the native language eliminated laborious recording and made it possible to deal expeditiously, and without artificiality and looseness, with phraseology no longer current (p. vii).
In this Introduction to the texts, Phinney is groping for a vocabulary by which to describe what he considers desirable in a well-presented tale. His concern to find a style equal to the reality of the storytelling is demonstrated further in his correspondence with Boas. “A sad thing in recording these animal stories,” he writes from Idaho to New York on 20 November 1929, “is the loss of spirit—the fascination furnished by the peculiar Indian vocal rendition for humor. Indians are better storytellers than whites. When I read my story mechanically I find only the cold corpse.” Boas replies that Phinney should “try to learn to tell a few stories just as lively as the Indians do and with all their gestures. We can then try once more to get it down on phonographic discs so that we get really the way a good story teller tells it. Of course you must practise on it a good deal to get it in the right, lively form” (letter 27 November 1929). “With the practice you suggest,” Phinney unenthusiastically replies (3 December 1929), “I can render the subtleties of humor, derogation, exclamation, etc., if you see a way to portray this element to students lacking an understanding of the Indian habit of thought, who see mostly only symmetrical mechanics in primitive languages.”
Phinney became more encouraged when he had a chance to compare his own results with others: “It is particularly gratifying to me to find in our collection a more natural spirit, higher plot unity, and generally fuller elaboration of particular incidents” (letter to Boas 5 December 1930). If we pounce on this casual statement and use it to forward our main argument, it is because one rarely finds criteria stated so succintly and from so eximious a source:
(i) “natural spirit”—I take this to mean the ease of flow of words which a born story-teller has, so that his or her pleasure in the performance is communicated to the audience (and, if we can find a way to do it, to the reader) as a shared feeling of confidence and buoyancy;
(ii) “plot unity” —a beginning, a middle, and an end, encompassing an action of some scope and significance, so that, no matter how unpredictable the episodes, a good story will make them hang together to the satisfaction of the teller and his listeners;
(iii) “elaboration of particular incidents”—subtle clues to character, crucial hints about motivation, suspense sustained by attention to detail, pregnant pauses, the hidden tensions of repartee, dramatic irony: Indian legends are not famous for these qualities. Is it because we have had too many truncated versions put in front of us? Occasionally, thank goodness, we come across texts which have enticing intricacy, where the raconteur “has obtained complete mastery over his technique” and “plays” with his material.4
The spirited flow of narrative, the coherence of the action, and the richness of detail: these are not criteria we are unfamiliar with in literary criticism. They have been basic from the beginnings of art. But we are still left with the question of the style that different people use to fulfill these criteria; and specifically the job of registering that an oral performance has accomplished what it set out to do. Much of the “play” is in the paralanguage of gesture, tone of voice, and timing. The humour, especially, is in innuendo, which involves all three. This is what worried Phinney most in presenting his tales. For all his care to find “absolute equivalents” in his literal interlinear translations, “the specific conceptual formations” and “the inner feel so far as it is possible to do so” (letters 16 April and 18 November 1933); for all his care to have the free translation embody “the emotional flavor or usage of words in sentences—the spirit of the tale” (16 April 1933); for all his concern to distinguish between a coyote and Coyote, a meadowlark and Meadowlark, based “on a feeling for something that inheres to animal names” (letter 26 February 1934); for all his care to give animals their traditional speech characteristics, where “Fox always speaks with utmost clarity and directness,” “Bear slurs consonants,” and “Skunk nasalizes in a high-pitched voice” (Introduction, p. ix); for all this care, when it came to the essential humour of the episodes, no amount of care, he felt, could get it on to the page; and he was reduced to stating flatly in his Introduction that a certain couple of the tales are “excellent examples of the depth, and delightful flavor of Indian humor” (p. ix). He is right to worry; for these specified tales are not, on the face of it, more humourous than the general run of Coyote stories. Something vital is obviously lost in transmission, and we are in danger of being left, as he feared, with the “cold corpse” of a story.5
Archie Phinney was a man of independent mind—witness his research in Russia (1932-36) even before the Soviet Union had diplomatic recognition from the United States. In preparing his Nez Perce Texts, however, he did not have the genius to go beyond the rather staid format that his mentor expected of him. He could not allow himself to think of some of the solutions to the problem of humour which we have seen attempted in recent years. For instance, Dennis Tedlock has a Coyote story in Finding the Center (1972), and the typographical devices for loudness, pauses, prolonged syllables, and other performance features help, I think, to convey the humour. Coyote has annoyed Old Lady Junco by repeatedly asking her for her song:
He was coming for the fourth time when Old Lady Junco said to herself, (tight) "Oh here you come but I won’t sing, " that’s what she said. She looked for a round rock. When she found a round rock, she dressed it with her Junco shirt, she put her basket of seeds with her Junco rock. (tight) “As for you, go right ahead and ask. ”(p. 81)
As one becomes familiar with Tedlock’s notations, one begins to hear precisely the tone of voice which carries the humour. Coyote is going to ask for the song again; the rock, of course, is not going to say anything; and Coyote is eventually going to take a bite out of the rock at the expense of his molars. So much of the humour is in the anticipation of the outcome, and the way the hints of the outcome are allowed to leak into the narrative. Anticipatory laughter in the audience is triggered by a laconic quality in the way the denouement is prepared.
How much laughter? In transcribing Yellowman’s Coyote story, J. Barre Toelken settled the question by stating how much. A recording of a particular telling before several of Yellowman’s children on the evening of 19 December 1966 was transcribed two years after, with the help of one of those children. It is instructive to see how early in the story the laughter begins:
(style: slow, as with factual conversational prose; regular intonation and pronunciation; long pauses between sentences, as if tired)
Ma'i [Coyote] was walking along once in a onceforested area named after a stick floating on the water. He began walking in the desert in this area, where there were many prairie dogs, and as he passed by them they called him mean names, but he ignored them. He was angry, even so, and it was noon by then, so he made a wish:
(slower, all vowels more nasalized) “I wish some clouds would form.” He was thinking about killing these prairie dogs, so he wished for clouds, and there were clouds, (audience: smiles and silent laughter)6
The children know that Coyote wants rain so that he can pretend to be drowned in the flood, so that he can get Skunk to bring the prairie dogs to gloat over his “corpse,” and then he can jump them. They are already smiling at the way this circuitous plan is initiated. The mimicry and the special animal voice probably have something to do with this early laughter; and also the feeling that their father is not going to rush the story—it is going to be told well. Toelken’s transcription indicates the different kinds of laughter, including Yellowman’s own laughter at certain points. There are also footnotes to explain certain comic devices, and an extended commentary which shows the social importance of the humour. It is a very full treatment of a performance text, one which Archie Phinney, I think, would have appreciated. It might be too cumbersome for everyday use—though I am not so sure about that.7 In any case, it allows us to go back to texts like Phinney’s, and understand how they “reveal currents of subtle humor” (Introduction p. ix), and why Phinney in a letter can state that “Indians are better storytellers than whites” without expecting to be contradicted.
"A Masterpiece of Indian Oral Tradition"
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