Myth, folk tale and ritual in Anna Lee Walters's "The Warriors."

Marc Steinberg

In her short story "The Warriors," Anna Lee Walters alludes to two Pawnee myths: the warrior tale of Pahukatawa and the creation myth concerning the mating of Morning Star and Evening Star. These two myths well represent the vacillating spiritual condition of Uncle Ralph, a character who depicts both a lost past and a promising future. The warrior tale indicates the dissipation of the fighter spirit, and it points to Ralph's loss of faith in the once grand and triumphant tribe. But Ralph, in his role as teacher, ultimately expounds traditional values, and the mating myth illustrates the hope Ralph inscribes in his nieces, the next generation of Pawnee warriors.

The afterlife of Pahukatawa, a veritable Pawnee warrior of the early nineteenth century, has become the source for a folk tale.(1) One day in 1830(2) a company of five Pawnee men ventures on an expedition to trap beaver. Among this group is Pahukatawa; members of the enemy Sioux tribe soon capture, torture, kill and then mutilate him. His own men later abandon his remains for "there [is] not enough of him left to bury" (Grinnell 143). At this point the mythic levels of the story emerge. Pahukatawa's family visits the remains of its beloved and discovers that the body has disappeared. The distraught mother cries herself blind.

Pahukatawa re-emerges shortly thereafter and cures his mother of her blindness, the first wondrous event effected by the once deceased. He then informs his brother of enemy activities--to spy on the enemies Pahukatawa transmogrifies himself into a wolf, "the Skidi symbol of war" (Hyde 141)--and he guarantees to fulfill the wishes, however eccentric, of the brother's men. One man asks Pahukatawa that he be able to kill 10 men and then be wounded in battle; another desires to kill two men and then be killed in warfare. Whatever the desires of the men, Pahukatawa satisfies all.

Pahukatawa comes back to life because the Nahu'rac (animals) take pity on him and help restore him bodily, so that he becomes whole and carnate, except for his skull and his brains, which cannot be located. Pahukatawa makes his great powers known to the Pawnees and wishes to be treated like a demi-god. In fact, he believes only Tirawa, the venerated supreme being who rules the universe (Grinnell v), to be above him. He requests allegiance and responsibility from his brother: "when I come down to see you, you must not get tired of me" (Grinnell 156). But the brother does tire of Pahukatawa, and the powerful warrior-spirit feels betrayed and cannot help his people any longer. Inherently a warrior, Pahukatawa needs to serve some tribe, so he assists the Rees, rivals to the Pawnees. George E. Hyde places the year of betrayal at 1835 and claims that the Skidi Pawnees were very depressed because of the loss (141). That year, claims Hyde, the Pawnees constantly discussed their powerlessness resulting from Pahukatawa's departure (141).

This is the Skidi Pawnee version of the tale to which Ralph alludes in the story; there also exists a Rees version. Although the Pawnee tale depicts the heroism of the warrior, it pertains to a dark period in Pawnee history. Ralph's telling of the Pahukatawa story to his nieces works on two levels. On one level Ralph tells the story because it depicts the warrior mentality, and Ralph himself represents both a traditional and a contemporary warrior. In terms of heritage and values, Ralph succeeds as a traditional warrior, but in terms of practical life, he is self-deluded in that role. One of his nieces says: "Sister and I knew even then that Uncle Ralph had a great battlefield of his own" (12); that is, he had a great battlefield in his mind, for the Pawnees no longer wage war with rival tribes. The "battlefield" could be perceived as the timeless battlefield of survival. The Pawnees are naturally inclined to be warriors--they fight for basic values family, sustenance. Alfred C. Haddon, who documented the lifestyle of the tribe, claims:

The attitude of the Skidi Pawnee towards nature is marked by an

endeavor to escape toils and to receive those benefits that will ensure

him in this life abundance of food, happiness in his family life, his soul

to escape wandering aimlessly through space during the life after death.

(Duke 197)

Before succumbing to alcoholic fantasies, Ralph is a timeless warrior, but by the tale's end he becomes a deluded anachronism.

On a second level the myth refers to impotency. Because of Pahukatawa's betrayal the Pawnees are encumbered with a sense of powerlessness. Ralph approaches but resists this enervation. Eternally potent insofar as he bequeaths legends to the next generation, Ralph loses control by turning to alcohol, thus becoming a different brand of warrior--the hobo. These warriors fight for essentials as well--sustenance, warmth, survival. The hobos do not represent hope, but they are nevertheless a manifestation of a fighting spirit. Ralph accurately claims that "hobos are kind of like us" (14). Like the classical warriors, the hobos have "crept ... wandered ... leaped ... traveled ... scurried" (13) and generally pursued revivification. The contradiction of warrior attributes--the fierce and brave have become ragged and sickly--reflects not only the loss of the Pawnee warrior spirit but the actual loss of members of the tribe, i.e., veritable warriors.

Ralph, who by virtue of his heritage is necessarily a warrior, is not practically the traditional warrior at all (the tribe, in fact, had been scant by the time of his birth), although he has fought in Korea. For him, war means stability, for warfare is the natural state of the traditional Pawnee. Pahukatawa represents the stability and resistance for which Ralph longs. Pahukatawa says: "I shall live forever, as long as this world exists" (Grinnell 156). But just as the warrior "spirit" leaves the tribe, the spirit of the warrior becomes endangered for Ralph; Ralph becomes the haggard hobo, full of dreams and a basic will to survive, no longer futilely valiant, but necessarily persevering.

The Morning Star Evening Star myth portrays the implicit hope in Walters's story. From the east has come Morning Star,(3) the Pawnee god of war, of light, of fire (Weltfish 64). Evening Star, from the west, is the goddess of night, of germination (Weltfish 64). Morning Star and Evening Star ultimately give birth to the first human being, a girl, but prior to the conception there are great obstacles precluding the mating. In preparation for the climactic encounter in the west, Evening Star places four symbolic animals in the four corners of the world--the four animals "symbolize ... all war and conquest" (Weltfish 262). Other male gods had died attempting to penetrate this foursome, but with the aid of the sun Morning Star overcomes the obstacles, even, finally, Evening Star's "vaginal teeth" (Weltfish 82), which Morning Star penetrates with a meteor.

From this myth emerged a violent ritual that the Pawnees had celebrated each spring in order "to insure a bountiful harvest" (Irving 184). To compensate for Morning Star's struggles, at each of these ceremonies the Pawnees sacrifice a child from a rival tribe. The Pawnees capture the child months before the actual ritual killing and feed and nurture him or her until the appointed time, when the Pawnees bring the child to the altar and the priest anoints it. The same occurs on day two of the five-day ritual, and on the third day the people decorate a scaffold and build a ceremonial pit. On the fourth day they paint the child's body, red and black, symbolizing the two stars, and on day five they order the child to climb the scaffold, where he or she is tied, burned, shot in the heart, and then stabbed in the heart; finally, all the men and boys shoot arrows at the lifeless body.

The star myth refers to creation and, similarly, the star ritual refers to fertility. Following the ceremony there is "a period of sexual license to promote fertility" (Weltfish 114). The sacrifice symbolically allows Morning Star to retrieve the first child he had placed on earth. The ritual commingles life and death because in "the way of the Morning Star, death and life, war and fruitfulness [are] one process" (Weltfish 115). The ritual, a symbolic and veritable combination of expectation, horror and re-birth, ended in 1838.(4)

We see that the star myth comes to reflect a fertility that emerges from the recognition of the past. The star ritual is at once a recognition of the Pawnee past (its pre-history) and an emblematic act of production and survival. The myth, as well as Ralph's need to retell it, points to the significance of the past in the lives of the Pawnees. Paradoxically, while the myth concerns fecundity, the ritual is steeped in the images and ceremonies of death, albeit a death typifying generation. Walters has said: "My future is in my past, the values and visions of a collective past" (Carroll 72). This past remains alive in the story as a result of Ralph; his perception of the necessity to keep the spirit of the tribe intact designates him a warrior, no matter how deteriorated his personal spiritual health might be., Ralph's role as story- and myth-teller must be acknowledged. If matters, little that Ralph is an anachronism--the warrior annals he teaches his nieces may not reflect contemporary concerns, but he relates an undying, endemic hope to his two nieces. He privileges teaching the girls Pawnee words and folk tales as opposed to disciplining them (12), although, in a sense, he does discipline them with an appreciation of Pawnee heritage and values.

Ralph's great flaw is his inability to temper the burdens of a no-longer-viable past. He claims to have been born into the wrong time, but his desire to return to the town with thousands of warriors refers to absolutely no time in recent Pawnee history. There had not been 1,000 men, including children and elders, in the tribe since the late 1800s, and there had not been 2,000 men in the tribe for the century preceding that (Hyde 292-93). Because of his reliance on the past, Ralph is overwhelmed by the burdens of the present; he is "trapped in a transparent bubble of a new time" (12), i.e., tricked into seeing what he perceives to be the Pawnee past while irrevocably entrenched in the Pawnee present. This disjunction, in part, can explain his increasing reliance on alcohol.

By the end of the story Ralph becomes thoroughly incapable of surviving in the present. The now, for him, is a wasteland in which the young "don't care `bout nothing that's old" (18), where there "are no more believers ... no more warriors" (22). With disdain, he repeatedly refers to man's desire to go to the moon--progression seems fruitless to a man who has yet to reconcile himself with the past, and how can reaching the moon mean anything to someone whose ancestor is the moon itself?

As the consummate teacher Ralph represents an undying tradition. His death is ultimately replete with hope, for the Pawnees believe in reincarnation--both the Pahukatawa story and the star ritual are about reincarnation--and Ralph's fighting spirit would be helpful to future generations. Since the Pawnee dead "reside in towns occupied by related families" (EchoHead 92), the story ultimately affirms familial potency, the power of the undying spirit within this family. And Pahukatawa, after all, returns to help first his family, then his tribe.

In an interview, Walters has discussed a "federal move to take the Indianness out of each student" (Carroll 66) at a boarding school. Ralph cannot be satisfied until his nieces are well aware that they are Pawnees; their Indianness is all-important to him. Recognizing their heritage, the nieces need also recall that love, friendship and devotion are essential in the formation of the warrior Pawnee; perhaps what Ralph means by the word "beauty" is the love and devotion that the Pawnee dedicates to his or her life. To live beautifully means to be devoted to one's heritage, and this devotion denotes the proud warrior. Walters says: "We envision Pawnee life throughout time as it describes the people, their prehistory and history, and their ceremonies, and repeats ancient prayers and songs" (Talking Indian 118). Ralph embodies these characteristic Pawnee attributes. His myth-telling recounts tribal history and pre-history, and he regularly sings ceremonial songs and breaks into ceremonial dances.

"The Warriors" ultimately furnishes us with a view of both war and fertility.(5) Ralph provides lessons on life and death, which are, for the Pawnees, indistinguishable. The creation myth connotes life while the war myth connotes death, yet the former is ritualized in a sacrificial festival while the latter contains a reincarnation. Ralph's "stories of life and death [are] fierce and gentle. Warriors dangle ... in delicate balance" (12). Although there is an evident despondency in Uncle Ralph's adherence to a no longer vibrant sense of the warrior, the ending of the story is affirmative and hopeful because of the implied fertility, the girls' awareness of Pawnee myths and values. Comprehending the meaning of the Pahukatawa myth becomes the first step in the process of awareness, and understanding the star myth ultimately undercuts the solemnity inherent in the Pahukatawa warrior myth. Amidst Ralph's final visit one of the nieces recalls the myths that she had learned from Ralph; like her uncle, she will comprehend grief, survival, and beauty, all that Pawnee mythology entails--she becomes Uncle Ralph incarnate.

(1) My summary of the Pahukatawa tale is, for the most part, a summarization of George Bird Grinnell's story from Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk Tales (142-60).

(2) Grinnell was not aware of the date when he related the warrior story. In fact, he may not have known that Pahukatawa was an historical figure.

(3) For my review of the star myth I have culled information primarily from Gene Welffish's The Lost Universe. He also provides valuable accounts of the subsequent star ritual.

(4) According to Weltfish, the last child sacrificed was a 15-year-old girl named Haxti. She was killed on 22 February 1838 (117).

See John Treat Irving, Jr.'s Indian Sketches: Taken During an Expedition to the Pawnee Tribes for an account of the ceremony. Irving's associate, Major Dougherty, learned of the abduction of a young Cheyenne woman and attempted to save the captive. Dougherty persuaded the Pawnee chief to release the girl, but upon her release she was shot with an arrow, mutilated and beheaded (184-88).

(5) According to Weltfish, "the connection between war and fertility is a leitmotif that runs through much of Pawnee sacred ceremonialism" (99).

Works Cited

Carroll, Rhonda. "The Values and Visions of a Collective Past: An Interview with Anna Lee Walters." American Indian Quarterly 16 (1992): 63-73.

Duke, Philip, ed. "The Morning Star Ceremony of the Skidi Pawnees as Described by Alfred C. Haddon." Plains Anthropologist 34 (1989): 193-203.

Echo-Hawk, Roger C. "Pawnee Mortuary Traditions." American Indian Culture and Research journal 16 (1992): 77-99.

Grinnell, George Bird. Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1961.

Hyde, George E. Pawnee Indians. De Denver: U of Denver P, 1951.

Irving, John Treat, Jr. Indian Sketches: Taken During An Expedition to the Pawnee Tribes. 1833. Ed. John Francis McDermott. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1955.

Walters, Anna Lee. Talking Indian: Reflections on Survival and Writing. Ithaca, New York: Firebrand, 1992.

--. "The Warriors." The Sun Is Not Merciful. Ithaca, New York: Firebrand, 1985. 11-26.

Weltfish, Gene. The Lost Universe. New York: Basic Books, 1965.

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