Listen to Grandma Supernaw tell you Quapaw Stories

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Title

 Minutes

Story 1 .mp3:  A Ghost Story of a Hunting Dog.  11:26
   
Story 2 .mp3:  A Cold Snowy Journey. 11:24
   
Story 3: .mp3  A Story of War and Fighting. 4:02
   
Story 4: .mp3  Why Don't You get Sick? 11:43

Maude “Grandma” Supernaw
Interviewed by: Bill, Jr. and Irene Supernaw
Interview Date: 1962
Transcribed by: Billy Supernaw Proctor
Subject:
Interviewee Mary Maude "Grandma" Supernaw

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Quapaw Stories in the Quapaw Language

(Irene) This story was told by Grandma Supernaw to her son Bill, this is how her father, Tallchief, told it to her, also how it was told to him by his father.

(Maude) Well, I was gonna tell a story, what my father and great grandfather where talking about …. My father learned from him, so I’m gonna tell how Quapaw, they come from the …. I try and tell a story …. They claim, my father said they claim a big fire, a big tree fire, that’s what, they come out of it, they told me.

So, and uh, I’m gonna tell them, and uh, and they brought corn with them too, to raise, eating on it, and they make medicine out of it too. So, they brought that with them, I guess, I know, I guess God give them, I guess. So, they bring with them.

So, they travel around, they camping somewhere around there, working, making a living, so, and uh, they right along the ocean, and they see that, uh, people come in a boat, white, white man, woman. So, they funny looking that first time they see whites. So, they didn’t know what to do, they want kill them, and they don’t want to, and so, they went over there and shake hands with them, and they talking, motioning around and after awhile they got whiskey and they said, uh, give whiskey and they said their mother call, uh, white woman, they call father , uh, mother and the white man, father. So, they didn’t kill them. So, they talking around there awhile and they told when they give them so many days to come back in. So, they left, Indians left, and so they went back and, back ocean, I guess, across. And, uh, later on, many days, they going to come back, and they went over there again and they meet them again and they bring flour, coffee, salt, sugar, something like that, they bring with them. So, that’s what the Indian learned how, what taste of salt was, and flour, and the coffee, that’s what they learned, they say, so.
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Maude “Grandma” Supernaw
Interviewed by: Bill Supernaw, Jr.
Interview Date: March 1960
Transcribed by: Rise Supernaw Proctor
Subject: Quapaw Memorial Dinners

Quapaw Funeral Dinners

      

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 Grandma Supernaw told her son, Bill, how the custom of having dinners after Quapaw Indian funerals started.

 She said her father, Louis Angel or Tall Chief, died in 1918 and he was buried about noon that day. So she just fed everyone there. She said that is how it all began.

 Francis GoodEagle was at the funeral and dinner. He liked Grandma’s father very much. The next year he told Grandma Supernaw that her father was such a good man, they should have another dinner. So she had a memorial dinner for Tall Chief that next year. She also had a memorial dinner for him on the third year of the funeral anniversary.

 So from then on, Quapaws gave a dinner on the funeral day and one dinner each anniversary for 2 years.