Discussion: Zitkala-Ša, Iktomi Legends (pgs. 1-26 and 42-44)
Zitkala-Ša as born in 1876 and spent her childhood on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota. She has an extraordinary biography, and I recommend reading the Introduction to our edition of her writings for an overview (pgs. xi-xxxv). We will deal in more detail with her life in subsequent discussions. For this week, however, we will work with the traditional Iktomi stories that Zitkala-Ša wrote down and published. These are traditional stories, traditionally told orally, passed down from generation to generation, and available for the embellishment and personal style of each given teller. What we’re reading are Zitkala-Ša’s versions, and they have touches characteristic of her irony and eye for the symbolic detail.
In her autobiographical writings, Zitkala-Ša associates these stories with her childhood and with hearing her elders tell them. For example, in one episode, she describes older women of the village coming to visit with her mother:
At the arrival of our guests I sat close to my mother, and did not leave her side without first asking her consent. I ate my supper in quiet, listening patiently to the talk of the old people, wishing all the time that they would begin the stories I loved best. At last, when I could not wait any longer, I whispered in my mother’s ear, “Ask them to tell an Iktomi story, mother.”
Soothing my impatience, my mother said aloud, “My little daughter is anxious to hear your legends.” By this time all were through eating, and the evening was fast deepening into twilight.
As each in turn began to tell a legend, I pillowed my head in my mother’s lap; and lying flat upon my back, I watched the stars as they peeped down upon me, one by one. The increasing interest of the tale aroused me, and I sat up eagerly listening to every word. The old women made funny remarks, and laughed so heartily that I could not help joining them.
The distant howling of a pack of wolves or the hooting of an owl in the river bottom frightened me, and I nestled into my mother’s lap. She added some dry sticks to the open fire, and the bright flames leaped up into the faces of the old folks as they sat around in a great circle. (72)
This anecdote testifies to the way in which the Iktomi stories were personal for Zitkala-Ša. Hearing them was a moment of delight and comfort, in part because of the stories themselves and in part because of the circumstances in which she heard them. In this account we can also see how the women who told them took delight in shaping and commenting on them—making funny remarks and laughing, presumably at each other’s embellishments and comments. Humor is very much a part of the stories and their occasions.
As Zitkala-Ša introduces the stories, she seems to imply that her imagined readership for them will also be children, and she suggests that the stories belong as much, now, to their white readers as they do to the people who originated them: “The old legends of America belong quite as much to the blue-eyed patriot as to the black-haired aborigine” (5). Her hope is that the stories will spark interest in Native American stories among the white audience, who has, deliberately or not, laid claim to them along with the land. It is not a stance that would necessarily be shared by every teller of these stories, but it is one that is representative of the complexities of Zitkala-Ša’s identity and the way she negotiated a life that moved between and synthesized two different cultures.
Iktomi is a trickster character, that is, a character who both tricks and is tricked, who acts in his or her own self-interest, but also tends to catalyze the characters around him or her into doing things that they might not otherwise have done or thought possible. And, at the same time, the Iktomi stories have been described as centering “on lessons in proper behavior for the young.” He is an agent of chaos, but also an agent of civilization: disrupting society and, in doing so, throwing its rules into greater relief.
As the passage above from her autobiographical writings shows, the Iktomi stories were comforting and entertaining for Zitkala-Ša when she was a child, but Davidson and Norris, the editors of our edition, also suggest that the stories contained “trickster strategies” that helped Zitkala-Ša to “maintain a sense of self” as she made her way through the trials of the Indian schools in the east (xvi).
For this week, describe your understanding of Iktomi by answering some or all of these questions: In what ways does he seem to be the trickster figure, a character who is at play in the world, testing the boundaries of society’s rules and hierarchies? In what ways do the stories seem to convey “lessons on proper behavior”? In what ways do you see “trickster strategies” in the stories: that is, strategies that may not be proper behavior at all, but that might offer a model for an act of sabotage or a clever escape that can help one to survive an adverse situation? Be sure to use specific examples in your posts.