Pumpkin Seed Point by Frank Waters, and: The Peyote Religion Among the Navaho by David F. Aberle, and: The Arapaho Way by Althea Bass (review)

Reviews THREE WAYS TO THE INDIAN Pumpkin Seed Point, By Frank Waters. (Chicago: Alan Swallow Publishers, 1969. 175 pages, $6.00.) The Peyote Religion Among the Navaho, By David F. Aberle. (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1966. 454 pages, $12.50.) The Arapaho Way. By Althea Bass. (New York: Clarkston N. Potter, 1966. 80 pages, $5.95.) As a start, consider the following quotations—first, W. J. McGee, writing in 1897: “Appreciation of the fundamental characteristics of belief is essential to even the most general understanding of the Indian mythology and philoso­ phy, and even after careful study it is difficult for thinkers trained in the higher methods of thought to understand the crude and confused ideation of the primitive thinker.”1 Or, more recently, R- E. Lee: “And though the The kindest judgment I can make on these words is that they represent a kind of thinking and an outlook disproved and completely transcended by the authors of the books here under review. More importantly, the quotations dramatize the really terrifying chasm between the worldwide combine of white thought and dominance, on the one hand, and the worldwide scatter of brown-skinned fellahin or Indian thought and submission on the other. 1W. J. McGee, “The Siouan Indians,” 15th Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology. Washington: U.S. Gov’t Printing Office, 1897, p. 179. Western Indian has been to school for a century, he has still not written a memorable word.”2 2R. E. Lee, From West to East. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966, p. 8. 62 Western American Literature These quotations show more than cultural arrogance; they are symptomatic of our split world. Invidiousness is only a surface trait; what matters is that the world is caught in conflict, in disharmony, in pain. We characterize the conflict as between the “haves” and the “have-nots,” displaying our value system; but it seems to me that the split is between polar opposites of selfand world-consciousness. Our trouble is fundamentally religious, or philosoph­ ical, rather than racially skin-deep or economic. Both sides have trouble crossing over the attitudinal gulf—have trouble even taking the other side seriously, as the quotations indicate. But if we want healing and synthesis, rather than simple military-economicliterary -philosophical domination (pax whitey), we will simply have to take the "others” seriously. We might even learn something. First, probably, should come the primary materials. These are hard to come by, or hard to put between the covers of a book, because the “other side” does not always express itself in our kind of linear, sequential, printed mode. Sensitive go-betweens become necessary, people like Althea Bass, who gives us Carl Sweezy’s memoirs in The Arapako Way. She has, she says in the Foreword, only arranged in print what the Arapaho painter Sweezy told her in talk. I suppose the precise amount of ghosting is unknowable: at least this is the case when the writer, like Althea Bass, seems deeply tuned to the talker’s thought. Whatever the judgment on that fine point, the fruits of the collaboration here are quite obviously and strikingly beautiful. Sweezy’s personality comes through as clear, open, and spacious. The first-person writing is poetically evocative, simple, and unstrained—yet it is far from the weird baby-talk sometimes put in the mouths of, say, movie Indians. Sweezy’s paintings, twenty-two of which illustrate the book, are similarly understated and poetic. He tells us of a world where the quality and economy that characterize his art were in fact the guidelines of his people’s life. There is an expansiveness of spirit and style in Sweezy which seems only the natural result of the original Arapaho Way, an inevitable consonance. This is relaxed wholeness and in­ tegrity, where the talk and the art flow easily, rivers on the plains. But Sweezy’s life was not easy; I am speaking of his own personal ability to ride smoothly, not the outward situation of the Arapaho people, who were in effect broken to the plow during Sweezy’s childhood. Despite the murderous psychic damage of “acculturation,” the worst Sweezy can muster against Whitey is a faint and gentle irony...