In her study, George Sword’s Warrior Narratives: Compositional Processes in Lakota Oral Tradition, Delphine Red Shirt examines the process of oral composition in Lakota culture. Red Shirt’s study draws on the work of Milman Parry and on Albert Lord’s The Singer of Tales, showing the ways that Parry and Lord’s oral formulaic theory can usefully be applied to the study of Lakota oral tradition.

This study focuses on the written narratives of one Lakota individual, George Sword, who lived from 1847-1910. Sword is an interesting figure who learned traditional Lakota ways from his adopted father, One Star. Sword grew into many traditional responsibilities in his community, including membership in the warrior society. Later in life, Sword adopted many customs of the Euro-American colonizers, including Christianity and written language. James Riley Walker, who arrived at Pine Ridge in 1896 to work as a medical doctor, began documenting traditional Lakota culture, and took an interest in George Sword. Sword decided to take the process into his own hands, writing down his narratives himself instead of relying on the translation and interpretation process of Walker’s ethnography. These manuscripts, which include the full series of Sword’s written narratives, are now part of the Walker collection at the Colorado Historical Society (History Colorado).

Red Shirt, who holds a PhD from the University of Arizona and is currently a lecturer at Stanford University, undertook a massive effort in selecting and translating four of the George Sword narratives from Lakota into English. Red Shirt first did a word-for-word translation, and then a “literary” translation.These literary translations are included in full, alongside the original Lakota text in the book’s lengthy appendices.

Red Shirt is herself Lakota, and a fluent speaker of the language. She comments that her intimacy with the culture and the language allowed her to successfully complete this study in a way that would be difficult for outsiders to do. This understanding of the language becomes important in Red Shirt’s identification of certain structural forms in the oral tradition (especially what she identifies as “recurring and rhythmic verbs”), as well as in her ability to identify and understand the significance of the way Sword uses an older dialect in his narratives, which indicates a sort of narrative frame.

Red Shirt suggests that though Parry and Lord’s oral formulaic theory has been accepted among scholars working with Western oral literatures, it is still commonly held by many that “American Indian oral tradition relied primarily on extraordinary memory and not any singular process of composition” (xv). Red Shirt’s work refutes that conception. Sword’s narratives, and the broader Lakota oral tradition, like the Homeric and South Slavic epics studied by Parry and Lord, are not the work of rote memory, but rather of individual creativity within a set system.

Red Shirt identifies several structural features of Sword’s narratives that, along with the context provided in Sword’s biography, suggest the written text was composed in a traditional Lakota oral style. These include: (1) an organizational pattern consisting of lines, stanzas, and scenes; (2) statements of succession or lapses of time; and (3), the use of “recurring and rhythmic verbs.” Red Shirt works through several sections of Sword’s narratives, identifying the formulaic elements listed above, showing the significant presence of oral tradition in Sword’s writing, stating that “George Sword consciously wrote these narratives in a way that bears the mark of his own narrative style, a style that could come only from the tradition that he was a part of from birth” (119).

In addition to the elements of form mentioned above, Red Shirt examines the traditional themes that appear in succession in Sword’s narratives, which serve as additional evidence of traditional oral composition. For example, in one of the narratives that Red Shirt examines (narrative 3), the themes include (1) council for war, (2) the warrior’s feast, and (3) preparations for war. These themes are not organized by fixed language, but rather as a grouping of traditional ideas that, taken together, constitute evidence of oral composition.

Ultimately, Red Shirt successfully shows that formulaic elements similar to those that Parry and Lord identified in Homeric and South Slavic epics can be seen in Lakota oral narrative composition. Red Shirt also argues that the patterns discussed in this study can be used to examine any Lakota text to discern whether or not it originated in Lakota oral tradition. This study is recommended for those interested in folklore, oral literature, American Indian studies, or narrative studies. The book can also be taught in folklore theory classes, alongside The Singer of Tales, as a successful application of oral-formulaic theory to American Indian oral literature.

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[Review length: 769 words • Review posted on November 19, 2020]