Mrs. Humphrey Ward - "Amiel's Journal"

r, The Inner Life of the Author - "Ernest Linwood"

Jeffery Farnol et al - "The Amateur Gentleman"

Mrs. Henry Wood - "The Channings"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3)

J >> James Athearn Jones >> Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3)




"When any one dies in the time of hunting, they expose his body on a
very high scaffold, and it remains there till the departure of the
troop, who carry it with them to the village. There are some nations who
practice the same with regard to all their dead. The bodies of those who
die in war are burnt, and their ashes brought back to be laid in the
burying-place of their fathers. Others bury their dead in the woods, at
the foot of a tree; or dry them, and keep them in chests, till the
festival of the dead. In some places they observe an odd ceremony for
those that are drowned or frozen to death. The savages believe, when
these accidents happen, that the spirits are incensed, and that their
anger is not appeased till the body is found. Then the preliminaries of
tears, dances, songs, and feasts, being ended, they carry the body to
the usual burying-place; or, if they are too far off, to the place where
it is to remain till the festival of the dead. They dig a very large
pit, and make a fire in it; then some young persons approach the corpse,
cut out the flesh in the parts which had been marked by the master of
the ceremonies, and throw them into the fire with the bowels. Then they
place the corpse, thus mangled, in the place destined for it. During the
whole operation, the women, especially the relations of the deceased, go
continually around those that are at it, exhorting them to acquit
themselves well of their employment, and put beads in their months, as
we would give sugar-plums to children, to entice them to do what we
desire."

The customs among some of the tribes, especially those who have had
little intercourse with the white people, are substantially the same at
this day. But, it has been the effect of their acquaintance with their
conquerors to make them forget every thing laudable and praiseworthy,
among which was their singular veneration for the dust of their
ancestors. These now bury their dead with as few ceremonies as we
observe in burying a dog.

Mackenzie's description of the funeral solemnities of the Knistenaux,
who live further north than Charlevoix went, is something different from
the above:--The funeral rites begin, like all other solemn solemnities,
with smoking, and are concluded by a feast. The body is dressed in the
best habiliments possessed by the deceased or his relations, and is then
deposited in a grave lined with branches. Some domestic utensils are
placed on it, and a kind of canopy erected over it. During this ceremony
great lamentations are made, and the departed person is very much
regretted; the near relations cut off their hair, pierce the fleshy part
of their thighs with arms, knives, &c. and blacken their faces with
charcoal. If they have distinguished themselves in war, they are
sometimes laid on a kind of scaffolding; and I have been informed that
women, as in the East, have been known to sacrifice themselves to the
manes of their husbands. The whole of the property belonging to the
deceased person is destroyed, and the relations take in exchange for
their wearing apparel any rags that will cover their
nakedness.--_Mackenzie_, p. xcix. _Journal_, 148.

The Delawares, and other Indians on the Atlantic coast, buried their
dead after the following manner. Immediately after death, the corpse
was dressed in a new suit, with the face and shirt painted red, and laid
upon a mat or skin in the middle of the hut or cottage. The arms and
effects of the deceased were then piled up near the body. In the
evening, soon after sunset, and in the morning before day-break, the
female relations and friends assembled round the corpse and mourned over
it. Their lamentations were loud in proportion to the love and esteem
they bore the deceased, or to his rank, or to the _pains he suffered in
dying_. And they were repeated daily till his interment.

The burying-places of the Delawares were at some distance from the
dwellings. The graves were generally dug by the old women, as the young
people abhorred this kind of work. If they had a coffin, it was placed
in the grave empty. Then the corpse was carried out, lying upon a linen
cloth, full in view, that the finery and ornaments, with all the effects
left by the deceased, might appear to advantage. The funeral was
accompanied by as great a number of friends as could be collected. It
was then let down into the coffin covered with the cloth. During the
letting down of the corpse, the women set up a dreadful howl, but it was
deemed a shame to weep. Yet, in silence and unobserved, they could not
refrain from tears. It may be seen that they had partially conformed to
the customs of the white people. The "coffin" and "linen cloth" were not
Indian.

The funeral ceremonies of the tribes inhabiting New England were similar
to the authentic part of those practised by the Delawares. Graves were
dug and the body deposited therein, together with such utensils of
cookery, and weapons of war, as it was deemed would be wanted by the
spirits of the deceased in the world they were about to visit. They had
one custom, however, which I did not observe among the southern
tribes--that of placing weights on the grave to prevent the body from
getting out again, and haunting its friends.

It will be seen from these various customs, that one belief is common to
all the tribes scattered over the western continent--that of the
existence in man of the spiritual essence which we call _soul_; of its
flight after death to another and better world, variously located
however; and of its being there actuated by the same wants and wishes,
engaged in the same occupation and pursuits, and requiring the same
means for the attainment of the same ends, as in this.


END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

LONDON:
F. SHOBERL, JUN., LAZENBY COURT, LONG ACRE.

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