A History of American Literature

The Colonial and Revolutionary Periods 13

strong that he could not resist it” overcomes him “and he stretched out and touched

her.” At once, she awakens, weeping, and disappears. “If the young lover had con-

trolled his desire,” the story concludes, “then death would have been overcome.’”

The Zuni tale of a young man and woman not unlike Orpheus and Eurydice is

remarkable in a number of ways that take us back to the heart of Native American

legend. There is the acceptance, even celebration, of the cycle of life, the necessity of

death, and the inevitability of renewal. Story is inseparable from ritual in Native

American life, since both are forms of reenactment – that is, rehearsal of the past in

the present to ensure continuance in the future – so it is hardly surprising to find the

same celebratory acknowledgment of that cycle in Native American ceremony: in,

for instance, the songs as well as the stories of the Zuni. Every year, in a complex and

ancient ritual called Shalako, the Zuni work to ensure and praise the renewal of life.

The formal title of the ritual means “the Coming of the Gods.” And it derives that

name from the belief that the kachinas, who are at once patron spirits of the earth’s

forces and the Zuni ancestral dead, promised at the beginning of time to return

every December to the Zuni homeplace in New Mexico with seeds and moisture to

renew life for the coming year. The gods return incarnated in the persons of masked,

costumed men, who have spent most of the preceding year in rigorous preparation

for their duties. And the poem chanted in unison by the Shalako priests, over the

eighth night of Shalako, praises “Our father, Kawulia Pautiwa,” the creator of life:

who, “perpetuating what had been since the first beginning, / Again assumed form /

Carrying his waters, / Carrying his seeds” to the people. The performance of the

entire poem, with accompanying rituals and repetition, takes about six hours. It

confirms that “death happened for the best” because it is a pivotal part of the cycle

of life. And it insists on interdependence as well as continuance. That is, it knits sun,

earth, water, humanity, plants, and all animate beings together in one complex web

of mutually sustaining existence – as in a passage where the growth of the corn is

attributed to divine, human, and natural agencies, all working together to ensure

that, as the song puts it elsewhere, “the earth is clothed anew.”

That sense of the mutuality of all forms of life, announced in the arrival of the

corn, is a second remarkable feature of the Zuni tale of the young man and his spirit

wife. It is, after all, their friends the “owl-men” and “owl-women” who bring the

lovers back together for a while, with magic, advice, and warning. A similar sense

animates nearly all Native American song and story. It is at work, for instance, in

these lines from an Inuit song, set in the bleak environment of Alaska, about what is

called “the Great Weather,” a mysterious being that informs sea, wind, and sky and

moves human beings in directions they do not always understand:

The great sea stirs me.

...

The sky’s height stirs me.

The strong wind blows through my mind.

It carries me away

And moves my inward parts with joy.

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