Oneida Lives

Long-Lost Voices of the Wisconsin Oneidas

Herbert S. Lewis

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780803229433
• eBook ISBN: 9780803250864
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Native American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

In this intimate volume the long-lost voices of Wisconsin Oneida men and women speak of all aspects of life: growing up, work and economic struggles, family relations, belief and religious practice, boarding-school life, love, sex, sports, and politics. These voices are drawn from a collection of handwritten accounts recently rediscovered after more than fifty years, the result of aWPA Federal Writers' Project undertaking called the Oneida Ethnological Study (1940–42) in which a dozen Oneida men and women were hired to interview their families and friends and record their own experiences and observations. Selected from more than five hundred biographical narratives, these sixty-five chronicles, told by fifty-eight women and men, present a picture of Oneida Indian life from the 1880s, before the Dawes Allotment Act, through World War I and the Great Depression, to the beginning of World War II. Despite the narrators' struggles against harsh economic conditions, the theft of their land, and neglect, their firsthand histories are rendered with frankness and wit and present a remarkable picture of an era and a people.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. A Brief Economic and Social History
• 2. Recollections and Opinions of Elders
• 3. Working, Earning a Living, and Struggling Through
• 4. The Lives They Led
• 5. Marriages and Families
• 6. Religious Life and Beliefs
• 7. Boarding Schools and “Outing”
• 8. Sports and Recreation
• 9. Four Memorable Days
• Appendix: The Oneida Ethnological Study under Attack
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index