1. This exploration of the role of gift exchange in Osage marriage ceremonies over the past 200 years is accessibly written and illustrated with 120 high quality color photographs of objects and important scans of archival imagery.

2. It includes a wealth of previously unpublished material from ethnographic, artifact, and archival source material.

3. It prioritizes Osage voices by including excerpts from the community's conversation with the authors throughout and using historical documents to bring in voices from the past.

4. This is an interdisciplary work that will be of interest to anthropologists, folklorists, museum studies specialists, Native American studies scholars, and members of the Osage nation.

Wedding Clothes and the Osage Community: A Giving Heritage explores how gift exchange, motivated by the values of generosity and hospitality, serves as a critical component in the preservation and perpetuation of Osage society. Authors, Daniel C. Swan and Jim Cooley collaborate with members of the Osage Nation to discuss this foundational cultural practice over two centuries and in multiple social contexts.

The book begins with an in-depth examination of the Mízhin form of marriage, which bound two extended Osage families together for economic, biologic, and social reasons intended to produce value and community cohesion for the larger society. Swan and Cooley then follow the movement of Osage bridal regalia from the Mízhin from of marriage into the "Paying for the Drum" ceremony of the Osage Ilonshka—a variant of the Plains Grass Dance, which is a nativistic movement that spread throughout the Plains and Prairie regions of the United States in the 1890s. The Ilonshka dance and its associated organization provide a spiritual charter for the survival of the ancient Osage physical divisions, or "districts" as they are called today. Swan and Cooley demonstrate how the process of re-chartering elements of material culture and their associated meanings from one ceremony to another serves as an example of the ways in which the Osage people have adapted their cultural values to changing economic and political conditions. At the core of this historical trajectory is a broad system of Osage social relations predicated on status, reciprocity, and cooperation. Through Osage weddings and the Ilonshka dance the Osage people reinforce and strengthen the social relations that provide a foundation for their respective communities.

Foreword / Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear, Osage Nation

Acknowledgements

A Note on Orthography

Introduction

1. Mízhin Wedding Ceremonies

2. The Material Culture of Osage Weddings

3. The Osage Ilonshka

4. The Modern Ilonshka and Transfer of the Drum

5. Enduring Values in Osage Society

Appendix: Gift Exchange and the Reproduction of Osage Society

Glossary

References Cited

Index