On a hot Friday afternoon in the last week of August, cars, pickup trucks, campers, and sc
To an outside observer attending for the first time, this year's powwow may appear chaotic. Even though posted signs promise that dances will begin at four o'clock, there is still no dancing at five-thirty, and the scheduled drummers never arrive. No one is in charge; the announcer acts as a facilitator of ceremonies, but no chief rises to demand anything of anyone. Everyone shows great respect for the elders and for the dancers, who are repeatedly singled out for recognition, but at the same time children receive attention for dancing, as does the audience for watching. Eventually the program grows in an organic fashion as dancers slowly become activated by drums and singing. Each participant responds to the mood of the whole group but not to a single, directing voice, and the event flows in an orderly fashion like hundreds of powwows before it.
This apparent penchant for respectful individualism and equality within an American Indian group seems as strong today to a non-Indian observer in Fargo as it did five centuries ago to early European explorers. Much to the shock of the first European observers and to the dismay of bureaucratic individuals, American Indian societies have traditionally operated without strong positions of leadership or coercive political institutions.
Adventure novels and Hollywood films set in the past often portray strong chiefs commanding their tribes. More often, however, as in the case of the Iroquois people, a council of sachems, or legislators, ruled, and any person called the "head" of file tribe usually occupied a largely honorary position of respect rather than power. Chiefs mostly played ceremonial and religious roles rather than political or economic ones. Unlike the familiar words "caucus" and "powwow," which are Indian-derived and indicative of American Indian political traditions, the word "chief" is an English word of French origin that British officials tried to force onto American Indian tribes in order that they might have someone with whom to trade and sign treaties.
In seventeenth-century Massachusetts the British tried to make one leader, Metacom of the Wampanoag people, into King Philip, thereby, imputing monarchy to the American Indian system when no such institution existed. Thus while certain English settlers learned from groups like the Iroquois people how to speak and act in group councils, others simultaneously tried to push American Indians toward a monarchical and therefore less democratic system.
By the late 1600's the Huron people of Canada had already interacted for decades with European explorers and traders and were thus able to compare their own way of life with that of the Europeans. The Hurons particularly decried the European obsession with money. By contrast, the Hurons lived a life of liberty and equality and believed that the Europeans lost their freedom in their incessant use of "thine" and "mine." One Huron explained to the French adventurer and writer Baron de La Hontan, who lived among the Hurons for eleven years, that his people were born free and united, each as great as the other, while Europeans were all the slaves of one sole person. "I am the master of my body," he said, "... I am the first and the last of my nation... subject only to the great Spirit." These words recorded by La Hontan may have reflected the Frenchman's own philosophical bias, but his book rested on a solid factual base: the Huron pe
A．provide a narrative account to serve as an introduction
B．contrast American Indian social events with individual performances
C．create a sense of the permanence of some American Indian customs
D．inform. the reader about the nature of a powwow
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