Tracks is the third unit of the quartet: Love Medicine(1984, 1993), The Beet Queen (1986), Tracks (1988) andThe Bingo Palace (1994), but regarding the sequence of the events
in the four novels it comes first. Hence, the events and characters of
the novel are interconnected with the plots of the other three novels.
The story mainly describes the social and cultural embedment of Chippewa
Anishinaabe from 1912 to 1924. However, the family-tree in the beginning
of the novel tells about the culture and the time range of the twelve
years.
Figure 4.1
(Erdrich, 1988, p. iv).
The shoots of the tree like the interconnected story of the quartet
“[a]re all attached, and … hooked from one side to the
other, mouth to tail” (Erdrich, 1988, p. 46) that define how American
Indian oral traditional concepts of timelessness and macrocosmic
realities survive in modern times. The indigenous and mixed blood
characters in the family-tree denote the distinctness as well as the
hybridity of Anishinaabe culture. The tree expresses the long trail of
families performing a critical role in the survival of oral tradition
values in American Indian contemporary societies and also describes the
time of European intrusion. Regarding oral tradition, concept of
timelessness and the micro-cum- macrocosmic realities of the American
Indian society, Erdrich distinguishes the oral societies from the
European influence. She introduces the American Indian traditional
belief system and rejects the western stance about the incredibility of
American Indian macrocosmic stories.
Tracks follows a linear time direction as the events move from
1912 to 1924; the cultural variations of Chippewa are explained,
however, with the duality of the time sequence: the chronological time
defines western culture whereas ceremonial time proceedings signify
native values. The nine chapters and their headings give chronological
dates and ceremonial seasons simultaneously. This linear-ceremonial time
approach of Erdrich documents both western and American Indian time
periods and events, as well as languages, i.e. English and Chippewa:
“Chapter One: Winter 1912
Manitou-geezisohns
Little Spirit Sun
…
Chapter Two: Summer 1913
Miskomini-geezis
Raspberry Sun”
(Erdrich, 1988, pp. 1, 10).
Every chapter begins with “first a date, including the designation of
season(s) and year(s), then a phrase in Anishinaabe followed by an
English translation” (Peterson, 1994, p. 986). This information
establishes two opposing frames of reference: one associated with
orality with pre-contact culture’s seasonal or cyclic approach to time;
the other linked with textuality and post-contact culture’s linear or
progressive approach to time.
To follow the duality of time sequence – chronological or ceremonial –
the events in Tracks are incorporated in the microcosmic
and macrocosmic space that intensifies the description of Chippewa
lands. The physical places in Tracks relate with the microcosmic
concept of time however the beliefs in these microcosmic places as the
habitat of metaphysical creatures make them macrocosmic. For instance,
the multicolored map of divided Chippewa shows the physical space of
cultural assimilation and contamination:
[T]he lines and circles of the homesteads paid up – Morrissey,
Pukwan, Hat, Lazarres everywhere. They were colored green. The lands
that were gone out of the tribe – to deaths with no heirs, to sales, to
the lumber company – were painted a pale and rotten pink. Those in
question, a sharper yellow. At the center of a bright square was
Matchimanito, a small blue triangle. (Erdrich, 1988, p. 173)
By the same token, the western schools, churches or other urbanized
places in Argus also explain the microcosmic nature of American Indian
lands. However, this physical space limited in its area per se grows
into a macrocosm with its connection to supernatural happenings. For
instance, the places like Fleur’s house at Matchimanito Lake and its
surrounding woods gradually reveal their macrocosmic nature. Such
mysterious locations, according to the Chippewa community, are the
habitat of ghosts and other metaphysical species: “The Agent went out
there, then got lost, spent the whole night following the moving lights
and lamps of people who would not answer him, but talked and laughed
among themselves” (Erdrich, 1988, p. 9). However, in Tracks , the
macrocosmic space depends on the microcosmic as both microcosm and
macrocosm focus on the power of a single place: for the American Indian
land is “the only thing that lasts life to life”
(Erdrich, 1988, p. 33) and that is
in danger for it is dividing and selling (Wong, 1994, p. 45).
Erdrich also defines the concept of time and space through theintrapersonal communication – to communicate with the living and
non-living things through the power of the mind – of different
characters with each other and with other objects of nature. Through the
episode of Nanapush’s spiritual help to Eli Kashpaw, in hunting a moose,
Erdrich merges the macrocosmic and microcosmic worlds. The event is
placed in the tough winter of 1917. The shortage of food weaken Eli and
Nanapush, and Eli takes his gun and travels North to hunt. Nanapush
stays in his hut and helps Eli in hunting through his spiritual power.
This ceremony connects both despite the physical distance between them.
Nanapush appeals to the spiritual beings to help
them: he blackens his face with
the lump of charcoal and “began to sing slowly, calling on [the]
helpers, until … the song sang itself, and there, in the deep
bright drifts, [he] saw the tracks of Eli’s snowshoes clearly”
(Erdrich, 1988, p. 101). The correspondence between Nanapush and Eli in
hunting is different in nature but runs parallel: the former takes a
spiritual position based on shamanic ceremony whereas the latter is
physically there for hunting. Nanapush spiritually contacts Eli and
follows his every step, since he can ‘see’ him and ’read’ what he is
thinking. Nanapush sends him instructions and directions for hunting as
he knows his starving condition
and fears that he would make a mistake: “Do not sour the meat, I
reminded him now” (Erdrich, 1988, p. 102). The spiritual direction
helps Eli hunt the animal which will provide them physical strength.
After cutting the meat Eli faces the problem of how to take it back
home. The shooting and slaughtering of the animal make Eli dog-tired;
so, he seeks the spiritual help of the old man in his journey back home
in safety. Nanapush spiritually
instructs him how he would bind the pieces of meat around his body and
asks him to follow the sound of the drumbeats to come home safely. The
hunting episode suggests that Erdrich assimilates the supernatural
world, the world of animals and spiritual beings, with the natural world
of beings and in so doing, explores the reality of the timeless American
Indian ceremonial society.
The lovemaking between Eli
Kaspaw and Sophie Morrissey is another episode of such intrapersonal
communication. This time Pauline sets the events to get vicarious sexual
pleasure. She requests Moses to give her the powder made up of “crushed
fine of certain roots, crane’s bill, something else, and slivers of
Sophie’s fingernails” (Erdrich, 1988, p. 80). She controls Sophie
through this love medicine and hypnotizes her to attract Eli. The love
medicine enables Pauline to control the love making episode between Eli
and Sophie: “I turned my thoughts on the girl and entered her and made
her do what she could never have dreamed of herself … I was
pitiless. They were mechanical things, toys, dolls wound past their
limits” (Erdrich, 1988, pp. 83, 84). Looking at them from the secrecy
and distance of her hiding place, Pauline controls the mind of Sophie
and enjoys sexual pleasure, without actually being a part of it. The
whole event describes the power of the love medicine made by Moses
Pillager. Pauline is a proven liar in the community but her narration of
the episode of love making can be verified through other sources. For
instance, it is not Pauline’s own magical power as she describes in
other events but that of Moses who gave her the love medicine that she
uses. Pauline is quite helpless in creating and erasing the influence of
charm, for instance, when Bernadette, Sophie’s mother, beats her
daughter with “a strap, and [Pauline] felt it, too, the way
[she]’d absorbed the pleasure at the slough” (Erdrich, 1988, p.
86). Eli, on his visit to Nanapush, also tells him that he is not guilty
because “[he] was bewitched” (Erdrich, 1988, p. 98). The
transition of one world into another is related with the concept of time
and space.
Like Erdrich, Silko also explains the idea of time and space and
presents it with a dichotomy of the western and the Laguna worlds.
Unlike Erdrich, however, she defines it diachronically: juxtaposing a
contemporary hybrid society and the Laguna mythical past. The ceremonial
sequence makes the simple things sacred. For instance, in the story of
Hummingbird and Fly, the number four becomes sacred when it is placed in
the circular mode: Hummingbird instructs the folk to “sing this softly
/ above the jar: / After four days / you will be alive / After four days
/ you will be alive / After four days / you will be alive” (Silko,
1977, p. 66), and on the fourth day the Fly comes out of the jar and
goes with Hummingbird for finding Corn Woman in the fourth world. Silko
(as cited in Coltelli, 1990), herself admits that the presentation of
ceremonial time while writing Ceremony charmed her as she was
brought up among those who have a ceremonial vision of motion:
I was trying to reconcile Western European ideas of linear time – you
know, someone’s here right now, but when she’s gone, she’s gone forever,
she’s vaporized – and the older belief which Aunt Susie talked about,
and the old folks talked about, which is: there is a place, a space-time
for the older folks. (p. 138)
Ceremony follows this ceremonial sequence. Even the chronology of
Tayo’s story is based on it. His ceremony is not like a traditional
ritual in a tent but a journey, although he experiences the same
timelessness that is the soul of every ceremony. His shift from Japan to
Laguna is a shift from linear time to ceremonial. When he returns from
the Euro-American world to his native world, in his loneliness he
decides that “[h]e wouldn’t waste firewood to heat up yesterday’s
coffee or maybe it was day-before-yesterday’s coffee. He had lost track
of the days there” (Silko, 1977, p. 10). Similarly, the calendars that
embarrassed him in Betonie’s room are a ceremonial presentation of
Eurocentric chronology:
[H]e saw layers of old calendars, the sequences of years confused
and lost as if occasionally the oldest calendars had fallen or been
taken out from under the others and then had been replaced on top of the
most recent years. A few showed January, as if the months on the
underlying pages had no longer been turned or torn away. (Silko, 1977,
p. 120)
The unsymmetrical placement of calendars gives an achronological sense
that defines the ceremonial or circular pattern in American Indian
traditional societies.
The concept of space constructs the reality that is beyond textual space
and that raises the improbability of possibility (Wilson, 1985, p. 220).
Silko textualizes this reality of the Pueblo mythical worlds with the
microcosmic and macrocosmic concepts of space. The microcosmic concept
relates with the physical places of Pueblo. The western contact of these
natural places validates them for the modern readers. Tayo, on his way
to Gallup, describes the urbanized impact on the native person and
places:
I saw Navajos in torn old jackets, standing outside the bars. There were
Zunis and Hopis there too, even a few Lagunas. All of them slouched down
against the dirty walls of the bar along Highway 66, their eyes staring
at the ground as if they had forgotten the sun in the sky. (Silko, 1977,
p. 107)
The transitional change in the affected areas of Gallup intensifies the
microcosmic concept of space as the physical place of Gallup affects the
lifestyle of Pueblo youth as most youngsters, like Helen Jean and Rocky,
are motivated to settle there and consider it a better place than the
reservation. They too are eventually contaminated with the Eurocentric
norms which turn them into prostitutes and drunkards. The unknown child,
who narrates this description of Gallup, living with his prostitute
mother at the bank of the river, can also be identified as Tayo.
The role of memory enhances the microcosmic concept of time and space.
It is very spatial (like macrocosm) in its nature and functions as an
archive of visual images of different places (Wilson, 1985, p. 216). InCeremony most places and things come into description through
Tayo’s memory. For instance, the Veteran’s Hospital, the school where
Tayo studies with Rocky, the forest in Japan where Rocky is killed, the
railway station where he meets Japanese children and women, the home on
the bank of the river where he lives with his mother, the bars where he
and other natives waste their time, are places the reader comes to know
through Tayo’s memory. These places prolong the idea of alienation that
is ultimately harmful for the traditional harmony based on native
cosmology: hospitals and schools are places that organize the native
mind according to the western pattern by convincing them about the
irrationality of their customs; similarly, bars affect native lives and
drive them away from spirituality to nothingness. Silko could not
present them physically and therefore uses the macrocosmic space of
memory to explain them. After leaving the Veterans Hospital, Tayo goes
to the train tracks where he confronts the Japanese children and woman.
This confrontation pushes him back to his past time which he spends in
Japan. At that moment he realizes the diminishing of time and space
boundaries. The glimpse of the smiling face of the small Japanese boy
makes him think not only about World War II but also about his childhood
memories with his cousin Rocky:
[H]e cried at how the world had come undone, how thousands of miles,
high ocean waves and green jungles could not hold people in their place.
Years and months had become weak, and people could push against them and
wander back and forth in time. Maybe it had always been this way and he
was only seeing it for the first time. (Silko, 1977, p.18)
During the war Tayo has a similar state of mind at different times. For
instance, in Japan he rejected the order to kill his enemies as among
them he sees his dear uncle Josiah in the face of one of Japanese. The
same face, same slant-eyed look and the same color makes him realize the
universality of brotherhood among beings that keeps the cosmos in
balance and thus implies a universal time and space: “Distances and
days existed in themselves then; they all had a story. They were not
barriers” (Silko, 1977, p. 19). The timelessness of memories and
visions is a true guidance of the supernatural spirits for the
betterment of people and nature. These memories and visions have an
important role in Tayo’s ceremony.
Conclusion
The stories of Tracks and Ceremony reflect American
Indians’ awareness of and attachment to their culture. However, the
non-natives conceive the reality of Native American world, for its
timelessness and macrocosmic nature, as mythic and question the reality
shaped by these stories as they do not tell the world in a positivistic
way. Non-natives focus on the positivistic side of macrocosmic as well
as chronological elements and ignore the microcosmic time and space and
thus could not understand the American Indian concept of time and space.
The essentialization of American Indian societies makes the microcosmic
world macrocosmic too for them. However, the natives, regardless of
their tribal affiliation, perceive everything natural because of the
strong belief system and their daily involvement in such mythical
practices. The characters’ presentation and the way they are textualized
and the settings of the novels are normal things for the native
community, for the native readers and even for Erdrich and Silko, as the
writers like their protagonists have “believed in the stories” (Silko,
1977, p. 18).