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This book has editions and translations of eleven texts written in the Algonquian language Meskwaki by Alfred Kiyana over a century ago. The manuscripts of these are part of the large collection of Meskwaki texts that are in the National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Institution. The first ten of the texts have what are called winter stories. They are set in ancient times when human beings and their world are not yet like they are today. There are powerful spirits (manitous), giants and monsters, talking birds and animals, and magical transformations. Even the ostensible human beings may have supernatural powers. The final text brings together three brief thematically linked stories about people who lived in the world as we know it today. As indicated by the choice of the title selection, the stories in this book have sexual themes and some strong sexual content. They have been brought together not only because the treatment of these topics might be of interest, but also, given their often inexplicit titles, as a way to make clear the presence of subject matter that some may wish to avoid. Meskwaki is the heritage language of the Meskwaki Nation (the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa).

This book is a grammar of Meskwaki, an Algonquian language spoken today in Tama County, Iowa. There are two factors that make Meskwaki of particular interest and importance. It is arguably the most archaic language of the Algonquian family in preserving the word shapes of the ancestral Algonquian language that is reconstructed as Proto-Algonquian by linguists. And it is documented by a very large collection of texts written by numerous native speakers more than a century ago that is kept in the National Anthropological Archives of the Smithsonian Institution. Meskwaki is a highly inflected language with extremely free word order. This grammar includes separate chapters on phonology (the sound system), grammatical categories, inflections, the derivation of stems, sentence structure, and some aspects of how sentences are connected to form longer utterances and narratives (discourse). The uses of the proximate and obviative third person categories are described and illustrated with numerous examples. The use of discontinuous compound words, phrases, and clauses is also described. Extensive reference is made throughout to the published and unpublished textual sources. An appendix lists and analyzes all the inflectional endings in the two long texts that have been published with interlinearized analysis, "The Autobiography of a Meskwaki Woman" and "The Owl Sacred Pack." Meskwaki is the heritage language of the Meskwaki Nation (the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa).