The Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian - Paul Radin

Life, ways, acculturation, and the peyote cult

A slender read, written by an anonymous Winnebego Indian living in the Minneapolis region of the US in the mid-late 1800's. Curious, by western standards rather devoid of descriptions and more of a "these are the facts of my life and my tribe...". Of interest were the notes on the belief in reincarnation, the traditional roles of men and women, traditional knowledge, the narrators doubts regarding initiation and the great earth-spirit, the traditional native idea that to hoard up items you didn't use reflected a poverty of spirit, and that - unless you were actively using them, items were there for communal use - (a sound principle, I might add), there was the emphasis on dying in battle - a heroes death for the warrior clan - rather mirrors the idea of certain extremist Islamic groups.

All and all interesting - always interesting to have keys to the thoughts of long extinct others, and rare enough that we can get it from their own lips. And good to read, if only in that it overturns a lot of the romanticism we've built up over the first nations.