James R. Walker (1) (1849–1926)

James Walker was a doctor on the Pine Ridge reservation from 1896 to 1914; he interviewed many Lakota and recorded the results. Lakota Society is the middle of a three-volume set of Walker’s notes, transcribed and updated in 1982 by Raymond DeMalllie, an anthropologist at Indiana University. In this volume, Walker asked his informants about Lakota society and got information on council fires, the subgroups of the Lakota, Lakota kinship relations, Lakota government, the “winter count” show more calendar, and an eyewitness report on the Wounded Knee Massacre.

The Winter Count records were of interest because they reminded me of dendrochronology. The Lakota didn’t have a written language until European contact; however, they recorded the most interesting event of every year with a pictograph and supplemented that with oral recitations. Several of these winter count records were available; they don’t always record the same events. However, a key event on all of them is the great Leonid meteor shower of 1833, recorded as a pictograph of many stars falling. This allows anthropologists to count forward and backward and assign years to other winter count records.

Structured as records interviews with individuals, plus chapters with Walker’s syntheses. Interesting both as a historical document and a record of Lakota life. A plate section shows some of the pictographs from the winter counts. Appendices include one-line biographies of Walker’s Lakota informants and a guide to Lakota pronunciation. Endnotes, bibliography, and index. show less