The Book as a “Contact Zone” - Textualizing Orality in James Welch’s Fools Crow

Abstract

In the past four decades the U.S. cultural scene has witnessed a groundbreaking emergence of a number of Native American writers who have transformed the perception of minority literature, challenging Western audience to reconsider popular stereotypes and received assumptions of indigenous history, identity and culture. Today many of those writers hold prominent positions on popular bestseller and university reading lists, and interest in reading and studying their work is a mainstream trend. Committed to cultural and historical revisionism, they have also expanded the notion of a literary text, and the book as its traditional medium, turning it into a political weapon, a zone of conceptual contact, contestation and dialogue. With his third novel Fools Crow (1986) renowned Blackfeet author James Welch pointed his bow and pen in that direction as well.Set in the 1870s, the period of Indian wars, Fools Crow is a story about the tragedy of Native Americans caused by the coming of the Europeans. It captures the lives of Lone Eaters band of the Pikuni people, one of the bands belonging to the Blackfeet tribe, living on the border between American and Canadian Rocky Mountains. Told from Native American perspective, describing the time of dramatic transformation after encountering the Europeans, the plot of the novel centers around the life of the main character White Man’s Dog, later renamed Fools Crow because of his honorable performance in one of the battles. At the beginning he is just a young teenage boy, eager to finally set up his place as a successful warrior in his tribe. In spite of his initial insecurity and misfortune, he is growing into a successful warrior, hunter, leader, husband, and healer. Even though it seemingly follows Western tradition of the “identity narrative”, Fools Crow is not just a story about the experience and growth of an individual character illustrative of Western narrativity. This novel in many ways affirms Owens’s statement that “contemporary Native American authors are requiring that the readers cross over the conceptual horizon into an Indian world” (20). Right at the beginning, it invites a number of conceptual turns necessary for its understanding and interpretation. Blackfeet expressions and literal translations of words and concepts from the Pikuni culture blend with English sentences, making the novel a linguistic and conceptual amalgam. With no glossary provided, the text forces the reader to acquire the words like Napikwans (white settlers), blackhorn (buffalo), prairie runner (antelope), skunk ear (wolverine), ears-far-apart (owl), elk dog (horse), and accede to an anthropomorphic worldview in which swift silver people (fish) and the deities – Night Red Light (moon), Sun Chief (sun), Seven Persons (a constellation), Earth Mother and Wind Maker – are an integral part of human and earthly events. Throughout the novel, Pikuni words and cosmology continue to suppress Western ones, proving Onion’s thesis that, by inserting Pikuni words, Welch not only translates and mediates between cultures, but also creates a contact zone, invoking and affirming Blackfeet worldview (cf. Onion).