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).