The Man Made of Words: MOMODAY AMERICAN INDIAN SYMPOSIUM

he's remembered better however at the moving force in 1970 if we draw Institute's which overcome American Indians and in which tonight's speaker after that Institute reorganizing they remain strong supporter of American Indian concerns after this graduation Richard served independence in a Vietnamese it was there to die in the plane crash November the Vietnam War is over the Vietnam era was ended but for some of us it will never end because we are too aware of the price it was paid during that moment in our history it was a brief moment when one considers the 20 here history of American Indian people is kinda back history is what in many ways tonight's speaker speaking about in stop bombing de cacao India was born in 1934 and brought up on Indian reservations in the southwest he received his early schooling in Indian schools and his college degree he's been on the faculty of the University of California Santa Barbara and it's how the visiting appointment in the department of comparative literature at the University during summer thank you English dr. Martinez received many honors many awards for his poetry and his approach the most important one being surprise for fiction 1969 there is no way to rainy mountain is a collection of Indian legends the personal in historical and dr. mama days most recent book it's the names a fresh approach to tracing ones dr. Monday's work disappearance including the southern review in the next for new mexico horley ramparts reporter and blood he reviews frequently among the awards he has received the University of California Institute who in the world is a pleasure like so you're welcome you're welcome good evening thank you I'd like to talk to you this evening about several things but I will focus my remarks upon the American Indian oral tradition and upon a concept which I call the man made of words there is a Navajo ceremonial song which begins voice above voice of thunder speak from the dark of clouds voice below grasshopper voice speak from the green of plants so may the earth be beautiful there is an idea of this song a comprehension of the world that is peculiarly native I believe that is integral in the Navajo indeed in the American Indian mentality the singer stands at the center of sound of motion of life nothing within the whole sphere of being is inaccessible to him or lost upon him at least we have the sense that this is so and so does he his song is full of reverence of Wonder and delight and of confidence as well he knows something about himself and about the world in which he lives and he knows that he knows he is essentially at peace I am interested in what he sees and in what he hears in the range and force of his perceptual our immediate impression may be that his perception is vertical voice above voice below he says but is it vertical or is it vertical only at each level of his expression there is an elaboration of sound and substance the voice above is the voice of thunder and thunder rolls moreover it issues from the impalpable dark clouds and runs upon their horizontal range it is a sound which integrates the whole of the atmosphere and even so the voice below the grasshopper voice issues from the whole landscape and multiplicity of plants the singer points to nothing in particular and to everything in general we are given the wide angle of his vision and of his hearing this comprehension of the earth and air in language is a matter of morality I believe for it brings into account not only man's instinctive reaction to his environment but the full realization of his humanity as well the achievement of his intellectual and spiritual development as an individual and as a race I'd like to give you another example of this calm and comprehensive view of things this worldview as it is sometimes called here is a prayer of the night chant again from the Navajo once upon a time I went to this prayer for the title of a book as you listen to it consider if you will the special character of the singer the quality of his vision and of his being and particularly at the end consider the location of his voice in time and space segi house made of dawn house made of evening light house made of the dark cloud house made of male rain house made of dark mist house made a female rain house made of pollen house made of grasshoppers dark cloud is at the door the trail out of it is dark cloud the zig zag lightning stands high upon it male deity your offering I make I have prepared a smoke for you restore my feet for me restore my legs for me restore my body for me restore my mind for me restore my voice for me this very day take out your spell for me your spell remove for me you have taken it away for me far off it is gone happily I recover happily my interior becomes cool happily I go forth my interior feeling cool may I walk no longer soar may I walk with lively feelings may I walk as it used to be long ago may I walk happily may I walk happily with abundant dark clouds may I walk happily with abundant showers may I walk happily with abundant plants may I walk happily on a trail of pollen may I walk happily may I walk being as it used to be long ago may I walk may it be beautiful before me may it be beautiful behind me may it be beautiful below me may it be beautiful above me may it be beautiful all around me in beauty it is finished this by no means accidental or insignificant that in both of these ceremonial songs which I have recited the singer should have ended upon the notion of beauty of beauty in the physical world of man in the very presence and full awareness of that beauty neither is it insignificant that this whole and aesthetic sense should be expressed in language man has always tried to represent and even to recreate the world in words one of our most venerable metaphors for poetry as you know is that of the Renaissance man holding up the mirror of language to the face of nature nor of course is it accidental or insignificant that we have here at the very center of the singers purpose the language of prayer the house of this prayer is the physical world itself the singer affirms to himself and to his listeners those who by virtue of their spiritual cohesion share in his devotion that he has a whole and irrevocable investment in the whole world at the level of rational statement the prayer is profoundly simple and direct the singer acknowledges the sacred reality of the world in its various aspects and to that reality he makes his prayer as an offering a pledge as it were of his integral involvement in it he aspires to the very restoration of his body his mind and his spirit which in his cultural and religious frame of reference is pre-eminently an aesthetics a perception of well-ordered being and beauty of which he is the human center and the efficacy of his prayer is realized even as he utters it in beauty it is finished this is of course but one dimension of the experience there are others the Indian to a greater degree than most of us know perhaps locates the center of his being within the element of language this prayer from the night chant is a case in point the verbal formula is itself a religious context that is to say it is carefully prescribed and traditional it is not the singers own device but a current into which he enters and is sustained in his spirit he believes that language is intrinsically powerful that it is yet another and indeed indispensable dimension of the house in which he dwells it is moreover the dimension in which his existence is most fully accomplished he does not create language but is himself created within it in a real sense his language is both the object and the instrument of his ethical experience another dimension of this whole experience is of course the ceremony itself of which this prayer is a small part it is elaborate and of long duration enveloping as it proceeds myriad other components of the relationship between man and the universe always in his religious and artistic expression the Indian is concerned to bring virtually all of his being to bear upon the act of spiritual affirmation he brings his human strength to bear upon it the whole strength of his body and his mind and these forces he integrates in an imitation of the physical world and of its creatures nor is it imitation only as we are inclined to think of that word rather it is more truly a kind of incorporation and synthesis if you will and appropriation of all that touches upon him in his coming and going this is difficult for most of us to understand perhaps and it gives rise to certain ironies the idea of appropriation and of the related terms appropriateness and propriety is at the heart of Indian religion and Indian art some time ago I was told the story of an Indian man who had come upon bad times he was without work and he had a wife and children to support moreover his wife was expecting another child one day a friend came to visit and perceive that the man's situation was bad he said to him my friend I see that you are poor that you have no work and many mouths to feed and there is no fresh meat in your larder now I know you to be a hunter and I know that there are deer in the mountains close by tell me why don't you kill a deer that you and your family might have fresh meat to eat after a time the man answered no you see it is inappropriate that I should take life just now when I am expecting the gift of life my friend vine Deloria in one of his books writes of an indian woman whose child has died a Christian man of the cloth comes to her thinking to comfort her she should not grieve he says for her child has succeeded to another and eternal life but in this there is no solace for the woman for grief is the appropriate expression of her life at the moment and it is the only expression that is worthy of her and of her child I am fond of telling stories let me tell you a story one night a strange thing happened I had written the greater part of the way to rainy Mountain all of it in fact except the epilogue I had sat down the last of the old Kiowa tales in that volume and I had composed both the historical and autobiographical commentaries for it I had the sense of being out of breath of having said what it was in me to say on that subject the manuscript lay before me in the bright light small to be sure but complete or nearly so I had written the second of the two poems in which that book is framed I had uttered the last word as it were and yet something was missing a whole piece was missing and I began once again to write this is what I wrote during the first hours after midnight on the morning of November 13 1833 it seemed that the world was coming to an end suddenly the stillness of the night was broken there were brilliant flashes of light in the sky light of such intensity that people were awakened by it with the speed and density of a driving rain stars were falling in the universe some were brighter than Venus one was said to be as large as the moon I went on to say that that event the falling of the stars over the earth that explosion of Leonid meteors which occurred more than a hundred and forty years ago now is among the earliest entries in the Kiowa calendars so deeply impressed upon the imagination of the Kyra's is that old phenomenon that it is remembered still it has become a part of the racial memory the living memory I wrote and the verbal tradition which transcends it were brought together for me once and for all in the person of Kosan it seemed eminently right for me to deal with that old woman Coe son after all she is among the most venerable people I have ever known she spoke and sang to me one summer afternoon in Oklahoma it was like a dream when I was born Kosan was already old she was a grown woman when my grandparents came into the world she sat perfectly still folded over upon herself and it did not seem possible to me that so many years a century more or less could be so compacted and distilled her voice shuddered but he did not fail her songs were sad an old whimsy a delight in language and in remembrance shown in her one good eye she conjured up the past remembering perfectly the long continuity of her being she imagined the lovely young girl wild and vital she had been she imagined the Sun Dance this is what she said there was an old old woman she had something on her back this old woman the boys the boys of the rabbit society went out to see what it was that she had on her back it was a bag full of sandy earth the woman had a bag full of sandy earth on her back it was a certain kind of sand that is what they must have in the lodge the dancers must dance upon the sandy earth the old woman held a digging tool in her hand she turned towards the south and pointed with her lips it was like a kiss and she began to sing now we have brought the earth now it is time to play as old as I am I still have the feeling of play that said Kisan was the beginning of the Sun Dance well by this time by this time I was back into the book caught up completely in the act of writing I had projected myself imagined myself out of the room and out of time I was there with Kosan in the Oklahoma July we laughed easily together I felt that I had known her all my life indeed all of hers I did not want to let go of her but I had come to the end and I sat down almost grudgingly the final sentences it was I wrote all of this and more a quest a going forth upon the way to rainy Mountain probably Kisan to is dead now at times in the quiet of evening I think she must have wondered dreaming who she was was she become in her sleep that old purveyor of the sacred earth perhaps that ancient one who old as she was still had the feeling of clay and in her mind at times did she see the falling stars for some time I sat looking down at these words on the page trying to deal with the emptiness that had come about inside of me the words did not seem real the longer I looked at at them the more unfamiliar they became at last I could scarcely believe that they made sense that they had anything whatsoever to do with meaning in a kind of desperation I went back over the final paragraphs backwards and forwards hurriedly and my eyes fell upon the name Kisan and all at once everything seemed suddenly to refer to that name the name seemed to humanize the whole complexity of language before me all at once and absolutely I had the sense of the magic of words and of names Kisan I said and then it was that that ancient one-eyed woman ko saing stepped out of the language and stood before me on the page I was amazed of course and yet it seemed to me entirely appropriate that this should happen yes grandson she said what is it what do you want oh well I was just now writing about you I replied stammering I thought forgive me I thought that perhaps you had that you were know she said and she cackled died thought and she went on you have imagined me well grandson and so I am you have imagined that I dream and so I do I have seen the falling stars well but all of this imagining I protested this has taken place is taking place in my mind you are not actually here you are not really here in this room it occurred to me that I was being extremely rude but I couldn't help myself anyway she seemed to understand be careful of your pronouncements grandson she answered you imagine that I am here in this room do you not that is worth something you see I have existence whole being in your imagination it is but one kind of being to be sure but it is perhaps the best of all kinds and grandson if I am NOT here in this room then surely neither are you I think I see what you mean I said meekly and I felt justly rebuked tell me grandmother how old are you oh I do not know she replied there are times when I think that I am the oldest woman on earth you know the Kairos came into the world through a hollow log in my mind's eye I have seen them emerge one by one from the mouth of that log I have seen them so clearly how they were dressed how delighted they were to see the world around them I must have been there and I must have taken part in that old migration of the kaya's from the Yellowstone to the southern plains for I have seen antelope bounding in the tall grass near the Bighorn River and I have seen the ghost forests of the Black Hills once once I saw the Red Cliffs of Palo Duro Canyon you are indeed very old I said and you have seen many things yes I imagined that I have she said and then she turned slowly around nodded once and receded into the language I had made and then I imagined that I was in the room alone who is the storyteller of whom is the story told what is there in the darkness to imagine into being what is there to dream and to relate what happens when I or anyone exerts the force of language upon the unknown these are the questions which interest me most if there is any absolute assumption in back of my thoughts on this occasion it is this that we are what we imagined our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves our best destiny is to imagine at last and completely who and what and that we are the greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go I would like to return to the falling stars and let me proceed this time from a slightly different point of view in the winter of 1833 the Kiowas were camped on Elm fork a branch of the Red River in the Wichita Mountains in the preceding summer they had suffered a massacre at the hands of another tribe and timeI their sacred Sundance fetish and most powerful medicine had been stolen at no time in the history of their migration from the north and in the evolution of their planes culture had the kya was been more vulnerable to despair the loss of time II was a deep psychological wound in the early cold of November 13 there occurred over the earth an explosion of meteors the kaya's were awakened by the sterile light of falling stars and they ran out into the forth day and were terrified the year the stars fell 1833 he's among the earliest entries in the Kiowa calendars as I have said and it is permanent in the Kiowa mind you see there was symbolic meaning in that November sky with a coming of natural dawn there began a new and darker age for the Kiowa people and the last culture to evolve in North America began to decline within four years of the falling stars the Kiowa signed their first treaty with the United States government within 20 years for major epidemics of smallpox and Asiatic cholera destroyed more than half their number and within scarcely more than a generation their horses and weapons were taken from them and the herds of Buffalo were slaughtered and to waste upon the plains do you see what happens when the imagination is superimposed upon the historical event it becomes a story the whole piece becomes more deeply invested with meaning the terrified Kyra's when they had regained possession of themselves did indeed imagine that the falling stars were symbolic of their being and of their destiny they accounted for themselves with reference to that awful memory they appropriated it recreated it fashioned it into an image of themselves in short they imagined it and by means of that act of the imagination could they bear what happened to them thereafter no defeat no humiliation no suffering was beyond their power to endure for none of it was meaningless they could say to themselves yes yes it was all meant to be in its time the order of the world was broken that was clear even the stars were shaken loose in the night sky the imagination of meaning it was not much perhaps but it was all they had and it was enough to sustain them a writer for whom I have great admiration Isak Dinesen said this all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them the Kiowa tales which are contained in the way to rainy mountain constitute a kind of literary chronicle in a sense they are the milestones of that old migration in which the kya was journeyed from the Yellowstone to the Washita they record a transformation of the tribal mind as it encounters for the first time the landscape of the Great Plains they evoke the sense of search and of discovery many of the tales are very old and they have not until now been set down in writing among them there is one that stands out in my mind when I was a child my father told me the story of the arrow maker and he told it to me many times for I fell in love with it I have no memory that is older than that of hearing this story if an arrow is well made it will have tooth marks upon it that is how you know the kaya was made fine arrows and straightened them in their teeth then they drew them to the bow to see that they were straight once there was a man and his wife they were alone at night in their teepee by the light of a fire the man was making arrows after a while he caught sight of something there was a small opening in the teepee where two hides had been sewn together someone was there on the outside looking in the man went on with his work but he said to his wife someone is standing outside do not be afraid let us talk easily as of ordinary things then as it was right for him to do he he took an arrow and straightened it in his teeth then he drew it to the bowl and took aim first in this direction and then in that and all the while he was talking as if to his wife but this is how he spoke I know that you are there on the outside for I can feel your eyes upon me if you were a Kiowa you will understand what I am saying and you will speak your name but there was no answer and the man went on in the same way pointing the arrow all around at last his aim fell upon the place where his enemy stood and he let go of the string the arrow went straight to the enemy's heart well until now the story of the arrow maker has been the private possession of a very few a tenuous link in that most ancient chain of language which we call the oral tradition tenuous because the tradition itself is so for as many times as that story has been told it was always but one generation removed from extinction but it was cherished too and for the same reason that is to say it has been neither more nor less durable than the human voice and neither more nor less concern to express the fundamental meaning of the human condition and this brings me to the matter at hand the story of the arrow maker is also a link between language and literature between language and religion it is a remarkable act of the mind a realization of words and a realization of the world that is altogether simple and direct yet nonetheless rare and profound and it illustrates more clearly than anything else in my own experience at least something of the essential character of the imagination and in particular of that personification which in this instance emerges from the imagination the man made of words it is a fine story I think you will agree whole intricately beautiful precisely realized it is worth thinking about for it yields something of value indeed it is full of provocation rich with suggestion and consequent meaning it is informed by an integrity that bears examination easily and well and in the process it seems to appropriate our own reality our own experience our own conception of the truth it is a signal it is significant that the story of the arrow-maker returns upon itself in a special way it is about language after all and it is therefore part and parcel of its own subject virtually there is no distinction no difference between the telling and that which is told the point of the story lies not so much in what the arrow-maker does but in what he says the principal fact is that he speaks and in so doing he places his very life in the balance does this aspect of the story which might interest us most for it is here that the language becomes most conscious of itself and we are very close to the origin and object of literature our sense of the verbal dimension is very keen and we are aware of something in the nature of language that is at once perilous and compelling if you are a Kiowa you will understand what I am saying and you will speak your name everything is ventured in this simple declaration which is also a question and a plea the conditional element with which it begins is remarkably tentative and pathetic precisely at this moment is the arrow-maker realized completely and his reality consists in language and it is poor and precarious and all of this all of this occurs to him as surely as it does to us implicit in that simple occurrence is all of his definition and all of his destiny he ventures to speak because he must language is the repository of his whole knowledge and experience of his whole being and it represents the only chance he has for survival instinctively and with great care he deals in the most honest way with words let us talk easily as of ordinary things and of the ominous unknown he asks only the utterance of a name only that most nominal sign that he is understood that his words are returned to him on the shear edge of meaning but there is no answer and the arrow-maker knows at once what he has not known before that his enemy is and that he the arrow-maker has gained an advantage over his enemy this he knows certainly and the certainty itself is his advantage and it is crucial and he makes the most of it and he survives the venture is complete and irrevocable and for the arrow-maker it ends in success the story is meaningful it is so primarily because it is composed of language and it is in the nature of language that it proceeds to the formulation of meaning moreover the story of the arrow maker as opposed to other stories in general centers upon this procession of words towards meaning it seems in fact to turn upon the very idea that language involves the elements of risk and responsibility and in this the story seeks to confirm itself in a word it seems to say everything is a risk that may be so and it may be that the whole of literature rests upon that truth the arrow-maker is pre-eminently the man made of words he has consummate being in language it is the world of his origin and of his posterity and there is no other but it is a world of definite reality and of infinite possibility I have come to believe that there is a sense in which the arrow-maker has more nearly perfect being than have other men by and large and perhaps a more nearly perfect right to be we can imagine him as he imagines himself whole and vital going on into the unknown darkness and Beyond and this last aspect of his being is primordial and profound and yet yet the story has it that he is cautious and alone we are given to understand that his peril is great and immediate and that he confronts it in the only way he can I have no doubt that this is true and I believe that there are implications which point point directly to the determination of our ethical experience and which must not be lost upon us one final word then on an essential irony which which marks this story and gives peculiar substance to the man made of words the storyteller the man who first told the story of the arrow-maker is nameless and illiterate from one point of view we know very little about him except that he is somehow translated for us in the person of the arrow-maker but from another point of view that is really all we need to know he tells us of his life in language and of the awful risk involved it must occur to us that he is one with the arrow-maker and that he has survived by word of mouth beyond other men I said a moment ago that for the arrow-maker language represented the only chance for survival it is worth considering that he survives in our time and that he has survived over a period of untold generations aho before they have they have to formulate some it'll take a minute there is one yes sir ask you you know charge they raised a complaint yes the question the question is mm-hmm have I found out since since talking to mr. Walker several years ago the meaning of the staked Plains that term the staked Plains which refers to a arboreal desert region of the Southwest mainly in Texas and the answer is no I have heard a number of theories but I still am not sure what what the name refers to that the theory the theory I like best is that it is such a vast region and so many people were lost moving across it that journeymen then began staking their their route through it so that they could return by means of the visible stakes in the ground but I'm that's just a theory I'm not sure about it at all if anyone in the audience knows and can enlighten us please please do yes the world what is the degree of self awareness of the importance of details be carried on is their building Gail I'm not sure that I understand the question can you give it to me--one once more yes I think I understand the question could you all hear it okay I think I think the answer is the the storyteller is highly aware of his of his function of what he is doing in passing on this verbal tradition from one generation to another and I think that the tales do reflect that concern a number one of the one of the astounding things one of the things that astounded me in looking into the Kiowa oral tradition was the fact that so many of the stories I ran upon had to do in one way or another with language like the arrow-maker story that that is a kind of an analogy of the of the oral tradition it is true that the that the story really centers upon language and upon the importance of language and upon the understanding of the importance of language and that's true of of many stories in in the oral tradition so I think that there is a high degree of self-awareness and that that awareness is reflected very clearly in the stories themselves yes while parallels within the judeo-christian tradition well do I find any parallels in the in the judeo-christian and Native American traditions oral traditions yes there are striking parallels on many different levels I can't go into all of them like here but I can assure you that there are many many parallels the SIRT the naming ceremony for example naming the the idea of conferring a name upon something and in that act conferring being upon that thing at the same time is is an ancient and Biblical notion of course and it is widespread in the Indian world it perhaps is more vital in the Indian world now than it is in the judeo-christian tradition I just surmising that but I know that it's very vital in in the Indian world I had another example in mind as I started that and I've lost it but oh I was going to say that an excellent brief discussion of of some of those parallels is contained in Margo Astros introduction to the anthology which is called the winged serpent and it's a capricorn paperback readily available American Indian prose and poetry Margo Astro ast ROV she talks about and refers particularly to the the concept that in the beginning was the word so do i by the way in my novel house made of dawn yes sir we could you won't hear that question there is a strong implication in in some of vine' deloria's writing and in other writings recent writings that the anthropologists hear but do not reverence the stories within Native American oral tradition is that true I think it's true to an extent I don't know how far I would want to to generalize that point I think it is probably true for the most part however there are exceptions I know of anthropologists who are extremely sensitive to Indian traditions and who do reverence reverence the stories in those traditions I'm thinking particularly of such works as Theodoric Robers the inland whale which seems to me a very sensitive treatment of California Indian stories and there are other such things maybe the answer is that the that the the sensitivity is increasing and that the the situation is changing for the better I hope so other questions you can make comments to our accusations or well thank you for listening