“Manabozho”: A Native American Resurrection Myth by Nancy Tenfelde Clasby s the canon of American literature changes, more Native American literature is finding its way into the standard anthologies. Indian tales present unique difficulties for most readers, in part because of genre. As the products of an oral culture, the tales “mean” in ways that more familiar forms such as essays and short stories do not. Often the tales are parts of cycles of sacred myth, vehicles for the most important truths of preliterate cultures. Chanted to music and accompanied by dance, the tales were inseparable from sacred ritual. They were committed to memory for generation after generation and were associated with the vitality of the tribe. In Homer’s Greece the word for truth was aletheia, meaning “not forgotten.” The remembered tales were the truth, and as long as the tales were told the tribe lived. The difference between the “tribal ear” and the “existential eye” scanning the printed page (Lincoln 9) is enormous but may be bridged in part by understanding the symbol systems of Native American thought. Although great cultural differences exist among the Indian nations, they share a reliance on symbolic language as a crucial aspect of communication. Lame Deer, a Sioux medicine man, provides a description of the highly developed symbol systems playing a common role in tribal life: But I am an Indian. I think about ordinary common things like this pot. The bubbling water comes from the rain cloud. It represents the sky. The fire comes from the sun which warms us all—men, animals, trees. . .. The steam is living breath. . . . We Indians live in a world of symbols and images where the spiritual and the common-place are one. To you symbols are just words, spoken or written in a book. To us they are part of nature, part of ourselves— the earth, the sun, the wind and the rain... . We try to understand them not with the head but with the heart, and we need no more than a hint to give us the meaning. (Lincoln 26-27) Studies in Short Fiction 30 (1993): 583-94, © 1993 by Newberry College. 583584 Studies in Short Fiction Much current criticism seeks to make Indian symbols accessible by establishing “semantic fields,” or “typologies,” that group analogous figures in the tales of various native cultures (Bierhorst 78-79). Brian Swann’s Smoothing the Ground, for instance, contains essays tracing such figures as Coyote the trickster (Buller) or the Chinook Grizzly Woman (Hymes) through their permutations in the legends of several tribes. Valuable and interesting as these studies are, they raise difficult questions regarding the interpretation of symbolic matrices. Some schools of anthropology and psychology interpret myths as expressions of archaic levels of conscious development. Resurrection imagery, for instance, is thought to express anxiety about food-gathering. Such figures as Ceres and Billy Budd, whatever their historical context, are viewed as sublimated vegetation deities. Other readings, including those of Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye, treat the universal archetypes as expressions of typical stages in the development of consciousness. This method seems more suited to literary analysis since it acknowledges the deep roots and ontogenic quality of the archetypes, but also recognizes the complexities of new meaning emerging as symbol systems evolve. If we are to understand myth in its fully exfoliated manifestations, we must view it in the broadest, most comparative ways. Modern readers may be better able to bridge the gap between themselves and Indian tribal consciousness by extending the typological method to include not only Native American analogues, but also the more familiar figures and motifs of Western myth. “Manabozho, or the Great Incarnation of the North; An Algic Legend”! is an Algonquin tale translated in the 1830s by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. It 1§choolcraft was an Indian agent on Mackinac Island at Sault Ste. Marie. He married an Indian woman, learned the Algonquin dialects and customs, and translated a great body of Native American literature (Williams ix-xxi). 2$choolcraft expressed his intent to replicate the oral texts as faithfully as possible: Written down at the moment, and consequently in haste, no opportunity for literary refinement was presented; and after the lapse of some time, we have not judged it expedient to make any material alterations in the language adopted, while our impressions were fresh. A literal adherence to the sense of the original, to the simplicity of the narration, and, in many instances, to the peculiar mode of expression of the Indians, is thus preserved, while the order of the incidents is throughout strictly the same. (Clements 181) Mentor Williams presents a representative selection of Schoolcraft’s views on translation (301-07). William M. Clements presents a comprehensive view of Schoolcrafi’s talents and limitations as a textmaker. See also Dell Hymes (In Vain 59- 60) on general problems of translating Indian texts.“Manabozho”: A Native American Resurrection Myth 585 later became the source for Longfellow’s Indian epic, “Hiawatha.”3 The tale is compact—about 12 pages long—and is written in a spare, direct style, full of action and humor, good advice and observations about the natural world. For all its lightness and brilliance, the tale has the gravity of sacred literature: the strongly drawn demigods and monsters re-enact the sacrificial rite of death and resurrection. Manabozho’s story follows the pattern Paul Ricoeur calls the Adamic myth (167). The path begins in Eden, then drops into the fallen world where all sorts of trials and adventures occur.t The hero must pass through the underworld before rising again and entering the promised Kingdom. The tale of Manabozho begins in the wasteland where the boy lives alone with his Grandmother. The pair are in exile, literally fallen, because Grandmother was thrown to Earth from her native planet, and her only child, a beautiful daughter, was kidnapped by the West Wind. The daughter died giving birth to Manabozho. When the boy learns of his parentage he sets out to challenge his father, Ningabiun, the West Wind.’ As he strides across the continent seeking his father/adversary, he becomes a giant, covering miles with every step. The quest itself realizes his nature; by the time he reaches the western mountains he is a demigod. His father embraces him, but Manabozho only pretends to be reconciled. One evening he asks his father if there is anything he fears. Reluctantly, the West Wind admits that he is vulnerable to a certain sort of black rock. Like Superman’s Kryptonite or Balder’s mistletoe, the black rock makes the otherwise invincible god vulnerable to injury. Manabozho finds the black rock and then asks his father if he caused the mother’s death. When the Wind replies “Yes,” 3Longfellow substituted the Iroquois name “Hiawatha” for Manabozho. See Williams xix-xx and 313-18 for notes on the relationship between Schoolcraft and Longfellow. See also Chase Osborn and Stith Thompson. Andrew Wiget (5-10) provides a good summary of the Native American Earth- Diver myth complex, to which “Manabozho” belongs. The story commonly involves a fall from a Skyworld into the troubled world of history. In the Maidu myth, for example, the protagonists float on a little raft, guided by the Earth-Initiate, until the raft runs aground on the newly created shores of history. In the Iroquois version, the Woman Who Fell from the Sky gives birth to a daughter who subsequently bears rival twin sons. The quarrel “erupts into history” as the boys, who represent hunting and agriculture, struggle for dominance. SJohn Bierhorst (83-84) describes the Ritual of the Four World Quarters, common in Indian mythology. The hero, or celebrant, must make a “sunwise circuit” of the points of the compass, resting finally at the point past the one where he began. The rites are associated with cyclical patterns of rebirth. The chief god often resides in the West, as does Manabozho’s father.586 Studies in Short Fiction [The] battle commenced on the mountains. The West was forced to give ground. Manabozho drove him across rivers, and over mountains and lakes and at last he came to the brink of this world. (68) Finally the god cries out “Hold! . .. My son, you know my power and that it is impossible to kill me.” The West Wind promises to give Manabozho a place with his other sons, but first he sends him on a mission. “Go,” he says, “and do good.” Earth is “infested with large serpents, beasts and monsters, who make great havoc among the inhabitants.”6 As in John’s Gospel, 3: 16, the father sends the son to “do good” for the people of the earth, thus beginning the archetypal movement toward death and resurrection. The hero must match himself or herself against forces no one can reasonably hope to overcome. Out of this freely chosen exposure to destruction flows a capacity to “go out and do good.” Power to give life flows from a free acceptance of death. Images of the sacrificial agon of the dying hero are frequent in Western mythology, appearing in the stories of Osiris, Dionysus, the Green Knight and many others. Its most enduring and influential appearance is Jesus’s enactment of the mythic paradigm. The significance of death and resurrection imagery, in tribal myth or in contemporary fiction, is linked to stages in the development of consciousness. The infantile, unconscious experience of unity gives way to the painful, separative process of ego development. The emerging self experiences a fallen world requiring heroic struggle against strong forces within and without that threaten the immature ego. When the hero succeeds, painfully, in establishing an independent ego, the other peril, Aubris, emerges. His own aggressive egotism may tempt him to a disastrous separation from the collective forces of the unconscious. The successful hero is called upon instead to submerge the hard-won ego, to risk it in “doing good” for the community. The seed must fall into the ground if it is to bear fruit, and the one who would save his life must lose it. Images of death and resurrection occur at all phases of development but have particular significance for the final stage. Here, the ego, power-oriented, sharply focused, is called upon to transform itself once more. The last, rare transformation results in what Paul Ricoeur calls a “second naivete,” a simplicity and detachment of vision often called wisdom. One must become as a little child to enter into the kingdom of the twice-born. Prophets and visionaries of all cultures have sought the unitive vision, the wedding of conscious and unconscious principles flowing from the final metamorphosis. ‘Compare the Navaho myth of the twin sons of Changing Woman who challenge their father, the sun, When they pass the test, Sun arms them and sends them out to slay dragons and seek knowledge for the Navaho people.“Manabozho”: A Native American Resurrection Myth 587 The archetypes, then, express the paths of personal development. All psychic development is painful in that it involves the breaking down of old forms, old identities, as they become inadequate vessels for new revelations. The perilous rites of passage—birth, death, puberty, marriage, pregnancy— present themselves as transformative. Out of the metamorphosis emerges a new consciousness, a person reborn. The mythic hero is typically of mysterious parentage. The hidden antecedents of Oedipus, Moses, King Arthur and many others point to the unformulated identity of the hero. Until he sets out on the journey, the hero does not know himself. By committing to the heroic way, the hero realizes his identity as the king’s son. In Manabozho’s story, two feminine figures also appear: one is the lost, beautiful mother of the originary garden; the other is the Grandmother, a fallen surrogate from whom he must free himself. If the hero is to bring life to the wasteland he must leave the land of the mothers and find his spirit-father. That is, development to maturity requires that he leave the world of instincts and emotions to conform himself to the masculine rule of law and self-restraint.” Manabozho’s first task as a fully fledged hero is suggested by his Grandmother, called Noko, who asks for oil for her hair. Noko is somewhat negatively presented in that she represents the elementary, binding aspects of the unconscious, but she is by no means a monster. She is not like the horrifying Grizzly Woman of Chinook legend or the Hopi Jimpson Weed Girls. If we contrast her to Grendel’s mother or to the Sphinx who challenged Oedipus we see that the Grandmother is a relatively benign presence, not even a wicked stepmother. To get the oil for his Grandmother, Manabozho determines to catch the King of Fish who lives on the far side of the great lake. “Me-she-nah-ma- gwai,” he calls from his canoe, “Take hold of my bait” (69). The wary Kingfish sends a trout to take the bait. Manabozho pulls him up and cries “Why did you take hold of my hook? Esa! Esa! you ugly fish!” The trout drops off and Manabozho tries a second time. Another fish is made to bite the hook, and again the hero rejects the ploy. He shouts incessantly until the Kingfish, in exasperation, swallows the bait. The “three tries” device points to the hero’s tenacity. When the Kingfish at last reaches the surface of the water, he swallows Manabozho and his canoe in one gulp. The hero comes to his senses only to realize that he is “in the fish’s belly.” The battle with the chthonic monster, a reptile, dragon or great fish, is a universal emblem of the struggle against chaos. Leviathan represents 7 References to masculine and feminine in this context are only tangentially related to gender. The developing ego of women and men is perceived as “masculine.” Both the unconscious and the transcendent are manifested in “feminine” form.588 Studies in Short Fiction aboriginal, formless power, come to drag all living things down to darkness. Powerful forces rise from the unconscious to destroy the fragile ego. Being swallowed by a fish represents a descent into the underworld, into death itself. Like Jonah on his night sea journey, or Dante, or Joseph in the pit, Manabozho must go down to mortal darkness. He continues to struggle, striking the heart of the beast with his war club. The fish’s response is characteristic of the wry understatement of the tale. He observes, “I am sick at stomach for having swallowed this dirty fellow Manabozho.” Eventually, with the help of a squirrel hiding in his canoe,’ Manabozho succeeds in killing the great fish, and the carcass washes up on an island. The hero remains in the darkness of the corpse for three days, then he hears “birds scratching on the body, and all at once the rays of light broke in” (70). His resurrection is possible because he has persevered, overcoming the underworld, and his triumphant return home with the precious oil marks the conclusion of Manabozho’s first death/rebirth experience. Manabozho’s relationship to his animal helpers is related to his role as a trickster figure, one of the most difficult archetypes for modern readers to understand.? Like Odysseus, Cuchulainn and other tricksters, Manabozho is clever and deceitful, using his wits as well as his physical powers. Some of his tricks are surprising: he has, for instance, a disconcerting habit of deceiving his animal friends into a sense of security, then slaughtering them. In one instance, when a bird leads him to the home of his enemy, he offers the bird a medal. While appearing to pin on the medal, Manabozho “attempted slyly to wring the bird’s head off, but it escaped him . . .” (76). The narrator notes: “He had found out all he wanted to know, and then desired to conceal the knowledge of his purposes by killing his informant.” Perhaps this apparently callous violence reflects an obscure sense of Manabozho’s transcendent 8Manabozho is frequently aided by friendly animals, Images of helpful little creatures like Snow White’s seven dwarves or the ants who help Psyche in her task of sorting grain are common in folktale and myth. Some psychologists think they xepresent repressed, underdeveloped aspects of the psyche. They are unacknowledged capacities which in an emergency just might emerge to help out. Because the hero seeks to be whole and tries to acknowledge all aspects of himself, he is frequently rewarded by the surprising emergence of unrecognized capabilities. °Key works for understanding the enormously complex trickster figure are Paul Radin’s The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, C. G. Jung’s “On the Psychology of the Trickster figure” and Joseph Henderson’s “Ancient Myths and iModern Man.” Galen Buller and Andrew Wiget provide helpful summaries of the discussion. The Tricksters, such figures as Coyote and Hare in Indian literature, are “forerunners of the savior . . . bestial and divine.” Jung relates the trickster to the “shadow figure,” a projection of one’s own unacknowledged bad characteristics. The shadow often functions as a scapegoat. Like Prometheus, tricksters are rebellious, deceptive forces, dangerous, but bringing great blessings with them.“Manabozho”: A Native American Resurrection Myth 589 aspect. He is at one with nature, calling the trees and animals brother and grandfather, and yet he is also a god, standing somehow above the cycles of nature. His dark side may represent the indifference and cruelty sometimes experienced even in lives lived in harmony with natural rhythms. Manabozho’s next adventure is a battle against Pearl Feather, the Manito of Wealth. For this dangerous excursion, he needs new arrowheads to pierce the armor of the Manito, who is clad in shiny, impenetrable wampum. His search for weapons takes him to the secret tent of the arrowmaker. There, He saw the old artificer at work and so discovered his process. He also beheld the old man’s daughter, and perceived that she was very beautiful. He felt his breast beat with a new emotion, but said nothing. (70) Just as Vulcan, the arms maker, was the keeper of Venus, so this old artificer stands guard over the most beautiful of Indian women. We hear nothing further about this nameless beauty until the very last lines of the tale, in which we learn that Manabozho marries the arrowmaker’s daughter.'0 The hero’s Grandmother suggests that he fast in the forest for several days before his battle with the Manito. Her motive, however, is not pure, and Manabozho, always suspicious, wonders why she appears so eager for him to leave the lodge. The narrator observes: “She had a secret motive, which she carefully hid from him. Deception always begets suspicion” (71). Manabozho goes off, ostensibly to fast, but conceals himself near Grandmother’s home. “He had not been long in his place of concealment, when a paramour in the shape of a bear entered the lodge.” Grandmother and the long-haired bear appear to be “improperly familiar.” The narrator tells us, “At that time people lived to a very great age, and [Manabozho] perceived from the marked attentions of this visitor, that he did not think a grandmother too old to be pleased with such attentions” (71). Manabozho, angered and chagrined, decides to teach the bear a lesson. He sets fire to its coat and it runs off “in a full blaze.” Later, he feigns ignorance of the affair when his indignant Grandmother inquires. The operative contrast in the anecdote of the bear is between the manly custom of fasting represented by the young, hero, and the passion and animal sensuality projected here on Grandmother and the bear. Behind the humor of the text is a suggestion that the hero must be wary of the seductive ruses of the feminine unconscious. The developing ego is never fully safe from the possibility of a failure of self-control. 10The Indian tale’s spare treatment of the “love interest” is in considerable contrast to Longfellow’s romantic development of the feminine characters. “Hiawatha” includes a lengthy, lyric description of the bright-cyed maiden whom Longfellow names Minnehaha. He also expands the role of the hero’s lost mother, naming her Wenonah, the “Lily of the Prairie.”590 Studies in Short Fiction Manabozho fights the Shining Manito all day, but he is clothed in pure wampum and the hero can make no headway, even with his special arrows. A woodpecker tells him that the Manito has a weak point under the lock of hair on the crown of his head, and the hero is able at last to dispatch the Manito of wealth. He returns home to be greeted with victorious songs and dances. “Glory fired his mind” (72). What follows is a witty parable about the dangers of bubris. Manabozho’s ego is inflated by his success, and he determines to “outdo all others.” One evening he encounters “a great magician in the form of an old wolf with six young ones” (73). The hero, “fond of novelty,” asks to be transformed into a wolf. The magician obliges him, but Manabozho will not settle for being an ordinary wolf; he demands a long, bushy tail to mark what he is sure will be his special prowess as a hunter. The pack sets off and the wolf becomes his mentor, teaching him a series of lessons about appearance and reality. One of the pack drops a small bundle, which the old wolf asks Manabozho to pick up. “Esa,” he replies, “What will I do with a dirty dogskin?” When the magician takes it up, it becomes a beautiful robe. “Oh, I will carry it now,” says Manabozho. “Oh no,” says the wolf, and it becomes a robe of pearls as he carries it off. Similar metamorphoses occur when a “dirty dog’s tooth” becomes a silver arrow, and a mess of vomit becomes prime steak. Manabozho’s ego blinds him; he cannot sec as truly as the magician, nor can he measure up to the wolf pack as a hunter. At the end of this series of humbling lessons the old wolf says to Manabozho, “It is not a long tail that makes a hunter.” The chastened hero “bit his lip” (74). Like Tiresias and Merlin, the wolf is a magician-mentor. These prophetic figures represent a wholeness of vision lacking in the young hero. Very often the mentor warns his charge against bubris, the over-valuation of the conscious ego. He serves as a reminder of the powers of instinct and the unconscious mind. Because these are associated with the feminine and animal world, the mentor is often hermaphroditic, like Tiresias, or part animal, like Chiron, the centaur guide for Theseus and Hercules. At a middle stage of development, the ego rejects instinct and intuition in favor of an exclusive reliance on the masculine forces of detachment, control, manipulation. If the hero’s will to power drives him to live only in the paternal world of light and. logic he will lose touch with the realities of the world of instinct and the senses. The hero who entirely dissociates himself from the image-making, intuitive powers will not see with both eyes, will not realize his full capacities. When Manabozho has learned his lesson from the old wolf it is time to return to human form. The magician, however, sends one of his young wolves to be the hero’s companion. The image of the hero and his helper is worldwide but, as D. H. Lawrence observed, it seems especially common in. American narrative. One thinks of Leather Stocking and Chingachgook,“Manabozho”: A Native American Resurrection Myth 591 Huck and Jim, Ishmael and Queequeg, the Lone Ranger and Tonto.!! The dominant figure in each pair represents the masculine ego, the other the feminine, intuitive aspect of the psyche. They work together, yet are not really one. The devalued side is vulnerable to danger and thus is often the catalyst for action. Manabozho’s young companion, the wolf, soon falls victim to the supreme villain, the Prince of Serpents, whom Manabozho must then confront. Their climactic conflict is presented in a series of images rich in archetypal significance. Manabozho stalks the serpent on a sandy beach by the great lake. Many other serpents, red and yellow, rise from the calm water, but the greatest of them is the pure white Prince. Like Moby Dick, the white serpent embodies the ambiguous forces lurking below the dark surface of the planet. Manabozho succeeds in piercing his side with an arrow and runs away. The serpents pursue him, and the waters, their native element, rise. The hero is forced to run to the highest mountain and to climb the tallest tree. Still the waters rise. “Grandfather,” he implores the tree, “stretch yourself” (77). Three times the tree stretches toward the sky, Manabozho clinging to its topmost branches, submerged to his chin in water. The image of the hero hanging from the world tree recalls such figures as Wotan the Old Norse god hanging from “the windy tree . . . for nights full nine.” Buddha received illumination at the foot of the Bodhi tree. Biblical myth begins with the tree in the garden, bright fruit on its branches and the serpent coiled about its base. The central image of the New Testament is Christ suspended from the tree of the cross. Joseph Campbell relates the tree to the axis mundi (Mythic Image 190), “the still point at the center of the turning world.” Rooted in the abyss, reaching to the pole star, it spans the distance between the opposites of experience.12 While no single meaning can be drawn from this nexus of symbols, the images point to the sacrificial agon and the change of consciousness it brings. Wotan, for instance, hung himself from the ash tree and sacrificed his left eye to learn the secret of the resolution of opposites. His ordeal opened his inner eyes to a wisdom transcending the binary opposites. The tree reaches from depths to heights and the enlightened one, like the Buddha, has gone beyond the opposites of desire and fear. Blind Tiresias, partly male, partly female, symbolizes a reconciled consciousness, one in which the ego is aligned with 11In the Red Horn cycle, the hero has a companion thunderbird called Storms- As-He-Walks who compensates for the hero’s shortcomings. The Seneca twins Flint and Sprout, and the Navaho pair, Monster-Slayer and Born-for-Water, represent two equal sides of human nature, active and passive, reflective and dynamic, Manabozho calls the wolf Brother, but the animal is clearly a subsidiary figure. 12Compare John Bierhorst’s description of Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent, and the Ceiba tree, a similar symbol of death and resurrection (83-84).592 Studies in Short Fiction the prepersonal forces of the unconscious. Manabozho has been separated from his young wolf, who represents his intuitive, unconscious side, but when the ordeal is over, he will embody within himself the powers signified by the wolf. His task will be finished and great gifts will flow to the people because of his wholeness. Just as Manabozho, clinging to his tree, is about to despair, the waters begin to recede. The hero gazes out over a flooded world, and determines to make it new. As Noah sent a raven and a dove from his ark, Manabozho sends a loon, and then a muskrat. He wants the animals to fetch up a little earth for him to use as a base for the new creation. Both creatures die, but he breathes his own life into the muskrat and sends it for a third try. The reanimated beast represents an extension of the god’s own breath or spirit. The muskrat comes up clutching a little earth in one of his paws, “from which, together with the carcass of the dead loon, {Manabozho] created a new earth as large as the former had been, with all living animals, fowls and plants” (77). Marduk in the Enuma Elish fashioned a world out of the divine body of the earth goddess; Manabozho, in using the bodies of his animals, draws symbolically upon his own being. As in the biblical flood story, chaos appears triumphant, but eventually a new world is shaped. Noah’s ark is like a seed pod resting on top of the mountain; all the codes for the generation of life are carried within its hull. Manabozho, hanging from the limbs of his tree, is like the seed of the tree of life, carrying within himself all the regenerative forms. The hero is not content with his new world, however, because the serpent still lives. He finds the mother of the Serpent Prince in the form of an old crone, gathering medicinal herbs to heal her son. Manabozho kills her; then, assuming her skin, limps off to the palace, muttering and singing. When he is admitted to the sickroom, he finds his arrow has pierced half its length into the serpent’s side. “Giving the dart a sudden thrust” (78), he slays the serpent. The others chase him, but he hides, then returns seeking the corpse of the monster. In a remarkable scene, Manabozho flays the serpent and draws its potent skin over his body. Picking up his war club, he advances on the army of serpents, who are horrified at the specter of their dead prince advancing on them. Some flee and the hero slaughters the rest. The image of drawing on the serpent skin suggests a total assimilation of the powers represented by the beast. The hero appropriates the potentially destructive instinctual forces and brings them into the service of the whole psyche, The tale of Manabozho moves immediately from the destruction of the Serpents to the single sentence announcing the homecoming and marriage of the hero. “Having accomplished the victory over the reptiles, Manabozho returned to his former place of dwelling and married the arrowmaker’s daughter” (79). The hero myth often concludes with the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage of the gods. The prince and princess who live happily ever“Manabozho”: A Native American Resurrection Myth 593 after represent many opposed principles finally brought into conjunction. The Bride is the lost feminine element, and the hero can go home again, back to the garden to reclaim the feminine principle. But since mythic movement is spiral, a Yeatsian gyre, the Bride exists in a different dimension from the primal Mother. During the period of ego-formation, the feminine principles associated with instincts and unruly feelings appear in a negative aspect. On the newly achieved plane, however, the princess is an anima or soul figure, a manifestation of the flesh infused by spirit. She represents instinct become wisdom, Eve become Sophia. Marriage appears on the first level of myth as a symbol of renewed fertility. Pharaoh as the sun god weds the dark earth of Egypt as a promise of new life. In John’s Apocalypse, the wedding of the Lamb symbolizes the achievement of a new revelation of the divine. The Bride of the Lamb is the New Jerusalem, rising on the ruins of the Garden of Eden. The Adamic myth is complete with the reappropriation of the Mother and the lost garden, experienced as the reward of the heroic quest. Peace, fertility and wholeness flow from the marriage of opposites. “Manabozho” offers readers a particularly lucid experience of one of the great archetypal patterns. Its fresh, vivid images drawn from Algonquin culture embody the resurrection myth in a striking way. By examining the symbolic structures of Native American tales we approach the unforgotten truths ‘of oral culture. For modern readers, habituated as we are to the conventions of our own genres, Indian tales open the doors of consciousness, allowing long buried meaning to emerge. Works CITED Bierhorst, John. “American Indian Verbal Art and the Role of the Literary Critic.” Swann 78-87. Buller, Galen. “Comanche and Coyote, the Culture Maker.” Swann 245-61. Campbell, Joseph. The Mythic Image, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1974. Clements, William M. “Schoolcraft as Textmaker.” Journal of American Folklore 103 (April-June 1990): 177-92. Henderson, Joseph L. “Ancient Myths and Modern Man.” Man and His Symbols. Ed. Carl G. Jung. New York: Dell, 1964. 95-157. Hymes, Dell. In Vain I Tried to Tell You: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1981. ~--. “Victoria Howard’s ‘Gitskux and his Older Brother’: A Clackamas Chinook Myth.” Swann 129-70. Lincoln, Kenneth. “Native American Literatures.” Swann 39-56. Osborn, Chase, and Stellanova Osborn. Schoolcraft-Longfellow-Hiawatha, Lancaster, PA: Jacques Cattell, 1943. Radin, Paul. The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. 1956. New York: Schocken, 1972. Ricoeur, Paul. The Symbolism of Evil. New York: Harper, 1967. Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe. Algic Researches, Comprising Inquiries Respecting the594 Studies in Short Fiction Mental Characteristics of the North American Indians. First Series. Indian Tales and Legends. New York: Harper, 1839. ---. The Fire Plume: Legends of the American Indians Collected by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft. Ed. John Bierhorst. New York: Dial, 1969. . “Manabozho.” Williams 65-83. . “Manabozho or The Great Incarnation of the North.” The American Tradition in Literature. Ed. George Perkins. 7th ed. Vol. |. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990. 485-95. [A current, widely available anthology. ] ‘Swann, Brian. ed. Smoothing the Ground: Essays on Native American Oral Literature. Berkeley: U of California P, 1983. ‘Thompson, Stith. “The Indian Legend of Hiawatha.” PMLA 37 (1922): 128-40. Wiget, Andrew, Native American Literature, Boston: Twayne, 1985. Williams, Mentor L., ed. Schoolcraft’s Indian Legends. East Lansing: Michigan State UP, 1956.