An Overview of Native American Oral Literature::

The Power of Words and Other Symbols

For many tribes, words and thoughts are powerful to the point of being sacred in and of themselves. For example, the Navajo believe that thought brought the entire world into being. Through speech, song and prayer, the thoughts of the creator spirits brought the world as we know it into existence. This form of creation is reflected in the following Navajo song:

"The earth will be, from ancient
times with me there is knowledge of it.
The mountains will be, from ancient
times with me there is knowledge of it.
[...]

The earth will be, from the very
beginning I have thought it.
The mountains will be, from the very
beginning I have thought it.
[...]

The earth will be, from ancient times
I speak it.
The mountains will be, from ancient times
I speak it
[...]" (Witherspoon 1977: 16).¹

Here is a contemporary version of a traditional Laguna Indian belief in the power of words and thoughts to create the universe. It is by the writer Leslie Marmon Silko:

"Ts'its'tsi'nako, Thought-Woman
is sitting in her room
and whatever she thinks about
appears.
...................................................
Thought-Woman, the spider,
named things and
as she named them
they appeared.

She is sitting in her room
thinking of a story now
I am telling you the story
she is thinking" (Silko 1977: 1).²

Words are powerful tools in Native America. In the form of prayers or song chants, for example, they can bring rain, encourage a successful hunt, ward off sickness, kill an enemy on the battlefield, attract or detract a potential lover, and maintain harmonious relationships within a group. And words are used by spirits not only to create the world, but to communicate to humans and other mortal beings through visions and dreams. Words are the medium for direct shaman-to-spirit communication, for example.

According to Kenneth Lincoln, within Indian traditions words have a life of their own. They exist "organically in the world as animate, generative beings. Words are the roots of continuing tribal origins, genetic cultural sources within nature. Indian literatures are then grounded in words that focus being within a setting, detail by detail [...]" (Lincoln 1985: 45-46).³

In Native America the importance of words must be seen within the wider symbolic context. In the words of Kenneth Lincoln, "The Indian poet sees the magic of the world through symbolic detail; if attentive, he sees as a natural visionary" (Lincoln 1985: 52). Here is the Lakota medicine man and author John Lame Deer:

"But I'm 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 meat stands for the four-legged creatures, our animal brothers, who gave of themselves so that we should live. The steam is living breath [...] We Indians live in a world of symbols and images where the spiritual and the commonplace 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, stones, trees, animals, even little insects like ants and grasshoppers. 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" (Lame Deer 1972 : 108).⁴

Notes::

• 1 - Gary Witherspoon. 1977. Language and Art in the Navajo Universe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• 2 - Leslie M. Silko. 1977. Ceremony. New York: Viking.
• 3 - Kenneth Lincoln. 1985. Native American Renaissance. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Revised Edition.
• 4 - John Fire Lame Deer with Richard Erdoes. 1972. Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions. New York: Simon & Schuster.