4 Ceremony, Ritual and Oratory
All cultures have ceremonies and rituals of importance to them. Americans celebrate Thanksgiving with feasts, football and family. Many Christian churches worldwide celebrate Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras the night before beginning 40 days of Lent. For that matter, public speaking and oratory play a part in ceremony and ritual. Presidents of the United States speak at their inauguration; and honorary degree recipients give commencement speeches. Thus, what cultural ceremonies are you familiar with? What takes place within them? What is communicated and to whom? Reflect on your experiences with ceremony, ritual, and oratory as you read this chapter.
Ceremonial exchange proved vital throughout the Mississippi River Valley. Native peoples communicated with their spirit world and with those who arrived among them through ceremony, ritual and oratory. Consequently, having been in North America since the early 17th century, many French knew well the importance of a Native nation’s ceremonial exchange. Though the French were different and strange, they were often welcomed as newcomers. As they entered the Pays d’en Haut and the Mississippi Valley, the French understood that trade items were “words”–utterances of peace, alliance, friendship–and that ceremony was vital in any form of diplomacy. Ceremony communicated hospitality, welcome, friendship, kinship, adoption, alliance. Ritual “words” mattered greatly. Even without a common language, a level of understanding through ceremony and exchange developed between the French and many Native cultures.
Father Jacques Marquette, his companion Louis Jolliet, and the Illinois nation shared the first recorded Native/French ceremonial exchange and oration within the upper Mississippi River Valley. These Frenchmen had just arrived among the Illinois. The latter took to council to discuss their presence among them so as to determine their next stage of interaction with these unknown, strangely dressed men:
“The Council was followed by a great feast, Consisting of four dishes, which had to be partaken of in accordance with all their fashions. The first course was a great wooden platter full of sagamité,–that is to say, meal of Indian corn boiled in water, and seasoned with fat. He did the same to Monsieur Jollyet. As a second course, he caused a second platter to be brought, on which were three fish. He took some pieces of them, removed the bones there from, and, after blowing upon them to cool Them, he put them in our mouths As one would give food to a bird. For the third course, they brought a large dog, that had just been killed; but, when they learned that we did not eat this meat, they removed it from before us. Finally, the 4th course was a piece of wild ox, The fattest morsels of which were placed in our mouths. After this feast, we had to go to visit the whole village, which Consists of fully 300 Cabins. While we walked through the Streets, an orator Continually harangued to ob