George Sword's Warrior Narratives: A Study in the Processes of Composition of Lakota Oral Narrative

This research is the result of a long-standing interest in the work of one individual, George Sword who composed two hundred and forty-five pages of text in the Lakota language using the English alphabet in the period 1896 through 1910. In the past scholars have studied Lakota narratives and songs and with each study new insights are gained. However, the focus generally in oral literary research has been in the study of content and not process in Lakota oral traditions. In order to better understand the characteristics of Lakota oral style this study shows how it is composed and structured in the work of George Sword. The research focus is from a qualitative perspective concerned with exploring, describing, and explaining a culturally specific Lakota oral narrative more commonly found in history and ethnographic disciplines, where it is a special type of case study research. The primary method used is an analysis of historic documents and original text in Lakota to address the issues raised in the general research problem: How do you define Lakota literature? In the end this study shows the way in which Lakota oral narrative is composed, how its practice produced a distinct form. During the course of this study, what became apparent in George Sword's Lakota narratives were the formulaic patterns inherent in the Lakota language used to tell the narratives as well as the recurring themes and story patterns. The primary conclusion is that these patterns originate from a Lakota oral tradition. This analysis can be used to determine whether any given written narrative in Lakota oral tradition is oral or not; and leads the way for further researchRelease 18-Nov-201