Oral Patterns of Performance: Story and Song

by Barre Toelken

Overview

To many Native American cultures, songs and stories are dramatic enactments of reality, and words bring reality into existence. In this chapter from his award-winning book, The Anguish of Snails, Toelken thoughtfully approaches a number of stories from Native American traditions, discussing how narratives can be touchstones of shared values among closely associated traditional people and how songs and stories go far beyond an evening's entertainment or "lessons” about life. A traditional narrative can be a culturally structured way of thinking and of experiencing the patterns that make culture real.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780874219531
Publisher:	Utah State University Press
Publication date:	02/15/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	56
File size:	1 MB

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Oral Patterns of Performance

Story and Song

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By Barre Toelken

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2003 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87421-967-8

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CHAPTER 1

Oral Patterns of Performance: Story and Song

Everything is made possible through stories.

— Hugh Yellowman, Navajo, explaining why stories are told

I've been poor most of my life; I've known only one song.

— Little Wagon, Navajo, on the importance of songs

Early in the Navajo creation story, First Man and First Woman (who are depicted as gendered holy beings made up of colored light), hear a strange noise on a nearby mountain shrouded by clouds. Apprehensive about what this unknown noise may signify, but feeling a need to investigate, First Man rejects First Woman's advice to avoid the dangers, saying:

Do not be afraid ...
Nothing will go wrong. For I will surround myself with song.
I will sing as I make my way to the mountain.
I will sing while I am on the mountain.
And I will sing as I return.
I will surround myself with song.
You may be sure that the words of my song will protect me.

What First Man finds on the mountain is a baby girl, crying; it is Changing Woman, the first real personage in Navajo mythic history, and the closest to a full deity of all the sacred people (yei) in the Navajo pantheon. He brings her back to First Woman, and the two, totally clueless about what to do with a baby, set about ritualizing her life and physical development by creating proper words and stories.

Much of the Beautyway story and ceremony focuses on the discovery and maturation of Changing Woman, and today, whenever a hogan is blessed, or a wedding is performed, or a young woman celebrates her first menstruation, songs from this extensive ceremony are sung, the words vividly dramatizing for contemporary people their identity with the sacred past. For Navajos, actually uttering words creates the reality of their world: Spoken or sung language is a creative act; hence, people avoid speaking of things they don't want to see appear in the world around them. One of the most terrible things to say out loud (if a Navajo carpenter pounds his thumb with a hammer, for instance) is shash, "bear," for — uttered in passion — the word may really summon a bear, and bears are ritually (and factually) difficult to deal with.

Spoken words, especially when enhanced or intensified by repetition, ritual structures, and musical phrases, are the principal means Navajos use to create a sense of order and harmony in the world they inhabit. The medicines administered to a patient in any Navajo healing ceremony are a response to the symptoms being treated, but healing in any deeper sense comes through the power of the words in the ritual. Along with doing sand paintings (which are symmetrical, cyclic, oriented to the universe, and usually four sided), placing the ritual inside a hogan (which is round, oriented to the east, and represents the womb of Changing Woman), and using four-way repetition in the songs (which represents the four directions), Navajo curing ceremonies have the same patterns and assumptions we have been discussing. Most of these rituals are not secret and are not conducted by mysterious shamans but by hataaii, literally "singers," who may be either male or female (hence the uselessness of the stereotypical English term "medicine man") and spend about fifteen to twenty years learning the songs, sand paintings, stories, and medications for one ceremony or "Way." Most of these singers know several Ways, which are healing rituals envisioned as moving along a trail; obviously, even mastering one is an intellectual achievement of some distinction.

By contrast, a shaman (the term is based on a Siberian Tungus word, so the second syllable has nothing to do with gender) is defined as a person who has gained control over the processes of life and death — usually by having died and come back to life. Shamans are most active in cultures which depend on a lively interaction between the living and the dead — hunting cultures are the most prominent examples — where the death of animal relatives is explained and mediated, and breaches with the animal world healed, by the magical ability of the shaman to visit the world of dead animals. Such a person would be called a witch by the Navajos and other southwestern tribes, mostly agriculturalists, whose way of viewing reality entails the verbal encouragement of health and fertility for plants and people alike.

Much has been written about these ceremonies, and since our object is to deal with expressions readily available to outsiders, I want only to call special attention to the concept of the creative power in spoken words. When I was a patient in a Beautyway ceremony a few years ago (urged on me by my adoptive Navajo family to promote stability in my life), we reached the part of the story where the Hero Twins, sons of Changing Woman (fathered by the Sun and some drops of water since there were no men yet), are on their way to visit their father, the Sun, who is protected by powerful warriors whose job it is to fight off anyone who approaches. Not only was the story being told — in part through ritual songs — but we were to think of ourselves as actually being there, floating up to the Sun on the same feather that was transporting the Hero Twins, empowered by the words uttered by the singer. As we got closer to the Sun and the battle became fiercer, my Navajo family members began shouting words of encouragement like "Don't give up!" "We're almost there!" "Protect us with your spear!" What I had been doing for an hour during the ceremony was holding over my head a foot-long, chipped stone spearhead, which was in fact getting heavier every second. The singer, Jimmie Descheeny, had also tied a row of stone arrowheads around my head, and I began to realize that these armaments were my means to reach the Sun and assure the safety of those traveling with me; I, the sick one, provided the only protection. After our success, which was celebrated with several fourfold song stanzas, the story described us returning to earth on a lightning bolt. Imaginary, you may say. Sure, in the same way a gripping play or film is imaginary: If it's done right, it becomes a very vivid experience.

Not all tribes believe that spoken language is creative in the same way the Navajos do, but every tribe I know believes that songs and stories are dramatic enactments of reality which go far beyond mere entertainment. A good story is like an effective ritual: It puts you there, makes you experience or reexperience something. And that something is an otherwise-abstract but real idea from your culture, made concrete and experiential through the imagination and knowledge which you bring to the story performance, enhanced by the power of the performer.

Indeed, narrative structure is so central to human thinking that some scientists believe that story is the engram of our species. In the same vein, John D. Niles, a scholar of oral literature, has argued that we should be called Homo narrans (storytelling man). In the following songs and stories, then, let's take story structure and song nuance seriously and ask, "What does this song or story dramatize or embody?" (not "What does it describe?" or "What does it explain?"). Many Native stories end with a formula like "and that's how the bear got a short tail," leading listeners to assume that such tales are primitive (and childish) ways of accounting for the features of the natural world. But when you ask the storytellers, they don't see the story as an explanation of anything but rather, an enactment of something: A bear is dramatized as lazy, or uncaring, or selfish, or careless; because he fails to act appropriately, he gets his tail caught in the ice, and, persisting in being selfish or egotistical (instead of calling for help), he tears himself loose and leaves his tail stuck there.

When we hear the story, we're reminded of how personally damaging and painful it is — even for someone who is large and powerful — to be lazy, uncaring, selfish, or careless. When we see a bear in the world around us, we notice the short tail and recall the story and our cultural obligations. Once again — this time through a story — the animal becomes (and through oral tradition remains) our mentor. Interpreting the story as a serious explanation of bear physiology is equivalent to seeing "The Three Little Pigs" as a serious report on porcine behavior.

A good example of the dramatic patterning of cultural abstracts through narrative occurs in a story performed by a Lummi (Northwest coast) woman for Jan H. Brunvand, Joseph Campbell, and me while we were speaking at a symposium at Western Washington State University in the late 1960s. None of us had brought a tape recorder, so the following is not verbatim but reconstituted from my notes, not by any means an ideal situation but acceptable because the story itself — even partially recaptured — is quite powerful. The woman spoke in English but said she had grown up hearing the story in Lummi. Because it was a story reflecting her tribe's traditions and not her own ideas, she said we could use it — for it was not secret — as long as we didn't associate her name with it. She didn't give it a title, but I identify it in my mind as "The Five Lummi Sisters." Here is the written version; the separate paragraphs indicate segments of the story, not her performance dynamics.

Five sisters went out to get huckleberries; each one carried two baskets.

When they got out there where the huckleberries grew, they saw that the bushes were just covered with big huckleberries. There were way more than they could ever pick, so they knew they'd get all they wanted.

The oldest sister said, "Look at all these huckleberries! We can fill our baskets easily." So they held their baskets under the bushes and shook the berries in. Right away they all had their baskets full, so they sat down in the shade to rest.

The oldest sister said, "Look; there are plenty of berries. It's a nice warm day, and we could just eat these berries and fill our baskets again before we go home." So they ate all the berries they had picked, and then they turned the baskets over and hit them against their legs like this [slapping her hands a few times against her thighs] to knock all the leaves and stems out. And so they went back to the bushes and started picking again. Again their baskets filled right up with no trouble at all.

The second sister said, "Those berries were really good, and look how many more there are. If we don't eat them, the birds will just get them. Why don't we eat these and then get some more before we go home?" So they sat down again and ate all the berries they had picked. Then they beat their baskets against their legs again like this [slapping her thighs a few times] to knock all the leaves and stems out. It took them a little longer to get rid of all those leaves. Then they went back to the bushes and picked some more. Just knocked them off the bushes into their baskets, and they got full baskets again right away.

The third sister said, "Look how many berries are still there! The birds will get them if we don't. Let's eat these we've picked and then fill our baskets again before going home." So they sat down again and ate all the berries. After they rested a while, they got up and slapped the baskets against their legs like this [slaps her thighs a few times] to get the leaves and stems out, and it took even longer this time. Finally, they went back to the bushes and began pushing the berries into their baskets, and their baskets got full right away.

The fourth sister said, "Those berries were so good! I'd like to eat some more. There are still plenty of berries here. Let's sit down and rest and eat these. We can still fill up our baskets again before going home." So they sat down and ate the berries, and afterward they knocked the baskets against their legs again like this [slaps her thighs several times] to get rid of the stems and leaves and little bugs. And it took a long time to clean out the baskets. They went back to the bushes and began picking again. Actually, they didn't even have to pick: The berries just fell off, and right away they had all their baskets full again.

The youngest sister said, "Those berries were warm and sweet, and I'd like to eat some more before we go home. There are still plenty left for us and for the birds." So they sat down again and ate everything they had picked. They got up. They started knocking the baskets against their legs [slaps her thighs continuously through the rest of this sentence], but they couldn't stop, and their arms went higher and higher, and they kept hitting the baskets against their legs, and they couldn't stop until finally, they lifted off the ground, flapping their arms faster and faster, and they flew away.

They became the birds. That's where birds came from. That's all.

Now, if we read that last line as the meaning of the story, we have a conceptual problem because how can a story where the birds already exist and the characters refer to them explain the origin of birds? So let's start elsewhere: What's dramatized by this story and how? At the same time, it's appropriate to ask, "What does the Lummi audience know that I don't? What do they bring to this dramatic experience that makes the narrative mean something for them?"

What is clear is that between the simple opening and closing sentences is a sequence of five events — all practically the same. Five is the standard dramatic number in Pacific Northwest narratives, just as three is the standard Euro-American number, and four is the most common number in the Southwest. But this is more important than just observing that different cultures prefer different numbers: These are methods of thinking about the relationship among the narrative parts. The one-two-three lineal sequence we are so familiar with in Euro-American jokes, tales, ballads, and even personal anecdotes usually comes to some point on count three (the third little pig is the one who keeps the wolf from the door; the third try is the charm). The Southwest use of four, since it refers to the main directions, almost always suggests surroundment, encirclement, focus; in stories structured in fours, there is no punch line or result, for the device is not envisioned as lineal. Rather, the listeners know that if something is repeated four times, the event is important and may even have ritual significance.

The Northwest five may be patterned after the fingers of the hand, for in many cases (as in the beginning of "The Sun's Myth," discussed next), it suggests completeness, wholeness. Within a story, the device is not used unless the idea repeated five times is important. In a way, it is a kind of oral italics, a means of intensifying. So, while a non-Northwest person may see the repetitions in "The Five Lummi Sisters" as needless redundancy, the Northwest Native understands they are a sign that the action of eating berries and dumping baskets has considerable consequence.

Why would eating and dumping be so important though? Part of the answer can be inferred already by anyone who has eaten a great quantity of berries; eating is fun, but getting rid of the byproducts can be problematic. But the story offers us more than gratuitous advice about diarrhea. In virtually every tribe, food gathered and hunted away from the village should not be consumed until it's brought back to be shared with family and other villagers. Eating gathered food by yourself, away in the woods, is a form of gluttony and viewed by most tribes — unless it's a case of raw survival — as antisocial. When the oldest sister, who should be the most knowledgeable in the customs and values of her people, makes the first move to break the code, it makes it easier for the younger ones to follow. Incrementally, as the human social order breaks down, the girls go out of control and become birds. Why birds? Observe them, and you'll notice that they eat berries, dump the residue, and spend most of their time bringing food back to their nests for their families. For their inattention to social values, the girls become living icons of the social principle of sharing; the birds remind us of the idea as they fly by — the beating of their wings sounds like baskets against girls' thighs.

Another pattern in Native narrative can be called reciprocative structure. Some years ago, John Bierhorst suggested that many Native American myths are structured in two parts, one reflecting, expanding, or reciprocating the other. In another story, also from the Pacific Northwest, the device achieves great power. "The Sun's Myth" was collected in 1891 by Franz Boas, who took it down phonetically from the dictation of Charles Cultee, one of the last three speakers of the Kathlamet Chinook language. This language is no longer spoken (in fact, the last speaker died only a few years after Boas collected the story), and people who would have understood all the nuances of the story are long gone. Thus, while we have no hope of knowing fully what this myth dramatized, we can extrapolate from hints in the story, as well as customs and traditions of nearby related tribes, and reach a provisional understanding.

For one thing, we know that the Chinooks usually named their myths after the most important character in the narrative, not necessarily the one who appears most often. Thus, the focus in this myth is the Sun, and she is female. As an older female, she naturally provides nourishment and ritual propriety for her family. The baseline is ancient, continual, and traditional nurturance by a female head of family (and since she is the Sun, we may suppose this family includes us).

With that as a lead, we can look at the other females in the narrative: What roles do they play? The wife of the chief who wants to visit the Sun tries to dissuade him, implying that he's foolish to think he can go there. This is a subtle form of Native persuasion; since Native behavior is almost never prescriptive, mentors delicately suggest advice, but an individual's decision is his or her own responsibility. By rejecting or ignoring his wife's suggestion, the chief is taking personal responsibility for a rash decision. Like a traditional wife, she does not argue but helps him prepare. Later in the story, he encounters another younger, unmarried woman, and she, too, tries to give him guidance but to no avail.

All this is important for us to track because otherwise we might misread the story, which at first sounds like a Western "hero myth," in which a daring man goes into the world to bring back some kind of prize for his people. Instead, we must see this story as a man intruding his own egotistical agenda into a traditional way of life. The result? Not a blessing for his people but destruction.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Oral Patterns of Performance by Barre Toelken. Copyright © 2003 University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of University Press of Colorado.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Oral Patterns of Performance: Story and Song

Notes

About the Author

About the Book