Sean O'Neill

Named a 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleWalks on the Ground is a record of Louis V. Headman’s personal study of the Southern Ponca people, spanning seven decades beginning with the historic notation of the Ponca people’s origins in the East. The last of the true Ponca speakers and storytellers entered Indian Territory in 1877 and most lived into the 1940s. In Ponca heritage, the history of individuals is told and passed along in songs of tribal members. Headman acquired information primarily when singing with known ceremonial singers such as Harry Buffalohead, Ed Littlecook, Oliver Littlecook, Eli Warrior, Dr. Sherman Warrior (son of Sylvester Warrior), Roland No Ear, and “Pee-wee” Clark. Headman’s father, Kenneth Headman, shared most of this history and culture with Louis. During winter nights, after putting a large log into the fireplace, Kenneth would begin his storytelling. The other elders in the tribe confirmed Kenneth’s stories and insights and contributed to the history Louis has written about the Ponca.Walks on the Ground traces changes in the tribe as reflected in educational processes, the influences and effects of the federal government, and the dominant social structure and culture. Headman includes children’s stories and recognizes the contribution made by Ponca soldiers who served during both world wars, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, Desert Storm, and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Despite centuries of intertribal contact, the American Indian peoples of northwestern California have continued to speak a variety of distinct languages. At the same time, they have come to embrace a common way of life based on salmon fishing and shared religious practices. In this thought-provoking re-examination of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, Sean O'Neill looks closely at the Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk peoples to explore the striking juxtaposition between linguistic diversity and relative cultural uniformity among their communities.O'Neill examines intertribal contact, multilingualism, storytelling, and historical change among the three tribes, focusing on the traditional culture of the region as it existed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He asks important historical questions at the heart of the linguistic relativity hypothesis: Have the languages in fact grown more similar as a result of contact, multilingualism, and cultural convergence? Or have they instead maintained some of their striking grammatical and semantic differences? Through comparison of the three languages, O'Neill shows that long-term contact among the tribes intensified their linguistic differences, creating unique Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk identities.If language encapsulates worldview, as the principle of linguistic relativity suggests, then this region's linguistic diversity is puzzling. Analyzing patterns of linguistic accommodation as seen in the semantics of space and time, grammatical classification, and specialized cultural vocabularies, O'Neill resolves the apparent paradox by assessing long-term effects of contact.

Published through the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas initiative, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Dictionary of the Ponca People presents approximately five thousand words and definitions used by Ponca speakers from the late nineteenth century to the present. Until relatively recently, the Ponca language had been passed down solely as part of an oral tradition in which children learned the language at home by listening to their elders. Almost every family on the southern Ponca reservation in Oklahoma spoke the language fluently until the 1940s, when English began to replace the Ponca language as children entered government boarding schools and were forced to learn English. In response to demand, Ponca language classes are now being offered to children and adults as people seek to gain knowledge of this important link to tradition and culture. The approximately five thousand words in this volume encompass the main artery of the language heard and spoken by the parents and grandparents of the Ponca Council of Elders. Additional words are included, such as those related to modern devices and technology. This dictionary has been compiled at a time when the southern Poncas are initiating a new syntactic structure to the language, as few can speak a full sentence. This dictionary is not intended to recover a cultural period or practice but rather as a reference to the spoken language of the people.