Abstract
Interpreted along structuralist lines, the Clackamas Chinook story “Seal and Her Younger Brother Dwelt There” is a skillful dramatization of a fatal conflict between two goods: decorum and empirical alertness. Seal’s adult concern with propriety keeps her from heeding her daughter’s warning that Seal’s brother’s new “wife” “urinates like a man.” In the subsequent murder of Seal’s brother, the motives and identity of the homicidal “wife” are deliberately obscured so as to emphasize the tragic conflict between Seal and her daughter. Another Oregon Indian text, “The Revenge against the Sky People” (Coos), contains a version of the Clackamas story, but overall it is a narrative of heroic revenge, in which the killer’s motives and feelings are made known to us before he kills his victim. The two stories complement each other structurally and together represent Indian narrative art at its best.
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