American Indians: Poets of the Cosmos

Abstract

G E R A L D H AS L A M Sonoma State College American Indians: Poets of the Cosmos When Bufly Sainte-Marie sings— Has a change come about Uncle Sam, or are you still taking our land? The treaty forever George Washington signed. He did, dear lady. He did, dear man. And the treaty's being broken . . . Now that the buffalo’s gonel1 —she transcends history in a living communion with America’s oldest literary heritage; American Indians were and are the poets of the cosmos, the singers of America’s most vital songs. Miss Sainte Marie’s emotional vibratto evokes the centuries-old chants of her Cree forefathers, for Amerindian poetry is traditionally sung; to say it another way, Amerindian singing traditionally employs poetic language. And singing, as A. Grove Day observes, “was a way of tapping . . . superhuman force, and was used to obtain success in almost every act of Indian life.”2 Indeed, F. W. Hodge points out that “most Indian rituals can be classed as poetry. They always relate to serious subjects and are expressed in dignified language, and the words chosen to clothe the thought generally make rhythm.”3 Hodge might have also noted that Amerindian rituals, complete with their serious and rhythmic use of language and patterned movements, constitute dramatic forms. The border between prose and poetry is both more distinct and different among Amerindians than among European-American writers. Poetry is distinct in presentation, form, and content, often being concerned with transcendent subjects and explorations, and leading to forms of mystical experience. American Indians recog­ nize the magical power of language, and they seek to utilize it. 2Buffy Sainte-Maria, “Now That the Buffalo’s Gone,” as sung on her Vanguard album (VDS-79280) I’m Gonna Be A Country Girl Again. Gypsy Boy Music. 8A Grove Day, The Sky Clears: Poetry of Indian Indians (Lincoln, Neb., 1968), p. 2- •F. W. Hodge cited in Day, p. 2. 16 Western American Literature Prose, on the other hand, is an intoned form, stressing rhythmic aspects in its delivery, but never actually chanted to music. Day suggests the following characteristics which distinguish Amerindian poetry from prose: Poetry was used only on certain occasions; it was always rhythmic in form, and was chanted or sung, usually to the accompaniment of drums, or melodic instruments; and the composers made use of certain stylistic devices recognized as poetic—usually consisting of archaic, tersely suggestive, or imaginative language.4 While poetry was usually concerned with religious—in the animistic sense—subjects, prose was most often used to transfer the lessons of history, the secular information necessary for survival of the culture. Such information took the form of tales, parables and other short, complete forms of discourse; often, the tales were linked in long cycles of stories, producing the spoken equivalent of longer prose forms in written literature. The tacit historic assumptions of many Euro-Americans con­ cerning Amerindians—that they were savages who rode about scalp­ ing one another, or that they were silent, sullen people incapable of articulate expressions—demonstrates the wealth of misinformation our educational system has allowed to proliferate; between the stereotypes implanted in young minds by motion pictures and television, and the unwillingness or inability of educators to counter­ mand and correct such stereotypes, most Americans know little of American Indians as they actually were and are. There were approximately six hundred different cultures living in North America when Europeans first came here; no two cultures were exactly alike: “The Chippewa rode in a birchbark canoe, the Chicasaw in a dugout; the Sac slept in a bark wigwam, the Kiowa in a skin teepee, and the Pueblo in a stone apartment house. . . . The Papagos regarded was as a form of insanity, the Comanches gloried in it.”5 And, despite the uniform physical image projected in the popular media, “Red men came in as many different sizes and shapes and skin tones as the whites who were about to overwhelm them. The only features the Indian had in common were black hair, brown eyes, and some shade of brown skin.”6 4Day, p. 4. W illiam T. Hagan, American Indians (Chicago, 1961), p. 3.«Hagan...