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Simburger [hPX. Cain [jqa. Cutler [JSG. Alison James [jvc. Lewis [KkR. Matveev [Lzn. Peterson [M1L. Hall OT [mcH. Lindsay [MuN. Nanda; Yahya Tosun; [mx6. Strome [mZv. Balme [o4f. Bear Bergman [o8y. Bancroft [OKE. Skennerton [PyN. Hirsch [R By Phil Pierce [RH6. Kinder, Diego Chornogubsky [SBr. Kail [sci. Jutton [sWE. Nation [Tb2. Porras [tFQ. Hansen [u2K. Pickover [UBR. Aspen Pittman [UCV. Richardson [Ulv. Unmistakably "amphibious" in its conjunction of realism and tribalism, Fools Crow shifts time and discourse to explore the rich but lost inheritance of tribal culture lying behind the condition of disorientation and estrangement of Welch's contemporary protagonists.
In Fools Crow Welch ambitiously seeks to amalgamate the "Western" traditions of the historical novel, the picaresque or epic quest novel, and the Bildungsroman episodic, linear, digressive with the tribal traditions of storytelling, myth, ritual, vision and dream.
The result is an impressive feat of cross-cultural hybridiza- tion, as Welch has sought to bridge Western and tribal generic conven- tions, transforming and revitalizing both in the process. Between the brooding poetic iniensities of his sparse and somber first two books, and the deceptively transparent and unassuming prose of his fourth, Fools Crow stands as a formal and stylistic tour-de-force: an exuberantly poetic and expansively rhetorical historical canvas, with a large cast of fully realized characters and a loose episodic structure which accommodates a plethora of subplots and interpolated stories that rarely impede the narrative momentum.
Welch, himself part Blackfeet, part Gros Ventre, has written his novel from within the Blackfeet Pikuni cosmological perspective to bring to life a whole tribal culture-the camp-life routines of hunting and raiding, of butchering blackhorns and 5 Allen, The Sacred Hoop, p.
Welch presents that culture both in and on its own terms, dis- playing it in all its spiritual, moral and psychological complexity no primitivism here. It is the tragic irony at the heart of Fools Crow that we see the Pikuni culture functioning at its most powerful and idyllic, even as we see it teetering on the verge of eclipse. By showing us Pikuni culture at a fulcrum moment in its history-the few years preceding the Marias River massacre in the winter of , when Blackfeet, mostly women and children, were slaughtered by U.
Cavalry forces in an attempt to put a stop to raidings of white settlers by renegade Pikunis Owl Child's gang -Welch is able to both celebrate it and mourn its loss; what we witness is a historic tale of heart-rending sadness, a tragedy of epic sweep and mythic dimension.
The novel stands as both a personal and communal act of recovery and remembrance, a symbolic restoration of voice to the voiceless, history to the uprooted, legacy to the lost.
Throughout Fools Crow the apocalyptic note swells as white encroachment upon tribal territory makes the imminent destruction of Pikuni culture unavoidable. It seems wryly ironic that the Pikuni them- selves are eager to acquire-through trade or raid-the items of white civilization that they believe will give them a share of the enemy's wealth and power, but which in effect signal the subversive infiltration of Napikwan white culture: they are ambitious to exchange blackhorn robes for cloth and steel pans, bows and knives for muskets and "many- shots guns," moccasins for riding boots and leather saddles.
Contacts with white traders, if marked by reluctance and distrust, steadily increase, but conflict inevitably escalates, as Owl Child's gang of mili- tant Pikuni raiders, fed up with a history of betrayal by the "two-faced whites, rejects the strategy of moderation counseled by the elders and resorts to downright murder, rape and plunder, thereby setting off U.
Tribal cohesion is at the point of disintegration, when 7 The story of the massacre came to Welch through the stories of his father and greatgrandmother--the latter one of its survivors she was part of the group of women and children met by Fools Crow in the novel -- supplemented by some five historical studies of Blackfeet culture.
JAMES WELCH'S FOOLS CROW 37 the Pikuni debate on the response to Napikwan encroachment grounds to "an exhausted impasse7'8and the realization grows that "either way" the Pikunis "were being driven into a den with only one entrance" 16 : between fighting a superior Napikwan force to the death, being wiped out by a smallpox epidemic, and accommodations involving loss 7 of land and culture the Pikunis days seem numbered.
Against this background of inexorable cultural and human tragedy Fools Crow presents the growth of White Man's Dog to manhood and maturity. As we see him pass through the various rituals of initiation that make up the stages of his education-he rises from unpromising begin- nings to the status of heroic warrior, medicine man, and future leader of his tribe-he gradually internalizes the range of Blackfeet moral and spiritual values, acquires knowledge of Blackfeet myths and ceremonies, and, in the end, is granted to become a cultural survival hero for his tribe, the symbolic guarantor that the "stories" and rituals will be passed on even against the grain of history.
In the process of his young hero's journey of maturation Welch fully brings to life the animist and holistic world view underlying tribal culture, showing by implication that appropriation of tribal knowledge and identity makes for spiritual and moral sustenance precisely what his contemporary protagonists have lost , a sense of cultural and personal wholeness.
As Kathleen Mullen Sands has observed, the protagonist of Fools Crow is "part of a contin- uum of connections between people, animals, mountains, stars, cycles of seasons and ceremonies stretching into a mythical past. Thus he learns, through test and trial, the traditional warrior-hunter virtues of courage, strength and endurance.
At eighteen, White Man's Dog has "little to show" for himself 3 , but his "luck" changes when, on a horse-taking raid against the Crows, he successfully acquits himself of his responsibilities, kills his first Crow, and acquires his reward of twenty horses.
Having attained a degree of respect in the tribe, he makes further progress into Pikuni lore when he becomes a helper, then apprentice of Mik-api, the many-faces man; later he will take over the medicine man's 8 James Welch, Fools Crow New York: Viking, , p. All subsequent references to this edition of the novel will be glven parenthetically in the text.
It is Mik-api who guides him towards the next stage in acquiring a full tribal identity, when, dream-instructed by Raven, he sends White Man's Dog to release a wolverine from a steel trap set by whites high up in the Rocky Mountains.
In the account of White Man's Dog's expedition the novel effortlessly glides from realism into the "magical" realm of tribal myth, where animals are accorded the status and respect of sacred beings and naturally converse with humans. As a reward for releasing the wolverine from its trap, he is given his animal helper: "Of all the two-leggeds, you alone will possess the magic of Skunk Bear" Shortly after, White Man's Dog is "chosen" to act as a messenger to the other Blackfeet tribes; upon his return he is given the seat of honor next to the Pikuni chief.
White Man's Dog's growth as a Pikuni is directly related to his respectful attention to the many "stories" told by his elders in the chief's lodge or in private: Mik-api's story of how he became a medicine man, the story of the Feather Woman and Scarface, Boss Ridge's story of how he acquired the Beaver Medicine bundle. These stories help him gain the knowledge of Pikuni myth which he needs to interpret correctly and to act responsibly upon the dreams and signs that come to him at cru- cially formative moments.
In Welch's Blackfeet cosmology dreams and signs are directly connected to a person's life or the fate of the com- munity: not only may they be the source of personal and tribal "power," they may also prefigure future events, and be a source of guidance to personal or tribal action. Dreams thus function here as an instrument of characterization and of plot. There is, in the Pikuni world view, no sepa- ration between the realm of myth and reality; one flows naturally into the other; both are equally "real.
Thus, early on, his unwill- ingness to reveal an imperfectly understood dream of sexual attraction to a white-faced girl in an enemy tipi makes him feel partly implicated in Yellow Kidney's mutilation and ensuing misery. But later, when he acts wisely upon the dream of the wolverine, his totem animal, he is rewarded with a power song and an increase of responsibilities in the 10 As Sands pertinently suggests, what non-Native critics are inclined to call "magical" realism is more properly understood as "tribal realism," reality being naturally imbued with myth and magic.
Kathleen Mullen Sands, "Closing the Distance," p. Conversely, the failure of his friend and foil Fast Horse to fulfill a vow made in a dream and to act respectfully in accordance with Pikuni lore leads to a loss of "power" and, eventually, the loss of a sustaining belief in Pikuni myth or medicine.
He ends up in cultural exile, commit- ted to the pursuit of individual freedom and "easy" wealth, a member of Owl Child's gang of militant murderers and marauders. When, at long last, he does accept responsibility for personal failure, he has reached the point of no return: "a solitary figure in the isolation of a vast land" , his fate prefigures the alienating loss of tribal connection of Welch's contemporary protagonists. White Man's Dog, by contrast, loyally keeps the vows he makes, even if they demand great physical pain and suffering.
Thus, at the Sun Dance he acts out his vow to sacrifice to Sun Chief in a ritual dance of physical torture; as a reward for enduring this initiatory "ordeal," he is granted his wolverine power song and the talismanic white stone which he will carry in his war pouch as a safeguard of strength and courage Shortly after, during the war raid on the Crows, he is given the honor of striking the enemy first: he is hit, seems dead, but, in a dazed reflex, manages to kill the Crow chief, and for this reputedly sly act of "fooling" the Crow earns himself the name of his manhood.
When he is in pursuit of Fast Horse, Fools Crow realizes that what attracts his friend to running with Owl Child is precisely a "freedom from responsibility, from accountability to the group" , and he relates the suffering of the Pikunis to the breakup of communitarianism and the pursuit of individual freedom.
Unlike Fast Horse, Fools Crow scores high on tribal solidarity: he hunts and provides food for the aged Mik-api, is generous beyond his own needs, and in marrying Red Paint takes upon himself the responsibility for hunting for an extended farnily- in-law. When he is ordered by Raven to perpetrate an overtly symbolic act-he is asked to kill a white hunter who is roaming the mountains, senselessly killing off animals and leaving a trail of destruction in his wake-Fools Crow carries out the command, if with great difficulty and at risk to himself and his wife who is used as sexual bait , thus making personal interest subordinate to the larger issue of cultural conflict.
Significantly, at this point, when he has committed his personal powers to the cultural and psychological sur- vival of his tribe, he is granted a visit by Nitsokan, the "dream helper," who instructs him to go on a dream quest to find "a direction or a sign" for his people. Fools Crow's minutely detailed vision-quest is both an enactment of Blackfeet tribal myth and a variation upon the "Western" quest or grail- motif.
His journey of three days and nights is a trial of strength and endurance, as he is led through dangerous enemy territory, through magical dreamscapes familiar yet strange, through many moments of self-doubt and terror. At crucial moments, he is helped by animals: his horse crashes through a patch of red willows blocking the entrance to a canyon, and later a freckle-faced dog and his wolverine animal helper show him a crevice past a huge boulder blocking his way. Crawling through a narrow tunnel, he is born into a summer landscape, an "amphibious" realm of transcendence, between myth and reality, where linear time is suspended, and hunger, shame and guilt do not exist.
In this "green sanctuary between earth and sky" -halfway between human reality and the sacred realm of the Above Ones-he meets a woman in a white doeskin dress, her hair close-cropped as a token of mourning, and he is forced to confront the psychological terror of future Pikuni suffering, as the shrill voices of thousands of winter geese pass overhead and the wailing woman's eyes bespeak "a grief so deep it would always be there and no words from him could help.
On the magically shifting designs which she has painted on yellow skins Fools Crow sees a chilling chain of disasters falling on his people: the white-scabs epidemic causes death and agony; countless armed "seizers" Napikwan bluecoats march against the Pikunis in winter; the prairies have been emptied of the blackhorns, depriving the Pikunis of their economic foundation and causing massive starvation.
As Fools Crow sinks in "hopeless resignation," knowing he is "powerless to change" the fate of his tribe, he is granted a last "design" prefiguring the marginalization and dispossession of future generations: a Napikwan school ground holds a group of white children laughing and playing, while a small band of Pikuni children, dressed in Napikwan clothes, stands by "on the edge," watching, on a fenced-in playground beyond which looms the rolling prairie.
I see them on the yellow skin and they are dressed like the Napikwans, they watch the Napikwans and learn much from them, but they are not happy. They lose their own way. The stories will be handed down, and they will see that their people were proud and lived in accordance with the Below Ones, the Underwater People-and the Above Ones' As Nora Barry has noted, though he does not return from his vision- quest with a new ritual, Fools Crow brings back "the spiritual tools of cultural surviva1,"lz the guarantee that the rituals, ceremonies, myths and stories of tribal culture will be passed on, so that they can continue to function as a source of spiritual sustenance to the Blackfeet.
Welch is cautious not to sentimentalize or romanticize this possibility for tribal survival. Rather, he severely qualifies whatever hopefulness it might suggest, showing Fools Crow increasingly troubled by the inex- plicable cruelty and injustice of the Above Ones, both in allowing evicted from the sky and, upon her death, withheld the consolation of reunion with her people in the Sand Hills. Instead she was banished to this in-between realm, doomed to mourn perpetually the loss of her husband Morning Star and her son Poia or Scarface.
Though Scarface is much honored among the Pikuni for having given them the rituals of the Sun Dance ceremony, Feather Woman is held accountable for bringing them "sickness and hunger, Napikwans and war. Upon his return, indeed, Fools Crow learns soon enough that Feather Woman's words offer at best a consolation against the cruel odds of history, as reality acts out the harrowing future glimpsed on the skin designs.
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