Pocahontas. Americans know her as the beautiful, Indian woman who fell in love with the white settler John Smith and then threw her body upon the poor white captive to protect him from being brutally executed by her own savage tribe. The magical world of Walt Disney came out with their own movie version several years ago portraying Pocahontas as a tan, sexy Barbie doll figure and John Smith as a blond-haired, blue-eyed muscular Ken doll.
Although Disney attempts to instill racial tolerance, inter-racial friendship, and nonviolent resolutions in Pocahontas, they contribute to the inaccurate Indian woman stereotype that has evolved from such stories. While it can be argued that Disney has liberties to change a story to suit their movie needs, or that they as producers only mirror popular beliefs, Pocahontas reflects the Americanized concept of an Indian woman, which, although fortunately unsavage, hinders the comprehension of Native American women then and now.
One may think that Pocahontas is only a child’s story created for entertainment and that children outgrow the image of the Indian princess or realize there are women that do not fit the other category of Indian squaw. However, once logic and reason begin to develop, the childhood Indian vision remains mythical. As Rayna Green explains in “The Pocahontas Perplex,” “we cannot ignore the impact the story has had on the American imagination” (183). Instead of mentally revising our perceptions of Indians and Pocahontas, we have based an American culture on a fairytale, told to suit white consumption.
Evidence that Americans have not outgrown the fantasy image of Pocahontas is revealed in that few Anglo adults know the true story of Pocahontas and can only associate her with the Americanized, Disney-like image. Americans are obsessed with the notion of a Native woman saving a white man. According to Louise Barnett, author of The Ignoble Savage, in stories, poems, and songs from the past, Indians often identify themselves as being intellectually inferior to whites and are noble because of their desire to die for whites which conveniently makes them, as inferiors, the sacrifice in a tragic romance (94).
In fact, Disney falls for this portrayal of female Natives when the animated Pocahontas heroically covers Smith’s body with her own, defying her father the chief, by suggesting he should kill them both if he is determined to kill Smith. Sadly, Pocahontas is not alone in her famed status due to her willingness to sacrifice herself to save a white man. Barnett explains, “a number of unlucky Pocahontas figures populate the frontier romance, saving white beloveds only at the cost of their own lives” (93).
Fortunately, Pocahontas’s life was spared despite her willingness to sacrifice, although her later affiliations with a white man and Europe led to her death from disease. The notion of females rescuing white men and assimilating with their culture have traditionally been connected, which resulted in greater Indian deaths due to their exposure to a foreign culture from which they had not yet learned to protect themselves. On the other hand, these new Native women are not always the primary characters of the fiction, but their presence is necessary for the text to evolve.
Although similarities exist between the mythical Indian woman and the characters developed in modern fiction, the new portrait being painted of Native women shows them as strong, spiritual, and powerful, even if they choose to use their power in a destructive manner. Keeping with tradition, Indian women are still caretakers and healers but while they keep their positions as saviors of men, Indian women are illustrated saving Indian men rather than white males.
Whereas the Indian women previously saved white men from the savages of their own tribe, they are now saving their own race from the destruction of the white world. Native women healing sick Indian men recurs as a common theme throughout multiple Native novels. Furthermore, it is generally the men who are spiritually or mentally sick: few emotionally ill women are portrayed coming back to the reservation in hopes of connecting to the past or finding themselves. For the most part, the female characters have already identified themselves and discovered their relationship to their world and community.
Momaday’s The Ancient Child, Silko’s Ceremony, Erdrich’s Tracks, Hogan’s Mean Spirit, and Alexie’s Indian Killer illustrate a different, realistic and modernized Native American female. In Indian Killer, an Indian college student illustrates a modern Native woman. In comparison to all of the female characters presented in this paper, Marie is the most determined to set the record straight. Marie says, I’m not an Indian warrior chief. I’m not some demure little Indian woman Healer talking spider this, spider that, am I?
I’m not babbling bout the four directions. Or the two-legged, four-legged, and winged. I’m talking like a twentieth-century Indian woman. Hell, a twenty-first century Indian, and you can’t handle it, you wimp. (Alexie 248) Marie’s boldness and honesty contribute to her effectiveness as a powerful character while dispelling traditional Indian misconceptions. In contrast to the stories written in the past about Indian women, more recent stories are questioning the Pocahontas stereotype and providing alternative methods of classifying female roles.
Modern Native American fiction is redefining the Indian woman image because the novels give female characters control of the story, portray her ability to hold power over men other than through sexual appeal, refuse to let women become victimized by rape, include women that display supernatural powers and healing, and show women as activists. Louise Erdrich’s Tracks provides the best contrast within the same text of two female characters who choose to use their powers in very different fashions.
Fleur Pillager is most closely associated with the power of the “Bear Spirit” (Barry 29) and her association with the bear suggests that she shares the powers of the bear. Fleur takes the form of animals: “we followed the tracks of her bare feet and saw where they changed, where the claws sprang out, the pad broadened. . . we heard her chuffing cough, the bear cough” (Erdrich 12). Later, when Fleur has suffered from a prolonged labor, a bear enters her house, causing her to finally give birth. Just by her association with the bear, an animal sacred to Natives, Fleur’s power is unquestionable.
In addition, Fleur is also powerful because of her relationship with Misshipeshu, the lake monster. According to local legend, Fleur has drowned twice in the lake, but ironically, it is the men that try to save Fleur from drowning that end up dead. Nanapush explains that the locals did not like to think about how she did it, but “she kept the lake thing controlled” (Erdrich 35). Although people are scared of Fleur’s powers and deem them evil, evil personifies itself in Pauline, not Fleur. Pauline tries to murder her unborn, illegitimate child by starving herself, then falling on an axe handle.
Later, in labor, Pauline refuses to push the baby into the world. “I told Bernadette I had decided to die, and let the child die too” (Erdrich 135). After the child is born, Pauline refuses to take the baby to her breast and leaves the house and baby behind. The life force within Pauline does not exist to help life come into the world, as Pauline can only ease a person to their death. In contrast, when Fleur goes into premature labor and Pauline is the only one with her, Pauline stands by, helpless. She watches as Fleur tries to breathe life into her half-dead baby.
Instead of physically assisting, Pauline immerses herself in prayer as the weakened Fleur puts wood on the fire and boils a mixture to feed to the baby and herself. Whereas Pauline deserts her own child, and will not help to save another’s dying child, Fleur gambles with the sprits in hope of buying back her child’s soul. Despite Pauline’s conversion to Christianity, her loyalty is to the devil rather than Christ. At night, he comes to her, tells her lies and convinces her to do evil in the name of the Lord. ” He sat in the moonlight, on the stove and looked down at me and smiled in the spill of His radiance and explained” (Erdrich 137).
Pauline’s blindness to evil allows her to become an agent for Satan. In addition, she turns to Christianity not because she believes, but rather because she feels the dying Chippewa culture will be to her disadvantage. Pauline switches sides halfway through the novel to gain the upper hand. She does not respect the power or use it properly. In fact, she forces herself to suffer, believing it will increase her powers. She inflicts injuries upon herself such as smashing ice with her bare hands until they bleed. She also refuses to urinate during the day, wears her shoes in reverse, wears uncomfortable undergarments and goes without bathing.
Her actions are not honorable because they are for no greater cause than to satisfy her own greedy cravings for power. Her manipulative tendencies are destructive without motivation for true personal benefit. For example, Pauline places a love spell on her young, innocent cousin Sophie, and upon Fleur’s lover Eli, causing them to have an affair. Later, during one of her religious hallucinations, Pauline murders Napoleon Morrissey, the father of the child she attempted to abort.
She strangles him with her rosary and then Pauline uses her faith to justify the murder. I]t suddenly was revealed to me that I had committed no sin. There was no guilt in this matter, no fault. How could I have known what body the devil would assume? ” (Erdrich 203). Pauline drags his body to the woods, and deserts it thinking, “they could find him or not for all I cared” (Erdrich 203). In Tracks, Pauline and Fleur take control of the story. Yet while Pauline alters the story through her lies, Fleur shapes the story by her actions. When Fleur’s land is threatened by loggers, she defiantly stays on her land, ignoring the order for her to move.
Furthermore, Fleur steals the loggers’ tools and uses them to plot against the loggers. Nanapush recalls the day the loggers arrive to ask Fleur to leave her property and house. As the trees begin to fall one at a time, Nanapush realizes that, Each tree was sawed through at the base. . . . With one thunderstroke the trees surrounding Fleur’s cabin cracked off and fell away from us in a circle, pinning beneath their branches the roaring men, the horses . . . Then the wind settled, curled back into the clouds, moved on, and we were left standing together in a landscape level to the lake and to the road.
Erdrich 223) The loggers, left in a state of shock and pinned under trees, surround the clearing of Fleur’s home where she stands viewing the destruction she coordinated. Yet Fleur’s response to the loggers taking her land keeps her from being the victim. Fleur and Pauline illustrate that Native American female characters can be powerful but utilize their powers in different ways. Native women are also illustrated as powerful healers and prove themselves in shaman positions. In Silko’s Ceremony, Ts’eh as a character has a minimal role and rarely speaks, yet she contains the power to help Tayo.
Support can be found that Ts’eh represents Thought Woman, but regardless she represents a “regenerative spirit” (Nelson 15) that has the ability to heal and counter evil. In “Grandmother Storyteller,” Kenneth Lincoln refers to Ts’eh as a “lovely medicine woman” who “comes and goes like a spirit” and translates Ts’eh to mean ‘water'” (246). Due to her knowledge of plants, animals and landscapes, Ts’eh’s connection to the earth and her love for life are part of her healing powers. Nelson points out that even when Tayo makes love to Ts’eh, her body takes the shape of a landscape in his mind (21).
Paula Gunn Allen theorizes in her essay, “The Feminine Landscape of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony,” that Tayo’s illness is caused by the separation of “unity of person, ceremony, and land and his healing is a result of this unity” (234). Throughout Ceremony, Tayo searches for his place and sense of identity. Other medicine men fail to help him, but the power of a woman induces his rebirth and renewal. Ultimately, Ts’eh’s love heals Tayo and becomes the foundation of the unity he seeks and needs for survival.
Tayo explains that even when apart from Ts’eh, “[t]he feeling he had, the love he felt from her, remained” (Silko 217) and then later, “[t]he breaking and crushing were gone, and the love pushed inside his chest, and when he cried now, it was because she loved him so much” (Silko 227). According to Paula Gunn Allen, Ts’eh is, the “wonder” being, a female creator, who has powers to “bless the earth and the beloved with healing, with rain. It is loving her that heals Tayo” (234). Furthermore, the strength of Ts’eh’s love allows Tayo to face and escape from the evil of his friends that has previously been a controlling influence.
In a similar manner, in The Ancient Child, Grey contains the healing powers necessary for Set’s salvation. Momaday describes Grey as she continues on the path to be a shaman: “[a]lready she had considerable power, but she would have more” (173). Members of Grey’s own family begin to fear her abilities for Milo admits he “was afraid of her growing power” (169). Once Grey completes her training as a medicine woman, she uses her energies to rehabilitate Set’s empty soul. Her powers begin to affect him before he comes to see her. In fact, Grey hints that Set has little alternative in coming to her.
The text reveals, “It was something, his coming, that she could bring about _ had indeed already brought about – by the sheer strength of her will and her belief” (Momaday 248). The ability to attract Set without using cunning sexual appeal affirms Grey’s confidence in her powers. Set may have the power of the bear, but he comprehends that Grey’s dominance is greater than his, especially while he is ill. Set tells Grey’s mother, “I can be well and strong with Grey’s help-she knows how to help me. I have become stronger since I have been here, because of Grey” (Momaday 295).
Both Set in The Ancient Child and Tayo in Ceremony realize their restoration has resulted from an undefined, feminine healing power. The female as deliverer contrasts to the Christian concept of individual salvation, as the female’s focus is to help now, not to secure their position in an afterlife. Ts’eh and Grey are saviors as healers, but their powers are diverted into restoring men of their own race, and they assimilate these men to Native ways rather than being absorbed into white culture themselves. The love and unselfishness displayed by Ts’eh and Grey makes them symbolic mothers who choose to nurture spiritually ill men.
Although their respective novels portray them healing only one man, the reader understands that their powers are capable of saving others. Furthermore, the men they salvage directly affect others within their communities. The men they heal become spiritually balanced, contribute to the community, and are capable of helping others who are sick. Many races of women have been and are objectified as sexual objects of masculine lust and consumption. Indian women are no exception and perhaps due to their minority status and historical servitude to white men, have suffered as sexual objects more than white females.
Murphy and Dwight illustrate the sexual infatuation with Native women in The Ancient Child. Murphy jokes about his son raping Grey: “I surely do admire the looks of that Injun gal, I surely do. And she surely can ride, can’t she, son? ” (Momaday 93). Although Grey is raped, she does not play the role of victim. Momaday explains her condition following the rape. She was naked and mangled. She must have been deep in shock. . . and it was not over; it was going on. . . . No, she must not faint, she had to hold on, to deal straightly with this emergency, horrible and violent and dehumanizing as it was.
Even to this she must find the appropriate response. (97) Grey’s response is to attack her own rapist. After she has gained the upper hand and tied his naked body up with bailing wire, and set pitch fork tines at his throat, she tells him, “I’d really like to kill you, Dwight” (Momaday 99). Despite the fact that he is no longer able to harm her, she continues to torture him. “She inserted the left outside tine into Dwight Dick’s left nostril; the next tine then came to rest at the outer corner of his left eye, against the ball, between his eyelids” (Momaday 100).
While Dwight is contorted in this helpless position, Grey uses a pair of curved cutting pliers and circumcises him. Kathleen Donovan, a feminist critic, is appalled at Momaday’s portrayal of Grey’s response to her rape. According to Donovan, the pain of Grey’s rape is not discussed in the novel, and “the narrative assumes a masculinist stance that the proper response for a woman in this situation is to return violence with violence” (92). Donovan has a valid point that a woman might not think of her revenge as she is being violated.
Yet the fact that Grey chooses to find justice on her own terms, and immediately following her own violent rape, reaffirms Grey as a powerful character who is invincible to a crime that could destroy a woman. Although Dwight steals a part from her unwilling body, she also takes from him without his permission. Unlike Shakespeare’s Shylock, Grey attains part of a pound of flesh as payment. In addition, after the rape, Grey has attained the horse she wanted, previously owned by the Dicks. The insinuation exists in the text that Grey bought the horse through sexual favor but Momaday never clarifies this detail.
If Grey did not sexually barter for the horse, she may be the only raped woman in the history of fiction to circumcise her attacker and then take his horse without being jailed for her actions. Later in the novel, wearing only a turtle mask, Grey inquires if Dwight’s “injured member” is better. It is a comic scene as, “Dwight Dicks . . . was struck dumb.. his eyes and mouth wide open. . . . She sat naked above the great, red, dumbfounded man, her coppery body glowing with sweat, her breasts heaving, the unearthly turtle mask tilted downward” (Momaday 200). This is another affirmation of Grey’s power.
By asking about his injury, she reminds Dwight not only of his circumcision by her, but of the power she had over him and still retains. Her naked body, seated on what had previously been his horse, reinforces her triumph over him. So while Grey could be emotionally scarred from her rape, Dwight’s symbol of manhood is scarred physically, a constant reminder of the rape he perpetrated that turned into his own rape. Therefore, although Grey’s response to her rape is uncommon or even unheard of, she illustrates that a minority woman may still be raped, but her reaction does not have to be one of silence, shame, or victimization.
