faces of the 50-sided die are kites, although very narrow.|
|100||Zocchihedron||Dice of this sort are rare. However, they can be found at most hobby and game stores. They are not, however, a true polyhedron. A 100-sided die is made by taking a sphere and placing 100 equally spaced flat planes on the surface. The name Zocchihedron is coined from its creator, Lou Zocchi.|
The full geometric set of "uniform fair dice" ( face-transitive) are:
- Platonic solids: 5 regular polyhedra: (4, 6, 8, 12, 20 sides)
- Catalan solids: 13 Archimedean duals: (12, 24, 30, 48, 60, 120 sides)
- Bipyramids: infinite set of prism duals, triangle faces: (6, 8, 10, 12, ... sides)
- Trapezohedrons: infinite set of antiprism duals, kite faces: (6, 8, 10, 12, ... sides)
- Disphenoids: infinite set of tetrahedra made from congruent non-regular triangles (4 sides)
- "Rolling-pin style dice" (also called "rolling logs" ) are the only way to make dice with an odd number of faces . They are based on an infinite set of prisms. All the (rectangular) faces they may actually land on are congruent, so they are equally fair. (The other 2 sides of the prism are rounded or capped with a pyramid, designed so that the dice never actually rests on those faces.)
For a single roll of a fair -sided die, the probability of rolling each value, 1 through , is exactly 1/s. This is an example of a discrete uniform distribution. For a double roll, however, the total of both rolls is not evenly distributed, but is distributed in a triangular curve. For two six-sided dice, for example, the probability distribution is as follows:
For three or more die rolls, the curve becomes more bell-shaped with each additional die (according to the central limit theorem). The exact probability distribution of a sum of i s-sided dice can be calculated as the repeated convolution of the single-die probability distribution with itself.
where for all and otherwise.
A fastest algorithm would adapt the exponentiation by squaring algorithm, using .
For example, in the triangular curve described above,
Equivalently, one can calculate the probability using combinations:
The probability of rolling any exact sequence of numbers is simply . For example, the chance of rolling 1, 2, and 3 in that order with three rolls of a six-sided die is , or .
The article Sampling equiprobably with dice describes the probabilities of sampling with dice from any range.
Application in role-playing games
While polyhedral dice had previously been used in teaching basic arithmetic, the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons is largely credited with popularizing their use in roleplaying games. Some games use only one type, such as Exalted which uses only ten sided dice, while others use numerous types for different game purposes, such as Dungeons & Dragons, which make use of 20-, 12-, 10-, 8- and 4-sided dice in addition to the traditional 6 sided die. Unlike the common six sided die, these dice often have the numbers engraved on them rather than a series of dots.
Roleplaying games generally use dice to determine the outcome of events, such as the success or failure of actions which are difficult to perform. A player may have to roll dice for combat, skill use, or magic use, amongst other things. This is generally considered fairer than decision by game master fiat, since success and failure are decided randomly based on a flat probability. Games typically determine success as either a total on one or more dice above (Dungeons & Dragons third edition) or below (Call of Cthulhu) a target number, or a certain number of rolls above a certain number (such as 8 or higher on a d10) on one or more dice (White Wolf's World of Darkness series). The player may gain a bonus or penalty due to circumstances or character skill, usually either by a number added to or subtracted from the final result, or by having the player roll extra or fewer dice.
Dice can also be used by a game master for other purposes, such as to randomly generate game content or to make arbitrary decisions. Some games use dice to determine what attributes the player's character has when created, such as how strong he or she is.
In Dungeons & Dragons and some other roleplaying games which use many types of dice, a dice notation is used. For example, a six-sided die is referred to as a
d6, while two such dice rolled with the results totaled would be called
2d6. A bonus or penalty applied to the final result is referred to like
2d6-2. Games which use only one type of dice rarely require complex dice notation.
A common special case is percentile rolls, referred to in dice notation as
1d%. Since actual hundred-sided dice are large, almost spherical, and difficult to read, percentile rolls are generally handled by rolling two ten-sided dice together, using one as the "tens" and the other as the "units". A roll of ten or zero on either die is taken as a zero, unless both are zeros or tens, in which case this is 100 (rather than zero). To avoid this confusion, sets of percentile dice exist where one is marked in tens (00, 10, 20... up to 90) and the other from 0 to 9.
Dice for role-playing games are usually made of plastic, though infrequently metal, wood, and semi-precious stone dice can be found. Early polyhedral dice from the 1970s and 1980s were made of a soft plastic that would easily wear as the die was used. Typical wear and tear would gradually round the corners and edges of the die until it was unusable. Many early dice were unmarked and players took great care in painting their sets of dice. Some twenty-sided dice of this era were numbered zero through nine twice; half of the numbers had to be painted a contrasting colour to signify the "high" faces. Such a die could also double as a ten-sided die by ignoring the distinguishing coloring.
Use of dice for divination
Some people believe that dice can be used for divination. Using dice for such a purpose is called cleromancy. A pair of standard 6-sided dice is usual though other forms of polyhedra can be used. Tibetan Buddhists sometimes use this method of divination.
It is uncertain if the Pythagoreans used the "Platonic Solids" as dice, but it is highly likely. They referred to these perfect geometries as "The Dice of the Gods". Julia E. Diggins, writer of "String, Straightedge, and Shadow" (Viking Press, New York, 1965) writes how the Pythagorean Brotherhood sought to understand the mysteries of the Universe through an understanding of geometry in polyhedra. It is recorded that the dodecahedron (12 sided platonic solid) was discovered by Pythagoras. (Guthrie: The Pythagorean Sourcebook)
Astrological dice are a specialized set of three 12-sided dice for divination, using the concepts of astrology and containing astrological symbols for the planets, the zodiac signs and the astrological houses. The first die represents planets, the Sun, the Moon, and two nodes (North Node and South Node). The second die represents the 12 zodiac signs, and the third represents the 12 houses. In simplified terms, the planets, etc. could represent the 'actor'; the zodiac signs could represent the 'role' being played by the actor; and the house could represent the 'scene' in which the actor plays.
Rune dice are a specialized set of dice for divination ( runecasting), using the symbols of the runes printed on the dice.
An icosahedron is used to provide the answers of a Magic 8-Ball, which is conventionally used to provide advice on yes-or-no questions.


Teaching Indigenous Languages
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Chapter 6, Teaching Indigenous
Languages edited by Jon Reyhner
(pp. 46-55). Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University. Copyright 1997 by
Northern Arizona University.
Coyote as Reading Teacher: Oral Tradition in the Classroom
Armando Heredia and Norbert Francis
Legends, myths, folk tales, and stories have long been an important aspect of the history and culture of indigenous people; vehicles to preserve, carry, and teach historical events, religious beliefs, ethics, and values to the young and old. Ethnographers and students of folklore have described in detail and extensively analyzed the literary aspects of oral tradition. However, despite the broad consensus on the artistic merits of traditional stories and the role they have played in the linguistic and cultural continuity of indigenous peoples, they are little used in schools. This paper discusses the instructional uses of traditional stories is meant to serve as a contribution to realizing their educational potential.Story telling was a way of relating history, transmitting cultural knowledge, and giving expression to the esthetic and poetic endeavors of all Native American peoples. As Chief Standing Bear explained:
Story-telling is an ancient profession, and these stories are among our oldest possessions. For many years before the white man ever came to our homeland these legends were told over and over, and handed down from generation to generation. They were our books, our literature, and the memories of the storytellers were the leaves upon which they were written. (quoted in Humishuma, 1990, p. 305)Erdoes and Ortiz (1984) refer to the 166 legends that they recorded as productions from the heart and soul of the Native people of North America:
Some have been told for thousands of years, and they are still being told and retold, reshaped and refitted to meet their audience's changing needs, even created anew out of a contemporary man's or woman's vision. (p. xi)While authorship and possession were typically collective, as with all esthetic and formal language use, special conditions and contexts of performance, the narrator's qualifications, and even, in some circumstances, strict requirements of execution and replication were observed. For example, Plains Indians followed prescribed procedures specifically identifying persons for conserving and sharing stories, who "owned" and protected individual story bundles. When the time was right, transfer of the story bundles would be carefully transacted by a process that involved formal instruction and preparation (Lankford, 1987). Clearly, oral esthetic, ceremonial, and formal genres depart from the context-embedded registers of everyday casual conversation in a similar way that their written counterparts differ from situation-dependent graphic messages.
Oral tradition and writing
It is important to note that the indigenous cultures of the Americas were not complete strangers to complex systems of graphic representation when the Europeans introduced alphabetic writing in the 16th Century. The Maya were evidently the most advanced in this area, with the Aztecs not far behind with their hybrid system that clearly was evolving toward true writing (the representation of units of language in graphic form). Montemayor (1993) compares the two systems:
Mayan writing, the closest to what we would define as a [true] writing system, and Náhuatl, had at their disposal numerals, logograms, phonetic and semantic determiners, and rebus elements. They were able to transcribe homonyms, or rather homophonic suffixes and endings. These pictographs and symbols not only represented ideas, but also sounds and sound patterns, which presupposes the capacity not only to recognize parts of words, but also the ability to recognize homophonic relationships among these parts and among other words. Writing was employed by priests, nobles and specialized scribes, and its origin and functions were closely tied to religion. (p. 22)At the time of the European contact, many of the tribes to the North had already experimented with various pictographic, iconic, and mnemonic systems. Lankford notes:
Europeans had early commented on the wampum (bead) belts used by speakers at formal councils to remind themselves of the historical or mythical episodes they were to tell; in the Plains the same devices were used, but they seem to have been more usually painted on skin. Both practices seem to have existed in the Southeast. (1987, p. 47)However, a full account of pre-Columbian writing will never be available because of the massive destruction of bibliographical and archival data during the Conquest. While the greater part of the material was surely lost, significant portions of the historical record and much of the poetic and narrative tradition was preserved orally.
The interest in indigenous narratives and poetry actually dates to the period immediately following the Conquest as missionaries and religious scholars began to take stock of the devastating loss to scientific and cultural knowledge that had already been irrevocably consummated. The compilation, transcription, and publication of indigenous oral tradition has continued to this day. More recently with the resurgence of interest in preserving the Native languages of the Americans, original editions have begun to be prepared, in many cases, without translation.
Critics of oral tradition transcription have pointed to the vastly differing contexts of oral performance on the one hand and the conventions of written language on the other--the collective and interactive processes that mediate text construction between narrator and audience versus the isolated and decontextualized encoding of the writer. However, despite the modifications that transcription entails (adjusting, for example, for the absence of an immediate and physically present audience and the loss of certain discourse resources available only to the narrator--prosody, deixis, and so forth), both historical evidence and our own experience in compilation and transcription have demonstrated, we believe, that the alleged discontinuities have been entirely overstated. In any case, transcribed and edited versions of oral narrative are not meant to capture the singularly interactive features of face-to-face performance. On the one hand, the formal and artistic genres of traditional cultures approximate in significant ways the planned, and peculiarly structured discourse that characterizes most (but, again, not all) written expression. And on the other hand, edited versions, in print (which need not in any fundamental way imply the displacement of oral forms) offer the reader/listener new options that we will briefly explore in the following sections.
Narrative structure of the stories
The very selective survey of coyote stories presented below highlights the vast classroom potential of this branch of oral tradition. Even a very introductory study and analysis of their literary aspects by teachers would enrich any reading and language arts program. But in particular, incorporating this awareness into teaching practice would be an essential component of bilingual language revitalization programs involving the teaching of indigenous languages. From our own rather summary examination of the material, teaching applications would seem to fall into two broad areas of school-based language learning:
Closely related to the say/mean distinction is the portrayal of Coyote's complex and ambiguous character. A literary feature usually associated with modern fiction, especially the novel, is ambivalence and inner strife, a common state of mind for our canine hero. Research on literacy development has pointed to the reader/listener's focus on and contemplation of characters' inner psychological states, thoughts, and feelings as an important milestone toward decontextualized comprehension strategies (Torrence & Olson, 1985). In "The Story of the Rabbit and his Uncle Coyote," a Tzutuhuil story (Sexton, 1992), and "Coyote's Rabbit Chase," Tewa (Erdoes & Ortiz, 1984), the use of dramatic irony presents but another opportunity for the emergent reader to reconcile contradictions and disparities of all sorts.
Heroism is unambiguously conferred upon our protagonist in the Diné version of "Coyote Brings Fire" (Newcomb & Zolbrod, 1993). The sequence of building conflicts and increasing tension, punctuated by the characteristic rhythm and tempo of the omnipresent parallel structures and recurring patterns, culminates in Coyote's escape from the Fire Man. Throughout this and many other coyote stories, the extensive recourse to metaphoric language ("cloud of sparks," "in the air waiting for a flame to blaze upward," "showers of sparks"), again, calls the reader/listener's attention to linguistic forms, the poetic functions in general, and how words are good for more than just expressing referential meaning. Especially regarding the higher literacy proficiencies, the reader must be able to reflect on what words actually (i.e., that which is stipulated by the text itself) mean as opposed to the mere interpretation of what was intended, as in casual conversation (see Olson & Hildyard, 1983).
Two contrasting examples
Coyote stories vary widely in their structural complexity, as well as thematically. In this variability, precisely, lies their power as a genre, from the pedagogical point of view. We would like to call the reader's attention to two particularly illustrative examples, each exemplifying features that, respectively, lend themselves to our two broad language learning objectives: 1) the development of textual consciousness and literacy-related discourse competencies, and 2) a source of second language comprehensible input.
Coyote and the Shadow People--for discourse competence
While the theme of the journey to the Land of the Dead in order to retrieve a loved one is apparently universal among indigenous peoples, in "Coyote and the Shadow People" coyote rises to truly heroic and humanlike proportions.2 The Death Spirit/Guide offers Coyote (who we find in the opening episode weeping and lonely) the opportunity to be reunited with his wife. To our tragic figure, he must repeat the classical admonition too many times: "You must do whatever I say, do not disobey" (Ramsey, 1983).
Guided through a series of images and illusions that Coyote (at first confused) must acknowledge as real, he is rewarded with the arrival at the longhouse where he greets old friends. Upon being reunited with his wife and admonished one last time not to touch her, he sets out on the return journey; the descent from the fifth mountain signaling the triumph over the Underworld. However, by the fourth encampment, the wife's apparition had become too attractive for Coyote to resist touching. Weeping at her loss, he vainly retraces his journey, reenacting the illusions of the first trip that are now so movingly useless, finally he arrives back at the dusty prairie where he first encountered the Lodge of the Shadows.
Here, the teacher can take full advantage of the complex interplay between irony and foreshadowing. As Ramsey points out, "in a sense, everything Coyote does in his quest foreshadows his failure, both for himself and his wife, and for the great precedent of returning from death that he might establish. Specific prefigurements occur at every turn" (1983, p. 53). This element of textual coherence cannot be underestimated, and unfortunately in many elementary reading and language arts programs developing the ability to mentally construct it is left for the student to somehow spontaneously acquire. This particular comprehension skill becomes increasingly more useful as children's reading material becomes more difficult. Students in the upper grades will find school texts more abstract and less transparent because predicting strategies based almost exclusively on general previous knowledge lose their universal applicability. The reader must rely to a greater extent on his or her ability to find in the text itself the cues, referents, causal relationships, and antecedents necessary for constructing global meaning.
Predicting strategies in reading have long been recognized as fundamental to both decoding and comprehension (Smith, 1988). Expectation and anticipation facilitate the processing of text at all levels. Perhaps at some levels, direct teaching of the patterns may require relatively limited conscious attention on the part of the teacher (e.g., sound patterns and grammar structures). However, at the higher levels, deliberate and systematic instruction plays a critical role in the acquisition of the advanced text processing skills that are the mainstay of textbook-type academic discourse.
In "Coyote and the Shadow People" some of the cues are explicit. After lecturing the traveler extensively against his inclination to do foolish things and repeating: "you must never, never touch herbut never touch her," in an aside, the Spirit says to himself "I hope that he will do everything right." Other cues are more subtle. Upon arriving at the Lodge of the Shadows, Coyote suddenly, and in apparent contradiction to his desire to take his wife back home, tells the Spirit that he wants to stay with his friends.
Coyote's futile recapitulation of the failed first journey (pretending to see the wild horses on the prairie, going through the motions of picking and eating the berries, and raising the door flap to the lodge) calls for special attention by the teacher, even perhaps during reading, in mid-discourse. On the unconscious level the young reader/listener experiences the effect of the different layers of parallelism and symmetry in the narration. Contrast is artfully reiterated: day and night, living world and shadow world, suffering (the heat and dust of the day) and celebration (the lodge reunion). The repetition of detail evokes the images that bring narrator and listener closer, another of the many features that everyday conversation and literature share (Tannen, 1989).
But it is when students begin to consciously reflect upon these structural aspects of the text that they are beginning to acquire the basic competencies of what Cummins and Swain (1987) call Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). In addition to the thematic and general content schemata, the students' network of previous knowledge will now call upon the powerful text organizing tools that correspond to their newly acquired system of formal schemata (Carrell, 1989; Carrell & Eisterhold, 1983). The skillful teacher can guide their students in discovering, for themselves, these literary features and discourse patterns.
Tlacual uan coyotl--for second language learning
Our second example comes from the oral tradition of the Náhuatl speaking communities of Central Mexico, where we were able to record a complete version of "Tlacual uan Coyotl" (The Opossum and the Coyote) from a middle-aged informant, native of San Isidro Buensuceso, Tlaxcala. Both thematically and structurally, the narrative falls at the opposite end of the continuum from the Nez Perce Orphic myth, although the particular context of the performance, an audience of young children, surely contributed to its simplification. But here, it is this characteristic that corresponds to the instructional objective in question: second language acquisition.
Along the lines of another common theme, especially in Mexico (see "Didxaguca' sti' lexu ne gueu," a Zapoteco version that attempts to account for a different natural phenomenon, de la Cruz & de la Cruz, 1990), Coyote arrives at what he thinks is an agreement with God to eat all His children. God's confederate, the opossum, submits the (in this case, outrageously) foolish coyote to a series of outlandish deceptions and deservingly punishing pranks. If the young listeners do not begin to predict the outcome of the subsequent sequences from the opening frame where the lowly coyote thinks he has actually made a contract with God, they may take note of opossum's patent lie in episode #2 that Coyote wholeheartedly believes. Opossum assures Coyote that, "God won't see [him]" drink the pulque (the agreement was for Coyote to fast before he could eat all the Earth's creatures). Seven episodes of opossum's craftiness and evasion at coyote's expense end with the latter hungry and alone, waiting forever for opossum to reemerge from his burrow.
What "Tlacual uan Coyotl" may lack in universality of theme or structural sophistication is more than compensated for in the series of repetitive structures in close succession, with the pertinent referents in high-profile foreground. This is the ideal kind of sequence for second language learners. Each short episode begins with the same initial event: Coyote comes looking, running after, wandering and (later) faltering; the repeated promise to devour Opossum who, each time, shifts the responsibility of the deception to the pulque opossum, the shepherd opossum, the turkey opossum, and so forth, nicely recapitulating for the reader/listener the sequence of deceptions. True to the repetitive pattern, Coyote, pleadingly, demands to know, every time why Opossum is deceiving him so much. And every time he reminds himself of God's admonishment.
The over-repetition of key content words (Toteotatzin--Our God Father, niccuaz--eat up, amo nimitztelhuiz--I won't accuse you, otnechacacaya--you deceived me), signaled by the appropriate intonation markers, increases the comprehensible input level. This feature makes the narrative even more accessible to the second language learner, in this case the Spanish speaking student whose Náhuatl language skills are still incipient or have suffered a degree of erosion.
The singular merit, from the pedagogical standpoint, of the Náhuatl coyote story and many others like it consists of the combination of simplified structure and authenticity. Too often authentic texts lack the necessary modifications that second language students depend on to be able to process textual material in their weaker language. In fact, with appropriate visual context support (puppets of Opossum and Coyote and props that depict the seven action sequences) the performance of "Tlacual uan coyotl" could serve as a highly effective language and literacy instructional material for level one (or even level zero) beginners in Náhuatl. Here, the process of meaning construction is supported by the key content word items, the limited concept load, repetitive action sequences, and the application of general previous knowledge.
For language revitalization purposes this type of narrative genre is a critical component of academic language input that, in turn, represents the raw material for learning new vocabulary and acquiring or reinforcing the grammatical structures of the indigenous language. Its complete and authentic characteristics facilitate learning the structural aspects of the language. Furthermore, learning language in context not only contributes to the development of higher order comprehension skills but integrates the all important cultural component (more critical in situations of indigenous language loss) into the language arts curriculum. Geographical features and towns mentioned in the narrative are often concrete cultural referents that are tied to important historical moments and turning points. The introduction of certain characters often correspond to historically significant transitions in the domain of interethnic contact: the white man, the priest, and new non-indigenous institutions.
For the monolingual indigenous language speaker, or beginner, translations into Spanish or English of oral tradition material provide for many of the same advantages outlined above. Reading and listening to the traditional stories of one's community insure significant levels of top-down support for the difficult second language decoding and processing tasks. And of course, the straight forward temporal/sequential narrative schema (with elements of causal/logical organization) lends itself well for native level Náhuatl speaking children in their initial stages of literacy development.
The popularity of indigenous oral tradition in translation, especially in regions of sustained intercultural contact, attests to the broad applicability of the various sub-genres (creation legends rivaling the coyote stories in both English and Spanish editions) for expanding non-indigenous students "narrative awareness" beyond the familiar patterns of their own traditional texts. The potential of this indigenous literary form for enriching the reading and language arts curriculum has been realized only partially, even in the most favorable contexts of additive/developmental bilingual education. Our examination of the multitude of applications has focused on only a few examples in the area of reading. Without a doubt, applying the material to the area of developing students' writing skills would be equally as productive. Coyote stories are basically vignettes in a never-ending story, prototypes of inexhaustible variations and permutations. It is, in fact, the assimilation of a relatively limited set of text organization schemata, mastery of basic narrative techniques, and a set of formulas that the traditional story teller has relied on in developing the extensive repertoires of his or her art.
In closing, it is important to emphasize that creativity depends on the writer's access to structures and patterns, the application of which are facilitated by high degrees of metacognitive awarenessfundamentally, on an awareness--fundamentally on an awareness of how expression is constrained. These text construction frameworks and organizers are consolidated by significant amounts of exposure to the pertinent models and reflective and deliberate examination of how they work (which includes reflection upon and feedback on one's own productions). Creativity, is also expansive and divergent, and within the self-imposed limits of all good literature, Coyote can do, or at least try, anything.
1For many indigenous students, their first language has become the language of wider communication, the national language (Spanish, English, and so forth). In other cases, fewer and fewer in recent years, the indigenous language remains the students' first language.
2The presentation and percipient literary criticism of this Nez Perce Orphic story we owe to J. Ramsey (1983), whose analysis we follow closely. The myth of Orpheus and Euridice is surely one of the most prominent examples of the universality of traditional narrative themes. The recording, transcription, and translation of "Coyote and the Shadow people" forms part of the extensive ethnographic and literary work of A. Phinney of Columbia University and a member of the Nez-Perce tribe. Swadesh (1966) shares with us a Nutca version where "Orpheus" travels by canoe and is counseled and guided by an elderly woman from his tribe who he finds on a strange and unknown beach.
Carrell, P.L. (1989). Metalinguistic awareness and second language reading. The Modern Language Review, 73(2), 121-130.
Carrell, P.L., & Eisterhold, J.C. (1983). Schema theory and ESL reading. TESOL Quarterly, 17(4), 553-573.
Cummins, J., & Swain, M. (1987). Bilingualism in education: Aspects of theory, research and practice. New York: Longman.
de la Cruz, G., & de la Cruz, V. (1990). Didxaguca' sti' lexu ne gueu'. In Animales fantásticos y más leyendas. Mexico City: Consejo Nacional de Fomento Educativo.
Erdoes, R., & Ortiz, A. (1984). American Indian myths and legends. New York: Pantheon.
Humishuma, C.Q. (1990). Coyote stories. Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska.
Lankford, G. E. (1987). Native American legends: Southeastern legendsTales from the Natchez, Caddo, Biloxi, Chickasaw and other nations. Little Rock, AR: August House.
Montemayor, C. (1993). Situación actual y perspectivas de la literatura en lenguas indígenas. Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes.
Newcomb, F. J., & Zolbrod, P. (1993). Navajo folk tales. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico.
Olson, D., & Hildyard A. (1983). Literacy and the comprehension and expression of literal meaning. In F. Coulmas & K. Ehlich (Eds.), Writing in focus. New York: Mouton.
Ramsey, J. (1983). Reading the fire: Essays in the traditional Indian literatures of the far west. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska.
Sexton, J. D. (1992). Mayan folk tales: Folklore from Latitlán, Guatemala. New York: Doubleday.
Smith, F. (1988). Understanding reading: A psycholinguistic analysis of reading and learning to read. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Swadesh, M. (1966). El lenguaje y la vida humana. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Tannen, D. (1989). Talking voices: Repetition, dialogue, and imagery in conversational discourse. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University.
Torrence, N., & Olson, D.R. (1985). Oral and literate competencies in the early school years. In D.R. Olson, N. Torrence, & A. Hildyard (Eds.) Literacy, language, and learning: The nature and consequences of reading and writing. New York: Cambridge University.
Torrence, N., & Olson, D.R. (1987). Development of the meta-language and the acquisition of literacy: A progress report. Interchange, 18(1 & 2), 136-146.
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While studying the exhibitions in the Hall of the North American Indian in Harvard's Peabody Museum, I overheard a conversation between two other museum visitors whom I speculatively identified as a Harvard student and her European guest. The conversation was intriguing and revealing, particularly the following exchange.
European guest: "How many Indians have survived?"
Harvard student: "I think…about 5% of the original population."
European guest: "Have you ever seen one?"
Harvard student: "Only descendants…not the way they were."
They had walked right past me. I suddenly had the urge to get their attention, "I'm Native American…over here. Don't you see me?" Perhaps we descendants are difficult to recognize. The juxtaposition of the past's visible images and the present invisible Native Americans in American society results in a loss of continuity between the two, both in museum representation and in collective American thought. Even as long-standing stereotypes are still being fixed and reinforced in many museums, forced acculturation and assimilation have rendered those stereotypes virtually useless in recognizing Native Americans today.
National museum representations of Native American are often outdated, unilateral in perspective, and far removed from the lives of the living populations. Local tribal museums strive to represent a tribal viewpoint while educating others about their tribe's history and traditions. For example, while many national museums in the United States represent the forced migration of Native Americans as a disembodied process, peripheral to the museum's message, for some local tribes and their museums, forced migration is central to their identities and their messages.
The Cherokee Heritage Center in Oklahoma is one local tribal museum that has represented Native Americans and forced migration to native and non-natives for almost 30 years. Established by the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, the Cherokee Heritage Center has made the Trail of Tears its major theme because it is central to Cherokee identity in Oklahoma where many descendants of the survivors of that bitter trek still live. I an one of those descendants. My identity has been strongly influenced by the Cherokee struggle for survival that is both commemorated and continued in the Cherokee Heritage Center. As the Cherokee Heritage Center combats Financial and other problems, it is struggling for its own identity and survival.
Who Is Native American?
Recent repatriation legislation has brought to the already complex issues of Native American identity and representation in American society a new sense of awareness and urgency. The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (Act H. R. 5237) provides protection for Native American and Native Hawaiian burial sites and sacred objects, establishing ownership of cultural property through cultural affiliation. It requires institutions receiving federal funds to catalog all skeletal remains and Native American materials in their collections by 1995 and to notify each federally recognized native group of materials presumed to belong to them. One problem that federally founded museums must resolves is an increasingly difficult one-who is Native American? Who is authorized to speak for each tribe, and who are the proper recipients of each tribe's cultural property and human remains now in museums?
Identity is an extremely complex issue. Certification of blood quantum is usually required in order to be legally identified as Native American, and some tribes require a certain blood quantum for membership. Informal constraints within the tribe also affect identity as some tribal members with full-blood quantum consider tribal members with mixed ancestry not to be truly "Native American." Even when blood quantum is not an issue, the behavior of tribal members can effect the perception of their identity within the tribe, i.e., a full-blood can be considered a "government Indian" rather than truly Native American. In addition, there are those who claim Native American ancestry because it has become politically and financially advantageous to embrace and financially advantageous to embrace a multicultural and even a minority heritage in modern American society. The issue of Native American identity is thus problematic. In fact, some question whether "authentic" natives continue to exist at all, having been sullied by the degenerative impact of Western influence.
No one voice can speak for all Native Americans, including mine. However, as a mixed-blood Native American, I am the anthropological participant-observer in this scenario in a unique way. My heritage includes, in order of purported degree: Irish, Cherokee, Choctaw, Scottish, French, and German ancestry. Of these, the Cherokee heritage has had the strongest cultural impact on my life, probably due to my tribal membership, birth, and long-term residence in the tribal territory of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. However, when forced to make a definitive statement about my identity, for example on application forms, I mentally quantified my mixed heritage and close "Caucasian" to indicate that I was not more than half Native American (through I have no formal documents to prove that I am more than half Caucasian either). To complicate matters even more, I know of no formal documents that prove my Choctaw ancestors' blood quantum or tribal affiliation. According to family oral tradition, one of my Cherokee great-grandfathers registered as only half Cherokee on the Dawes Roll (1902-1907) because he feared losing his business. If this is true, even my documented Cherokee ancestry is not accurate.
Who is Native American? Am I? Who has the authority to define the category "Native American?" Do I identify with the majority or the minority, with both or with neither? One fact is indisputable - I am a Native descendant. I am a descendant of survivors of a bitter forced migration that has become so integral to the identity of Oklahoma Cherokees and others that I cannot remember a time when I did not know about the Trail of Tears.
The Cherokees and The Trail Where They Cried or the Trail of Tears.
By almost any account, including historian Grant Foreman's, the Trail of Tears is a story of insidious greed and broken treaties on the pert of the white settlers and the United States government. The Cherokee people were forced to embark on a long, bitter and costly journey far away from their homeland despite their best efforts to peacefully coexist with Europeans. As one of the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes," Cherokees exhibited a remarkable acceptance of the Europeans, allowing intermarriage with them and the attainment of positions of power within the tribe for mixed-bloods. The Cherokees consciously adopted "civilized" lifestyles that included permanent agricultural settlement with churches and schools, elected tribal governments, a tribal constitution, a Cherokee syllabary introducing literacy to most members of the tribe, and the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix.
Despite their efforts to peacefully coexist, the Cherokees had become an obstacle to the "pioneers" of the expanding United States of America, especially after gold was discovered on Cherokee land in 1830. President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Bill of 1830 that was adopted after debate "abolished and took away all the rights, privileges, immunities, and franchises held, claimed or enjoyed by those persons called Indians within the chartered limits of that state by virtue of any form of policy, usages or customs existing among them." In 1832, Reverend Samuel Worchester, a missionary to the Cherokees, won a case challenging the constitutionality of the Removal Act before the Supreme Court, but President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the ruling, thereby refusing to halt the forced migration.
Although small groups of tribal members and their families had their families had begun leaving voluntarily for the West as early as 1794, their numbers were few. Cherokee resistance to forced migration induced tactics against them that included bribery, threats, theft, and imprisonment. The oppression of the Cherokee culminated with the so-called Treaty of New Echota signed December 29, 1835. In the absence of the elected tribal representatives, Major John Ridge, a prominent Cherokee, violated tribal law and signed the document in the presence of as few as 300 (of over 17,000) members of the tribe. Repeated protests to the federal government that the tribe would not abide by a treaty that they had not made included a protest signed by nearly 16,00 Cherokees. Nevertheless, after the deadline of May 23, 1838, government officials begin rounding up tribal members who had not left voluntarily, literally dragging them from their homes and abandoning, selling, and/or burning their possessions.
On a journey that sometimes took six months, groups of Cherokees were sent westward, by both land and water, throughout the summer and winter. Revolted by the meager and unfamiliar diet of corn meal and salt pork, crowed and exposed to disease and the elements as the result of hurried departure and inadequate provisions, many weakened and died during the journey. Due to the number of deaths, births, escapes, and the refusal of many to give the names of their families to their captors, the total number of people forced to migrate varies and is still disputed. An estimated 4,000 Cherokees, approximately one-fourth of the group who made the journey, are believed to have died during the course of what has come to be known as "The Trail Where They Cried" of The Trail Of Tears. Grant Foreman relates a quote from a Georgia volunteer who later become a colonel in the Confederate services: "I fought through the civil war and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew." The approximately 2,000 Cherokee who managed to elude capture or escape at various stages of the journey become the Eastern Band of Cherokees now centered around the Qualla Reservation in North Carolina. The Western Band of Cherokees settled in Indian Territory which become the state of Oklahoma in 1907. The tribe currently has more than 165,000 members with legally documented ancestry.
The Cherokee Heritage Center and the Trail of Tears
The Cherokees called themselves Ani-Yun'wiya meaning "Leading or Principal People," but Tsa-la-gi, meaning "Cherokee," is now used widely. Tsa-La-Gi is also sometimes used to refer to the Cherokee Center. The Cherokee Center in Tahlequah, Oklahoma is comprised of the Tsa-La-Gi Ancient Village, a recreation of a 16th century Cherokee settlement, the Trail of Tears Outdoor Drama, the Cherokee National Museum which also houses the houses the archives for the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and the Adams Corner Rural Village, reconstruction of a small crossroads community in the old Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma of 1875-1890.
According to Executive Director Mac Harris, the Objectives of the Cherokee culture and heritage along archived history, to educate tribal members and the general public, and to provide a place where all Cherokees, and others, can come together comfortably. Similarly, the Official Guidebook of the Cherokee National Museum states that the purpose of the museum is both to preserve its rich culture and heritage for the sake of the tribe and "to serve as a bridge of understanding between those inside the tribe and those outside the tribe." The Center's educational programs in the past have included visits to, and field trips from area schools to educate young people about Cherokee culture, crafts, language, and the Trail of Tears. While the audience for the Cherokee Heritage Cherokee Heritage Center is primarily the surrounding community in northeast Oklahoma and in nearby sates, the center considers itself, to be a national and even an international center as evidenced by its supporters from all over the country and abroad.
The Cherokee Heritage Center functions as a tribal museum and a nonprofit organization built on state land by the Cherokee National Historical Society. The Historical Society's founders sought to assemble everything ever written by or about Cherokees in one central facility. While the Center has always been very closely associated with the tribe (the majority of members of the board must be tribal member and the chief, deputy chief, and three other tribal leaders are ex officio members), it receives less than one-fourth of its annual operating budget in monetary and in kind donations from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. The rest of its founding comes from Cherokee National Historical Society memberships, donations, federal and other grants, ticket sales, and museum gift shop sales. Therefore founding has been an on-going challenge.
The Cherokee National Museum, the year-round center of the Cherokee Heritage Center, is modeled after a traditional Cherokee longhouse with sloping sides of native stone. Upon entering the Cherokee National Museum, visitors pass through the gift shop to an introductory display where they are welcomed, o-si-yo, and thanked, wa do', for visiting, an indication of the importance placed upon the use of the Cherokee throughout the museum. The exhibits are laid out in roughly chronological order along a single path through the museum. Although the museum exhibition is designed to present the cultural history of the Cherokees from the arrival of humans on the North American continent to the present day using art, the focus of the exhibition is the Cherokees' survival and life in Indian Territory after the Trail of Tears.
From the beginning, the Cherokee National Museum's exhibits focus the visitor's attention on forced migration. The first exhibit to confront the visitors is the sculpture "Exodus," a potent symbol of Cherokee struggle during the forced migration and the unofficial symbol of the Cherokee Nation today. The powerful sculpture, carved from a solid black of native walnut in 1967 by Willard Stone, a nationally-recognized Cherokee artist, conveys its message through both its aesthetic beautiful and strength and the artist's inscription on the base:
Over a trail of tears, reaching from the great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee to eastern Oklahoma, transferred and transplanted in our present state. In this block of native walnut...I have tried to capture the tragedy, heavy load of sorrow and heartache being overcome by a courage and determination seldom, if ever; equaled by any race in history against such heavy odds.
Other displays graphically illustrate the Cherokees' losses since European contact. The "Original Cherokee Territory" display uses maps to show the reduction in Cherokee populations and lands from European contact in 1540 to Removal in 1838-1839. The "Cherokee Maps" display compares the territory taken from the Cherokees in the East with the territory given to the Cherokees West by the United States Government. The "Cherokee Removal" display also maps the East at different points in time, as well as the overland and river routes taken during the forced migration in 1838-1839. The display text states that the forced migration resulting from the 1835 Treaty of New Echota bought "untold hardship" for the Cherokee people leaving "countless unmarked graves" in the wake of their journey.
Many of the displays focus on the tribe's survival and florescence after the Trail of Tears. The "Cherokee Language" display focuses on how Cherokee education flourished after the Trail of Tears at the Cherokee National Male Seminary and the Cherokee National Female Seminary. Both seminaries were established in 1851 and were intended to prepare Cherokee children to enter Eastern colleges and to obtain a more accepted place in white society while keeping their Cherokee heritage alive. A display with an old printing press once used by the Cherokee Phoenix, the tribal newspaper that began in 1828 and is still being published as the Cherokee Advocate, testifies to continuity and progress in tribal literacy. The "Cherokee Medicine" display focuses on continuity in Cherokee religion, music, and dance, including the Stomp Dance, a ceremonial dance performed to express thanks and remind participants of their responsibilities to the continuance of life on earth. The "Cherokee Recreation" display attests to the continuing popularity of Cherokee games and contests, particularly stickball which was occasionally substituted for warfare. Other displays focus on continuing traditions in Cherokee pottery, basketry, and weaving after the forced migration.
Several displays that focus on the Cherokee Nation today bring the story of Cherokee survival and success after forced migration into the present. Subjects include the Cherokee Nation's community self-help programs, Headstart, and other educational programs, tribal high school, and other services from the tribal government whose capital building and offices are located nearby.
Since 1969, the Trail of Tears outdoor drama has told the story of the forced migration of the Cherokees and other Native American and non-Native American actors during the summer months to reenact the Trail of Tears and its aftermath. The drama both serves as a memorial to those who died and focuses attention on the impact of this bitter journey on the lives of the Cherokees who survived and their descendants.
The oldest component of the Cherokee Heritage Center, the Tsa-La-Gi Ancient Village, is a living museum separated from the rest of the complex by a wooden fence. The Ancient Village has been educating the public about ancient Cherokee culture and traditions for almost 30 years and employs local Native Americans, mostly Cherokees, during the summer months to recreate the life of the Cherokee people in the 16th century. There are demonstrations of flintknapping tools and weapons, pottery-making, woodcarving, and leather-working. The village made such an impression on me as first-grader that I still remember the rectangular (summer) and circular (winter) dwellings, the people dressed in deerskin, the fires, the gourds, and the only Cherokee stickball game that I ever witnessed almost 30 years ago. Many other Oklahomans have related similar stories no me about the impact that trips to the village and the museum had on them as children-quite a testimony to its success. The Cherokee Heritage Center is clearly a forum for the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma to present a local tribal viewpoint on their own history and identity.
How can museum representations recognize and preserve the ethnic and cultural diversity of a nation while struggling against the divisive potential of this diversity? Can Native American groups like the Cherokees only receive accurate representation in their own local tribal museums? Are both national and local museums needed for balanced representation?
Anthropologist James Clifford has concluded that no museum can tell the whole or essential story of a group. Both Clifford and anthropologist Adrienne Kaeppler suggest that the difference between national and local museums may be somewhat exaggerated, i.e., the objects in exhibitions may be similar through the emphasis and message may be different. For example, the portrait of John Ridge, son of Major John Ridge, in Harvard's Peabody Museum communicates the positive message that the Cherokee were "civilized" as shown by the prominent Cherokee's European dress against the popular stereotype of Native Americans at that time. The same portrait of John Ridge in the Cherokee National Museum would communicate a more Ridge family were put to death as traitors by the tribe moving to Indian Territory.
The repatriation of Native American objects will certainly effect the balance of collection in national and local museums by sending many objects in national museums back to the tribes. According to anthropologist Wilcomb Washburn, these objects will not be lost, but consigned to local Native American museums. In a sense, this is yet another forced migration, a potentially healing reversal in which the tribes' relocated cultural property and human remains are being forcibly moved back to their present homelands. Local tribal museums such as the Cherokee Heritage Center can provide important lessons for tribes seeking to establish their own museums to house objects belonging to the tribe, including those objects repatriated as a result of Act H. R. 5237.
While the repatriation of Native American objects already in museums is potentially a positive relocation, the repatriation of the archaeological past may be more problematic for the Cherokees and other relocated tribes. The archaeological past of Oklahoma is actually foreign to the relocated Cherokees, yet the archaeological material from the original Cherokee homeland in Tennessee on display in the Cherokee National Museum seems out of place in a museum so focused on the Cherokees' lives after forced relocation to a new and distant homeland. This disassociation with their archaeological past makes the connection between the Oklahoma Cherokee and the land different in their present homeland. While not trying to divorce the Oklahoma Cherokees from their archaeological past, perhaps the memory of the original and present Cherokee homelands in more appropriate connection than the actual relocation of cultural material.
The benefits of having local tribal museums such as the Cherokee Heritage Center are many, particularly presenting an alternative, Native American perspective on a nation's shared history. According to Clifford, tribal museums "express local culture, oppositional politics, kinship, ethnicity, and addition." He suggests that in some respects, local tribal museums are not museums at all, but "continuations of indigenous traditions of storytelling, collection, and display." The Cherokee Heritage Center is an excellent example of a tribal museum which expresses and continues Cherokee culture and traditions, allowing visitors to see Native Americans society. The Cherokee Heritage Center stands as a tribute to the perseverance of the Cherokee people and as a testimony to their efforts to preserve and share their culture despite such hardships as forced migration.
I would like to tank Mac Harris, Executive Director, Cherokee Heritage Center, and Tom Mooney, Curator of Collections, Cherokee Heritage Center, for their invaluable input regarding the history and the future of the Cherokee Heritage Center. My deepest gratitude is also due to Dr. Rubie Watson for her encouragement, guidance, and editorial advice on this article and the search paper for her course on museums and representation from which it grew.
References * Clifford, James. 1991. "Four Northwest Coast Museums: Travel Reflections" in Exhibiting Cultures. The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, pp. 212-254. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. * Foreman, Grant. 1972. "Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians. Volume 2, "Civilization of the American Indian Series. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. * Gutelius, David Payne. 1992. The Official Guidebook of the Cherokee National Museum. Tahlequah: The Cherokee National Historical Society. * H. R. 5237, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. * Kaeppler, Adrienne L. 1992. "Ali'i and Maka'ainana: The representation of Hawaiians in Museums at Home and Abroad." in Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. Lavine, pp. 458-475. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. * Mihesuah, Devon A. 1993. Cultivating the Rosebuds: The Education of Women at he Cherokee Female Seminary, 1851-1909. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. * Washburn, Wilcomb E. 1990. "Museums and Repatriation of Objects in Their Collections." in The Hall of the North American Indians: Change and Continuity. edited by Barbara Isaac, pp. 15-18. Cambridge: Peabody Museum Press.
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