Paul Radin

Paul Radin, one of America's first and most reputable professional anthropologists, lived among the Winnebago Indians for years, and for years he tried without success to interview the notorious younger son of the Blow Snake family, the Crashing Thunder of this book. At last Crashing Thunder agreed to tell Radin his life story, one that Radin calls "a true rake's progress." Speaking through Radin, Crashing Thunder told of his childhood, stories of Winnebago gods, his appetite for women and beer, and his extraordinary friends and relatives, including his brother-in-law, Thunder Cloud, then in his third incarnation. Crashing Thunder also told of his redemption through his new religion, peyote. To enhance understanding of the autobiography and its place in anthropology and literature, a new foreword, appendix, and index have been prepared by eminent Native American scholar, Arnold Krupat. Paul Radin (1883-1959) was an American anthropologist who was considered an authority on the culture of primitive societies, especially the tribal societies of native North Americans. Among his many works are the books The Winnebago Tribe, The Road of Life and Death: A Ritual Drama of the American Indians, and The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. Arnold Krupat is Professor of English, Sarah Lawrence College.

In this transcription of the Medicine Rite, the most sacred ritual of the Winnebago Indians, anthropologist Paul Radin captured a poetic source of profound importance to the understanding of mystical experience. Performed by medicine men upon the initiation of a member to their cult, this secret rite recapitulated the mythic origins and heroes of the Winnebago while integrating those present with the ancestral forces.

This classic work on the Winnebago Indian tribe remains the single best authority on the subject. Based on Paul Radin's field work in 1908–13, The Winnebago Tribe was originally published as an annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1923. It is distinguished by a number of first-person accounts by Winnebago informants and by the thoroughness with which Radin discusses Winnebago history, archaeology, material culture, social customs, education, funeral and burial rites, warfare, and shamanistic and medical practices. Included are Winnebago tales and legends and the first complete account of the peyote religion, now known as the Native American Church.