Submitted by: agcomm,  Thu May 22 09:40:46 1997


PLAINS FOLK:
Adapt or Vanish
 Tom Isern, Professor of History
 North Dakota State University
 COPYRIGHT 1997 Plains Folk
 
     I've always believed in the richness of a society that
includes many cultures. The Great Plains are a great place
largely because of the diversity of peoples who live here. The
region is resilient because it is like America, only more so.
Its people prize their ancestries and traditions. Ecologists
tell us that polycultures are sounder systems than
monocultures. Those cultures and traditions, though, are
counterproductive if they only hearken back to a homeland
somewhere else. People have to take root in the new country
and graft new ways of life on the old.
 
     That's why I was so interested in a new book from the
University of Arizona Press called "Becoming and Remaining a
People: Native American Religions on the Northern Plains" by
Howard L. Harrod. This book by a Vanderbilt University
professor focuses on the religion of the village peoples of
the upper Missouri, the Mandan and Hidatsa. Early in this
millennium they began to arrive in the middle of present-day
North Dakota, and their river-bottom cultures had crystallized
there by AD 1400 or so.
 
     A basic question addressed by religion is, "Where did we
come from?" Harrod notes that the Mandan had two traditional
stories about where they came from. One said that they
originated as a people right where they were, at the mouth of
the Heart River. The other story recounted a journey from the
east to the new home on the northern plains. Eventually,
though, oral tradition integrated the two stories, so that the
Mandan were both from somewhere else and native to their place
of residence.
 
     Likewise the Hidatsa had more than one story as to their
origins, stories that existed alongside one another without
tension. Buffalo Bird Woman said the Hidatsa came out of
Devils Lake; others said they originated at a point near
present-day Washburn.
 
     Here, then, is the first lesson for residents of the
contemporary plains. It is possible to be both immigrant and
native and to draw strength from both stories. The peoples of
the plains are at different points in this process of
definition. Some, perhaps, never will become plains folk.
 
     The religious narratives of the Mandan and Hidatsa
feature what scholars call "culture heros"--larger-than-life
figures in the distant past who brought peoples into being and
originated rituals. The chief culture hero of the Hidatsa, for
instance, is called Charred Body. Also key to the religious
traditions and narratives are the sacred bundles containing
religious objects and passed along through bundle lines.
 
     Descendants of European immigrants on the northern plains
today often explain any social weakness in the region by
citing the social breakdown that has taken place since 1930 or
so--outmigration, farm consolidation, the collapse of the
small town and so on.  All that is true, of course, but let me
tell you about depopulation.
 
     The great smallpox epidemic of 1837 reduced the Mandan
population from 9,000 to less than 200. Bundle lines
disappeared, the culture appeared to collapse--but it didn't.
 
     Mandan culture survived because it was capable of
adaptation. The Mandan and Hidatsa moved close to cultural
fusion. Religious change, often hinging on the revelations of
dreams, healed over the wounds inflicted by demographic
disaster. "Their triumph over the tragic features of their
lives," Harrod writes, "is the result of their capacity for
self-renewal, which has often been fueled by their
reinterpretation of religious traditions and practices."
 
     Now I'm approaching the second lesson to be drawn from
the religious history of the Mandan and Hidatsa. Are the
descendants of European immigrants on the plains as capable as
the Mandan and Hidatsa of surviving as peoples, despite
adversity, by revising their stories and beliefs, by
redefining themselves?
 
     Perhaps. Those whom Wallace Stegner has called "the
stickers" will do so. If catechisms will not permit such
change, people will find it elsewhere, like water seeking its
own level.
 
NDSU Agriculture Communication
Barry Brissman
Departmental Editor
(701) 231-7866
Isern: (701) 231-8339