This is the essay I wrote for my midterm. I think it accurately shows the level I am(or was) at as well as my potential for future projects like this one.
When Stories Speak of Women
Myths have always been the stories of the past, and, whether true or false, these stories have and will influence people for hundreds of years. The stories of life and unanswered questions have interested people for centuries and will continue to spark our imaginations until the end of time. The values of our societies always show up heavily in them as well. Our love, our traditions, who and what we see as meaningful or valuable, and much more. This is why going through and pinpointing commonalities in various pieces of media can eventually determine the significant ways of life to the people from that community and time. Using resources from class, and a couple from my own bookshelf, this essay will be going through some native stories to see that the importance of women, like the Yellow Woman, in native society is much more than that of European or American narratives.
It may be necessary to clarify who or what the Yellow Woman is. One of the class readings, Kochinnenako in Academe by Paula Gunn Allen, doesn’t have a clear definition. However, she describes the Yellow Women as the main character in many stories:
“Kochinnenako, Yellow Woman, is in some sense a name that means Woman-Woman because among the Keres, yellow is the color for women (as pink and red are among Anglo-European Americans)… Yellow Woman stories are about all sorts of things–abduction, meeting with happy powerful spirits, birth of twins, getting power from the spirit worlds and returning it to the people… Many Yellow Woman tales highlight her alienation from the people: she lives with her grandmother at the edge of the village, for example, or she is in some way atypical…”.
While Allen’s explanation of the Yellow Woman is important and does show the reader the Yellow Woman’s character, there is also another definition from an article about the Native American author Louise Erdrich. The author of the article delves into Erdrich’s stories and finds that “The figure of Yellow Woman assumes many forms in the Indian traditions of the Southwest… She can be a spirit, an archetypal mother, or a tribal daughter or woman. She is a symbol of the powerful woman, an archetype for fertility, and an agent of change and renewal.” Overall, the Yellow Woman is a predominant figure in native stories and rituals that embodies the less conventional, but still significant aspects of the strength that comes with woman-hood. As Allen says, “she is, one might say, the Spirit of Woman”.
The Native American creation myth, the Sky Woman story, has many adaptations, but they all have the same basic plot-points. A woman falls down from the sky onto our world when it is still just water and, when land is made, births her two children who become the creators and molders of land and plants and humans. There are two distinct versions: native and more patriarchal. “You’ll Never Believe What Happened” is a Great Way to Start by Thomas King is the native version that characterizes the Sky Woman as someone who is curious and determined. Who, even though she is pregnant, travels and climbs and discovers the hole that drops her down onto Earth. She hosts a contest with the animals already living on the water-covered planet to find mud, and, when that mud is placed on the back of the turtle she has been living on, she leads the dance that turns the mud into land. This Sky Woman is most definitely someone that would be seen in a ritual or as a role model. She is truly a figure who personifies the symbol of the Yellow Woman. Someone who takes charge and makes mistakes and uses her wits to find solutions.
On the other hand, Myths and Legends by William Doty has more of a patriarchal interpretation. It characterizes the Sky Woman as a passive character. She was persuaded to lie down on the clouds, to ease the pains of pregnancy, but she sank through and fell to Earth. It was not the Sky Woman, but instead the animals who decided they needed to find the mud that would make land. Finally, in a rather weird turn of events, Doty seems to imply that the Sky Woman doesn’t actually birth her children and they, somehow, are able to come out on their own. On page 321, he says, “The conflict continued within [her womb], as one of her twin infants sought to pass out under the side of his mother’s arm, while the other held him back, attempting to spare his mother this unnecessary pain. Both entered into the world in their own individual way, the first bringing trouble and strife, the second bringing freedom and peace.” This Sky Woman is not given the chance to make decisions or even talk. Everything happens to her and she, as Doty says, “wisely accepted it must be so.”
Another very noticeable difference between these two versions is the case of the Sky Woman’s children. Doty characterizes both of the twins as male. One is good and the other is evil. Because of this the “good” one is named Good Mind(Hahgwehdiyu) and the “evil” one is named Bad Mind(Hahgwehdaetgah). Good Mind honors their mother after she passes away and tries to grow things(plants and mountains) to make the Earth livable, but Bad Mind is focused only on the terror and destruction he can bring. They go to war after Bad Mind grows jealous of Good Mind, and Good Mind is clever enough to win.
In King’s version, however, Sky Woman’s twins are a boy and a girl. They are born as counterparts, not enemies or rivals. They are not good and bad; they are not opposites; they are order and chaos. In King’s telling, Order makes the Earth flat and packed, then Chaos makes mountains and valleys. Order makes rivers and forests. The rivers are straight and the forests easy to find your way around in. Chaos takes those rivers and curves them; takes the forests and makes them dense in some places and clearer in others. The animals are not scared of Chaos and they even ask her to make waterfalls. The end of the story comes when, together, the twins created men and women, and, when they are done, say, “Boy… this is as good as it gets. This is one beautiful world.”
Mostly, it seems that the native renditions of these stories focus much more on women as being the creators and bringers of things. This is true in the telling of “Sh-ah-cock and Miochin or the Battle of the Seasons”, where the chief’s daughter, Kochinnenako, brings summer, in the form of a man named Miochin, to her home to overcome winter, in the form of her husband, Sh-ah-cock. Allen, the author of Kochinnenako in Academe, examines the native and patriarchal narratives, with the patriarchal interpretation being provided by John Gunn and the other versions and analysis by Allen herself. While Gunn’s translation talks about the “battle” between summer and winter, Allen expresses how the chief’s daughter is a Yellow Woman,and is supposed to have more agency, mainly because the native story is actually part of a ritual:
“When a traditional Keres reads the tale of Kochinnenako, she listens with certain information about her people in mind: she knows, for example… that the story is a narrative version of a ceremony related to the planting of corn… [she] also knows that the story is about a ritual that takes place every year and that the battle imagery refers to event that take place during the ritual; she is also aware that Kochinnenako’s will, as expressed in her attraction to Miochin, is a central element of the ritual. She knows further that the ritual is partly about the coming of summer and… that Yellow Woman… is the center of this and other sacred rites…”
Looking at the native variations of these stories, it is clear that Native Americans have, or at least had, a deep respect for women. They were thought of as intelligent and strong and a bringer of change. While the patriarchal retellings are centered far more around the men in each tale. These retellings also make it clear how little women are valued in our patriarchal, Anglo-European society. Women are seen as quiet and passive and, even worse, like property. This theme continues through Doty’s compilation of Myths and Legends. Every other Native American myth has men as the main characters. It is their characters that are being developed; that are learning lessons and acting to change their lives or the world around them, while, when included, women take the role of caretaker or guardian or guide. Brushed to the side as the supporting roles. It may be fair to say, then, that this author would very much like to give Doty a piece of her mind and let him choke on it, especially since the book was only published in 2013.
The enraging implications of Doty’s retellings aside, it is obvious that many stories have differences based on the bias of the author. This difference between the values of the Native American tribes and our Anglo-European society can be seen in a fascinating story from the book Women Who Run With The Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, who is “Mestiza Latina [Native American/ Mexica Spanish]”. This one is less potentially fictional, and is, instead, the retelling of a real performance/ritual called “The Butterfly Dance”. It is performed by the Butterfly Maiden, who Estés describes as,
“Big, really big, like the Venus of Willendorf, like the Mother of Days… she is old, very, very old, like a woman come back from dust… She is The Butterfly arrived to strengthen the weak. She is that what most think of as not strong: age, the butterfly, the feminine. [Her] hair reaches the ground. It is thick as her maize sheaves and it is stone gray… She is the center. She brings the opposites together… [she] must be old because she represents the soul that is old. She is wide of thigh and broad of rump because she carries much. Her gray hair certifies that she need no longer observe taboos about touching others… The Butterfly Woman can touch everyone. It is her privilege to touch all, at last. This is her power. Hers is the body of La Mariposa, the butterfly.”
Estés also discusses the viewers of this dance. The native viewers are “reverent, involved,” while the “visitors,” as she calls them, look on in disbelief. This chapter of her book has Estés highlighting the theme of the power of the body. She equates the body, specifically the Butterfly Woman’s body, to land or Earth in that it feeds and creates life. The only thing that matters about the body is having a connection to the world and the wide range of emotions and how it can move to express those feelings. This Butterfly Woman embodies those connections. She is old, feminine, and not conventionally beautiful, but she is strong all the same. She is the Yellow Woman in real life.
Stories are a big deal in every part of the world, from countries with varying cultures to gossip to traditions. Beyond this, however, it is necessary to be mindful of the roles being played by those society may deem less valuable. These values and ways of life are found in almost every story. The mothers and fathers, leaders, worshipers, and through them the readers and researchers can find themselves. The descendants are the only ones who can carry the stories, carry the values and traditions, and improve them. Reinforce the fact that everyone is important and nobody deserves to be just a supporting role. There are too many stories in the world just to tell the ones from a single perspective with a single goal.
Bibliography
Allen, Paula G. “Kochinnenako in Academe: Three Approaches to Interpreting a Keres Indian Tale.” The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions, Beacon Press, Boston, Mass., 1992, pp. 334–368.
Estés Clarissa Pinkola. “La Mariposa, Butterfly Woman.” Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Ballantine Books, New York City, New York, 1995, pp. 223–227.
“Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés.” Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés – Biography, https://www.clarissapinkolaestes.com/.
King, Thomas. “‘You’ll Never Believe What Happened’ Is a Great Way to Start.” Read, Listen, Tell : Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo, Ontario, 2017, pp. 62–77.
“Yellow Woman By Leslie Marmon Silko, 1974.” Encyclopedia.com, 23 Sept. 2021, https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/yellow-woman-leslie-marmon-silko-1974.
