Archaeologists identify the Menomini as descendants of the Middle Woodland Indians, who flourished in the area for thousands of years before the first Europeans arrived. According to Menomini legend, their people emerged from the ground near the mouth of the Menominee River. It was along that river that Sieur Jean Nicolet first encountered the Menomini in 1634. The Menomini, a peaceful people, lived by farming, hunting, fishing, and gathering wild rice. Perhaps because of their peaceful nature their name was not generally found in the white military annals, and they were largely unknown until 1892, when Walter James Hoffman published a detailed ethnographic account of them. Felix Keesing's classic 1939 work on the Menomini is one of the most detailed, authoritative, and useful accounts of their history and culture. It superseded Hoffman's earlier work because of Keesing's modern methods of research. This work was among the first monographs on an American Indian people to employ a model of acculturation, and it is also an excellent early example of what is now called ethnohistory. It served as a model of anthropological research for decades after its publication. Keesing's work, reprinted in this new Wisconsin edition, will continue to serve as a comprehensive introduction for the general reader, a book respected by both anthropologists and historians, and by the Menomini themselves. It is still the most important study of Menomini life up until 1939.

In the centenary year of Leonard Bloomfield's birth, this abridgment makes available a representative selection of the writings of this central figure in the history of linguistics. "Hockett has achieved his purpose—to reveal Bloomfield's way of working, the general principles that guided his work, and last, but by no means least, to indicate how Bloomfield's interests and attitudes changed with the passing years."—Harry Hoijer, Language

When Europeans first arrived on this continent, Algonquian languages were spoken from the northeastern seaboard through the Great Lakes region, across much of Canada, and even in scattered communities of the American West. The rich and varied oral tradition of this Native language family, one of the farthest-flung in North America, comes brilliantly to life in this remarkably broad sampling of Algonquian songs and stories from across the centuries. Ranging from the speech of an early unknown Algonquian to the famous Walam Olum hoax, from retranslations of ?classic? stories to texts appearing here for the first time, these are tales written or told by Native storytellers, today as in the past, as well as oratory, oral history, and songs sung to this day. ø An essential introduction and captivating guide to Native literary traditions still thriving in many parts of North America, Algonquian Spirit contains vital background information and new translations of songs and stories reaching back to the seventeenth century. Drawing from Arapaho, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Cree, Delaware, Maliseet, Menominee, Meskwaki, Miami-Illinois, Mi'kmaq, Naskapi, Ojibwe, Passamaquoddy, Potawatomi, and Shawnee, the collection gathers a host of respected and talented singers, storytellers, historians, anthropologists, linguists, and tribal educators, both Native and non-Native, from the United States and Canada?all working together to orchestrate a single, complex performance of the Algonquian languages.

As interest in folklore increases, the folktale acquires greater significance for students and teachers of literature. The material is massive and scattered; thus, few students or teachers have accessibility to other than small segments or singular tales or material they find buried in archives. Stith Thompson has divided his book into four sections which permit both the novice and the teacher to examine oral tradition and its manifestation in folklore. The introductory section discusses the nature and forms of the folktale. A comprehensive second part traces the folktale geographically from Ireland to India, giving culturally diverse examples of the forms presented in the first part. The examples are followed by the analysis of several themes in such tales from North American Indian cultures. The concluding section treats theories of the folktale, the collection and classification of folk narrative, and then analyzes the living folklore process. This work will appeal to students of the sociology of literature, professors of comparative literature, and general readers interested in folklore.

This work makes available for the first time in a single volume a representative collection of the major spiritual texts from the Native American Indian peoples of the East Coast. Elisabeth Tooker, professor of anthropology at Temple University and and editor of The Handbook of North American Indians, presents the sacred traditions of the Iroquois, Winnibego, Fox, Menominee, Delaware, Cherokee and others. Included here are cosmological myths, thanksgiving addresses, dreams and visions, speeches of the shamans, teachings of parents, puberty fasts, blessings, healing rites, stories, songs, ceremonials for fires, hunting wars, feasts and the rituals of various spiritual societies.

This set reprints key journal articles originally published between 1915 and 1995, and covers all of the major assessments of Bloomfield's work.

Gathers stories and songs from thirty-one native groups in North America, including the Inupiaqs, the Lushoots, the Catawbas, and the Maliseets.