35 pages • 1 hour read
Keith H. BassoWisdom Sits in Places
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaChapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Stalking with Stories”
Basso begins Chapter 2 by outlining a series of statements from members of the community in Cibecue in which they convey their perspectives on themselves, language, and the land. While these statements may be inscrutable to the reader, they only appear so because of a lack of understanding of the Western Apache worldview, Basso notes. Interpreting these claims, therefore, requires understanding how Western Apache talk about the land.
For help with this project, Basso turns to Nick Thompson, a man whose appearance belies his stature in the community. The first time we encounter Thompson, an accomplished medicine man and singer, he’s dressed in bright Nike sneakers and a T-shirt with “Disneyland” printed on the front. When Basso asks for his help interpreting statements made by Apache about the land, Thompson suggests Basso learn the place-names and agrees to help him do so.
At the outset of their project, Thompson says that rather than talking about names, they’ll focus on stories. Stories, Basso tells us, are one of the categories of Western Apache speech, along with ordinary talk and prayer. Stories (or narratives) are further divided by their length, temporal setting, and purpose into myths, historical tales, sagas, and stories arising from gossip. Place-names are most important in historical tales, Basso says, as they serve to quickly and effectively communicate a message of the consequences of disregarding Apache custom.
Basso then describes a number of historical tales that reference a particular place-name to illustrate this point. These tales are simultaneously about the subject of the story and the listener to whom the story is directed, who has almost always committed an analogous offense. This practice, Basso tells us, creates a link between the listener and the place at which the events of the story took place. As an example, Basso describes an incident in which a young woman wore her hair in curlers at a puberty ceremony, which is seen as disrespectful. At a subsequent dinner, the young woman’s grandmother told those attending, including the young woman, the historical tale of Men Stand Above Here and There, in which a Western Apache man attempts to betray a member of his community to white men and is punished. After this telling, the young women threw away her curlers, and she tells Basso the place continues to stalk her.
At the close of the chapter, Basso turns to a practical implication of the work he’s done examining the relationship of place to culture. Basso describes how he contributed documents that were used in litigation over Western Apache water rights. These documents, which contained discussion on place-names and the role of metaphor in shaping the Western Apache relationship to the land, helped set the stage for Indigenous witnesses, including Nick Thompson, whose telling of a historical tale about Much Water Flows Up and Out—and whose description of how tale guides behavior in the community—was, according to those present, the key factor in deciding the case in the Apache’s favor.
Chapter 2 Analysis
In Chapter 2, Basso explores the importance of understanding how people talk about themselves—more specifically, in the case of the Western Apache, of exploring how they talk about the land. By investigating the relationship between language and the landscape, Basso says, it is possible to grasp Western Apache morals and social standards. This idea is reflected in how Basso structures the chapter, as an examination of a series of statements made by Western Apache individuals.
Rendering these statements intelligible to outside understanding requires a closer examination of language and speech patterns; consequently, Chapter 2 uses a detailed examination of linguistic structures of place-names to show how place-names operate, a kind of examination Basso notes fell out of favor among linguists and anthropologists in the mid-20th century. Nonetheless, Basso states that the structure of place-names plays almost as important a part in determining the role of those names as the stories they convey: “[…] studying their internal structure, together with the functions they serve in spoken conversation, can lead the ethnographer to any number of useful discoveries” (44).
In Chapter 2, Basso also offers the first description of Cibecue itself: located in a narrow valley, divided by a stream, and bounded by sandstone bluffs. Basso’s mapping of the area, described in the previous chapter, has recorded 296 place-names. This density of place-names is a reflection of the fact that many Western Apache enjoy pronouncing the names of places, which are in fact full sentences of appealing “brevity and expressiveness” (46). Here, Basso illustrates how linguistic structures are important; the formation of Western Apache language allows its speakers to express a great deal of information with few words. This ability plays into how place-names are used in Western Apache culture: Because place-names are so evocative, Apache storytellers can situate their listeners on the landscape without needing to describe it.
Basso reinforces the importance of this level of detail when he describes the different kinds of narratives that make up Western Apache oral narratives. Place-names are particularly important in historical tales, which primarily serve to criticize bad behavior. If the target of that criticism properly receives the message, Basso explains, a link is created between that person and the places named in the tale.
To illustrate this process, Basso presents the story of the young woman who wore curlers at a puberty ceremony. In response, her grandmother told the historical tale of Men Stand Above Here, and that place, the young woman tells Basso, continues to stalk her—its name has prompted critical reflection, and the association of a feature of the landscape with that lesson ensures the lesson is not forgotten. A discussion of the metaphor of hunting that follows helps the reader understand why Western Apache individuals say “the land makes people live right” and that stories “go to work on you like arrows” (38); as Basso suggested at the outset of Chapter 2, an examination of the structure and function of place-names has helped render these statements comprehensible.
The closing section offers further justification for the importance of ethnography, a theme Basso explored in Chapter 1. In Chapter 2, Basso explains that metaphors—such as storytellers as hunters—are more than linguistic constructions; instead, they depend on a web of cultural assumptions. Therefore, linguistic and ethnographic research must occur in tandem.
