Anthropologists, Novelists and Indian Sacred Material

The Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 11,No. 1,Spring 1980 Anthropologists, Novelists and Indian Sacred Material H. David Brumble III One of the threads that binds the bundle we are coming to call American Indian Literature is that of the Indian caught between two cultures; there are, to name but a few, Abel in Momaday's House Made of Dawn, Martiniano in Waters' The Man Who Killed the Deer, S. B. in Radin's Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian, and, in a muted way, the unnamed protagonist of Welch's Winter in the Blood. Probably this preoccupation with personal identity and the impingements of culture is one of the major reasons for the rising popularity of American Indian books in a country which is stirring its melting pot ever more gingerly. But as the protagonists of such books writhe about in the nets cultures weave, they might be comforted to know that their creators share some of their problems-that the nets are there for authors as well as for heroes. One of the knottiest problems confronting these authors, Indian or white, is that of deciding upon which side of the culture line to take their narrative stance. Waters, for example, is one-quarter Indian, but, of course, whiteeducated . He is obviously in sympathy with the Hopis about whom he writes, but is he to write as an Indian, or about Indians? Waters is typical ofmany writers on Indian subjects in that he is fascinated by Indian religious and symbolic systems, but for many Indian peoples-certainly for Waters' Hopis-such matters are thought to be profaned by mere discussion, let alone commercial publication. Should one write on such subjects or not? 32 H. David Brumble lIJ If one does choose to write of the Indians' sacred things, what use is intended therefor? Why should the Indian lore be published at ·all? For preservation ?-for whom? For entertainment? For moral instruction?-whose moral instruction? These are frequently obtrusive problems for authors who claim to be very much in sympathy with their Indian subjects. I would like to discuss various responses to these problems, most particularly those of A. L. Kroeber, Frank Waters, Theodora Kroeber and N. Scott Momaday. I hope that this will serve as an aid to the understanding and appreciation of these writers, of course; but, in suggesting a brief history of the attitudes toward the problems implicit in the use of Indian materials, the main purpose of this essay is the erection of one fragile framework upon which we can begin to piece together a coherent account of the development of American Indian literature in the twentieth century. The earliest response to these problems could perhaps best be characterized as obliviousness. In 1907, for example, when J. L. Schultz wrote My Life as an lndian, 1 his account of his years among the pre-reservation Blackfoot, it did not occur to him that his sometime hosts might have had "rights of privacy" which could restrain him from telling about their ceremonies. Neither did it occur to Schultz, then, that he had in some way to justify his use of Indian materials. This non-apologetic use of Indian materials is, of course, typical of a great many such narratives. Indeed, examples of frankly exploitative, nonapologetic use of Indian materials abound to a degree that obviates further citation, but a passage from Theodora Kroeber's Ishi in Two Worlds2 will, I think, prove helpful in establishing the habit of mind of such writers. In 1908, the year after the publication of Schultz's book, a surveying party was working in the foothills of Mt. Lassen, in California, when they happened upon the village of the last of the Yahi Indians, almost certainly the four last Stone Age people in the United States. Three of these Indians ran away, after covering up "the helpless old mother ...that she might by chance go unnoticed." The response of the men of the surveying party to the tiny village could stand as a quintessential figure for the non-apologetic appropriation of Indian materials: The surveying party searched the village. Under a pile of skins they found lshi's mother .... As the...