While reading American Indian Stories, The Sioux became a story that really intrigued me. The story involves the return of Sioux Christian Missionary intent on converting those in his tribe who returns to his community and his father. After reading the story I gained the impression that the main theme of this story was that this destructive and ultimately worthless war between the White and Indian culture can tear apart the individual's most sacred institutions such as the family. However, there was one particular scene in the story that puzzled me.
On page 122 about the missionary quest to feed his father, "A rough hand wrenched my shoulder and took the meat from me! I stopped struggling to run. A deafening whir filled my hear. The moon and the stars began to move. Now the white prairie was sky, and the stars lay under my feet. Now again they were turning. At last the starry blue rose up into place. The noise in my ears was still. A great quiet filled the air. In my hand I found my long knife dripping with blood."
Is this murder the logical consequence of the war between White and Indian culture? If so, is this stranger simply a representation of those who are innocent who die in the conflict between Indians and Whites? Could the stranger represent something bigger and more complex? I think the latter may be the case due to the grave and permanent nature of murder.
3 comments:
I also found the scene you described to be both interesting and puzzling. In response to your question of whether this a logical consequence of the war between whites and Indians, I would comment that while maybe not logical, it is what happens. I think it is also important to note that this harm done to each other is not necessarily out of the intent to do harm, but out of the intent to protect one's own people. This is evident in the boy who would not have ended up committing murder had he not being trying to help his father and bring him food in the first place.
I tend to agree with Virginia's description of the significance of the story. First and foremost, the story is deeply ironic: the Sioux rejects violence to the story's penultimate scene, and then, as soon as he commits murder, his incentive for doing so is no longer. What the murder ultimately does is throw in to sharp relief the difference between the Indian and Christian ways of life. On the one hand, we see a dying father who beseeches his son to hunt, to kill for his sake; on the other, we see a son who resists to the last, who is so thoroughly inculcated with the concept of nonviolence that it takes the death of his father for him to consider killing.
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