Sewell Ford - "Torchy and Vee"

Herbert Baird Stimpson - "The Tory Maid"

Walt Whitman - "Complete Prose Works"

Various - "Chronicle Of The Cid"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3)

J >> James Athearn Jones >> Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3)




"A Spirit."

"Dost thou know that when thou shalt take me to thy bosom thou wilt
embrace a form of ice? Thou art warm and impassioned, I chilled and
chilling as the winds of winter, and frozen as the ice of the bleak
Coppermine."

"Still will I dare the union. My love shall kindle in thy bosom a
warmth equal to that which possesses mine own."

"My breath is the breath of the northern blast."

"And mine hath the warmth of the breeze which blows in summer from the
land of never-failing verdure. Wilt thou, beautiful Spirit! be the wife
of a Teton, who has more scalps in his lodge than fingers on his hands,
who has struck dead bodies of six different nations, and stolen half the
horses upon which his brother warriors ride to the combat?"

"I will--I am thine, brave warrior!"

"Thou art indeed cold, beautiful Spirit!" said the Teton, as he pressed
the consenting maiden to his bosom for a moment, and then, shuddering
with an icy chill, his teeth shaking like the rattles of a snake, put
her from him. "But thou art mine, though it were death to embrace thee."

Again, summoning all his resolution, he held her to his heart. Then
calling the women to him, the warrior bade them prepare a bridal feast.
The youth and the maiden then went through the Indian form of marriage,
and the beautiful spirit of the Laud of Snows became the wife of the
Teton warrior.

With the sun of the next day the whole tribe gathered around the bridal
cabin, eager to learn if the Spirit of the North still remained to
bless the arms of her husband. Soon she appeared with her beloved Teton.
But oh how changed! Her cheek and neck were now suffused with blushes as
deep as those which stain the cheeks of mortal maidens; her hair had
changed from a snowy whiteness to a glossy brown: she had become to all
appearance a beautiful mortal. Ever and anon her eyes were fondly turned
on the Swift Foot, who repaid her fond glances by pressing her _now_
warm and ardent bosom to his own. The aged Nicanape again approached the
pair, and asked the Spirit if she did not regret that she had left the
regions of the skies to assume the attributes of mortality. With a fond
glance at the object of her love, she replied that a single moon of
bliss like that she now enjoyed was worth an eternity of the cold and
passionless existence which was hers before she had quitted the skies.
Again was she enfolded in the arms of the doating warrior, and the crowd
retired to permit the full, and free, and undisturbed, interchange of
those fond attentions, which are wont to occupy the first moon of
married life.

And thus passed away the first year after the marriage of the Teton
Brave with the beautiful Spirit of the frozen North. Ere that year had
passed, there was a stranger in their cabin--a little son, with the
wondrous beauty of its mother and the fearless soul of its father. Never
was there a being so beloved as the Spirit-wife was by the whole nation.
Though she now possessed the soul of a human being, her breast was
visited only by the softer and purer passions of human nature; anger,
revenge, cruelty, jealousy, and the other turbulent passions and
emotions, never came near her gentle bosom. Her love for her husband
grew with the growth of years, and strengthened with the progress of
time; her pity and compassion for the poor, and hungry, and sick, and
fainting, knew no bounds. Ever mild and affectionate, and kind, and
humane, never prone to break the quiet of her cabin by those querulous
complaints and angry invectives wherewith wives destroy the comfort of
their husbands, and bring storms and tempests, hail, rain, thunder, and
lightning, into the sky of domestic peace, the Teton loved her better
than mortal ever before loved another. Her goodness not only brought joy
and happiness to her husband, but benefits to the nation, which made
their lives pass as pleasantly and glide along as smoothly as a canoe
floating down a quiet stream in the time of summer. When the hunters
would go to their forest sports and labours, they asked the wife of the
Swift Foot if their hunt should be successful, and as she told them
_ay_ or _no_ was their expedition undertaken or abandoned. When she bade
the women plant the maize, they might be sure of the fair weather
without which the task could not be well accomplished; when she cast her
bright eyes on the sheaf of arrows rusting on the wall, the warriors
without more ado rose, and prepared the corn and pemmican, and examined
the condition of their bows and casse-tetes[A], and painted themselves
with the ochre of wrath[B], and sang with a hollow and sepulchral voice
their songs of war, and killed the fat dog, sacred to Areskoui[C], for
they knew that the keen look of the Spirit-wife upon the instruments of
death boded victory and glory to those who should employ them in the
strife of warriors. On the contrary, if, tired with a long peace, one
rose with the string of wampum(1) in his hand, and said to his brothers,
"The blood of him whom our foes slew in such or such a moon is not yet
wiped away; his corpse remains above the earth unburied; I go to wash
the clotted gore from his breast, to give him the rites of sepulture,
and to eat up the nation(2) by whom the base wrongs were done him"--if,
having spoken thus, the Spirit-wife but cast her meek blue eye upon him,
and suffered a sigh to pass her beautiful bosom, the speaker rose, and
washed off the black paint, and effaced from his cheeks all traces of
the bloody design by which he had been actuated, and declared that a
kind bird had whispered in his ear that the "enemy were gone to the
mountain streams for sturgeon," or, "to the plains of the Osage to
gather bitter snow[D]," or, "to the prairies of the Wisconsan to hunt
the buffalo," or, "to the stormy lake of Michabou(3) to take the fish
wherewith the god had so plentifully stocked it." The assembled
warriors, knowing that he had a sufficient motive for changing his mind,
would follow his example, and lay by the weapons of war to resume those
of peace, without any inquiry why he had changed his mind. And thus,
more by soft persuasion, and kind entreaties, and wise prophecies, than
by stern commands, and bitter denunciations, the beautiful Spirit-wife
ruled the Burntwood Tetons to their glory and happiness.

[Footnote A: The war-clubs.]

[Footnote B: Black paint, as I have before observed, the symbol among
the Indians of belligerent intentions.]

[Footnote C: A fat dog is the chief and sometimes the only dish at the
feast, preparatory to a war expedition. This animal is sacred to
Areskoui, or the God of War.]

[Footnote D: Salt.]

Yet, with all her love for her husband, and her children, of whom in ten
springs ten stood in their father's cabin, she appeared at times to be
far from happy. It was observed that nothing could induce her to go
abroad after darkness had veiled the earth. When the robe of night was
thrown over the face of things, then the Spirit-wife would be found
seated in the darkest corner of her dwelling, nor could entreaties draw
her out. Insensible to fear, while the sun shone, the moment it
disappeared, her cheek became pallid as death; and if, during the period
of darkness, there happened a high wind from the north, and a fall of
hail, her agony knew no bounds, and excessive trembling would for awhile
deprive her of the power to move, and almost to utter intelligible
sounds. Her husband asked her wherefore this trembling, but could gain
no answer. And thus time passed away.

The snows of ten winters had fallen to rush to the embrace of the
rivers, and black clouds, and cold winds, and falling leaves, were
betokening the near approach of the eleventh, when, upon a clear and
starry night, a stranger, wearing a garment which glittered like ice
upon which the sun is shining, and whose hair was a body of icicles,
entered the village of the Tetons. He was of very small stature, being
scarcely taller than the child who has seen twelve harvests: and his
limbs and features were proportionably small. The colour of his skin,
and the robe which he wore, as well as the shape of the latter, so
nearly resembled those of the Spirit-wife on the morning she came to the
Teton village, that all deemed they were of the same nation, perhaps
brother and sister. When they asked the stranger who he was, and why he
had come hither, he made no answer, but to the question said, with a
voice that sounded like the wind of the Cold Moon:

"Have you seen my wife?"

"Wife?--What wife?" demanded the chief.

"She who _yesterday_ fled from my arms--the beautiful Spirit of Snow."

"Ten seasons have passed," said the chief, "and the eleventh is near at
hand, since there came among us a being, exceedingly beautiful, and
habited much like him to whom the great chief of the Tetons is now
speaking. She has become the wife of one of my Braves. Was she thine ere
she was his?"

"Ten of thy seasons are but a day, nay, but an hour, nay, but a minute,
in the eyes of spirits. In my computation, it was yesterday that the
fair Spirit of Snow left my bosom."

"And who art thou?"

"The Spirit of Tempests--the ruler over the realms of the bleak north;
he who harnesses his horses to the east winds, and drives the furious
whirlwind and crashing tempest over the lands of the affrighted Tetons
and their forest brothers."

"Thou seemest too small of stature to undertake wrathful purposes, and
all unfit to represent the mighty winds that rend the stubborn oak, and
the fierce tempests that scatter yet wilder desolation," said the Teton
chief, surveying, almost contemptuously, the diminutive form of the
strange Spirit.

"Tax but my powers--excite but my ire," said the demon, "and the chief
of the Burntwood Tetons may rue the hour that gave birth to his doubts
of the strength of the master of the northern blast. But why do I waste
words upon thee? Bring hither my wicked wife."

Seeing the angry and ireful Spirit determined upon mischief, the chief
departed, his bosom filled with sorrow, to summon the beautiful and
beloved Spirit of Snow to the presence of the being who claimed her as
his wife. He found her not unapprised of the dreadful fate which awaited
her. Bathed in tears, her head reclined on the shoulder of the doting
Teton, sat the lovely Spirit, her eyes now bent on him she loved so
fondly, and now on their beautiful children, who slept all unconscious
of the grief which wrung their fond mother's bosom. At length, with
sudden resolution, she rose from her seat, and, folding the beloved
warrior to her breast in one long and passionate embrace, she left the
cabin.

"I have found thee at last," exclaimed the angry ruler of tempests, as
the beautiful woman approached him. "Thou, who fledst from my arms to
those of an earthly paramour, how dost thou like the exchange?"

"So well," replied the trembling Spirit, "that if thou wilt consent to
let me remain where I am, I will never return to thee or to my clime of
snows."

"Base-minded woman! And wilt thou abandon the glorious destiny of ruling
the elements for the mean one of sharing in the labours of a Teton
cabin?"

"The destiny which thou deemest glorious may be well abandoned for that
which thou holdest mean. However well it may once have suited me to
dwell in the bleak climes of the north, and be the mistress of the flaky
dew, it now more glads my heart to share in the labours of a Teton
cabin. I know, from my own brief experience, that the fevers and agues
of mortality are to be preferred a thousand times to the unvarying,
unchanging, existence of a Spirit without passion, feeling, sympathy,
love, or tenderness. I pray thee let me remain as I am, and where I am."

"And so thou preferrest the earth to the sky; sensibility to
insensibility; a humble Teton warrior to the mighty Spirit of the clime
over which thou wast created to exert thyself a wondrous influence?"

"Let it not displease thee that I do. I have become in love with the
pains of human life, and delighted with the anxieties which cling to it,
as moist snow clings to a pine in the warm spring."

"Becoming a mortal being thou must die."

"I shall first have lived."

"Thy spirit--"

"Disincumbered of its earthly load, will return to its former starry
mansion."

"Once more I ask, dost thou prefer to remain on earth? Rough and noisy
though I be, yet will I not exert force to compel thee back to thine own
region."

"I would remain. In my cabin is a Teton warrior--him I love; there are
ten beautiful children at his side--the Spirit of Snow fed them with her
own milk--the Teton warrior is their father. Thou canst not, passionless
as thou art, know my feelings; but, believe me, that to part me from
them is to banish all peace and joy from my soul, and to drive me into a
depth of affliction, which will last till time shall be no more. Nor
deem that aught save death can weaken the force of those affections
which are now kindled in my bosom."

"I see, I see; and, but that stern pride forbids it, I, too, would,
throw off the state of a ruler of tempests and wintry winds, to become
the master of a cabin in one of the green vales of the earth, to gather
around me children like thine, and to feel the hopes and fears, which
have rendered thee so unlike the being thou wast. But we shall meet
again. When thou wert invested with the attributes of mortality, death
was also appointed to thee--a few years, and thou wilt quit the house of
clay, again to rove free and unconfined among the glittering stars, and
through the endless realms of space."

With these words, the Spirit of Storms took his departure from the land
of the Tetons, and none ever saw him more. Released from his presence,
joy again took possession of the bosom of the beautiful wife of the
Teton, and the traces of tears were soon removed from her fair cheek.
His assurance had quieted her soul, and fear was no longer an inhabitant
of her bosom. She no longer sought the gloomy privacy of the cabin at
the approach of night, but joined the dance of maidens, herself the most
sportive of them all. Every season added a little stranger to the
laughing and merry groupe, till twenty and seven sons and daughters
were in the cabin of the Teton Swift Foot. Old age came over the
husband, but not the wife. When his knees had grown feeble, and his
voice faint, and his eye dim, and his heart craven, her faculties were
in full perfection--her cheek still wore the blush of youth, and her
step was lighter than the fawn of four moons. And, if time had abated
nothing of her wondrous beauty and sprightliness, neither had it of her
goodness, and kind attention to the wants of the poor Indians. Her care
that they should want for nothing was as much exerted as ever--still
their hunting-grounds and their rivers were the best stocked of any in
all the land, and their war expeditions for forty seasons were
invariably blest with success. Let not my brother wonder, then, if the
Tetons almost forgot their duty to the Great Spirit, in their affection
for the good being whom they deemed his fatherly care had sent among
them.

At length, the Teton warrior, overcome by years, lay down and died. Then
it was that deep grief visited the bosom of his still beautiful and
still youthful wife. In vain, did the priest remind her that all must
die--she would not be consoled. They dressed the body of the deceased
warrior in his robe of fur, and then laid it, together with his spear,
and bow, and war-hatchet, and sheaf of arrows, and pipe, and
camp-kettle, in the house of death(4). While they were rendering the
last service to the body of the Swift Foot, the wife sat motionless,
looking on--when they had finished, she rose, and spoke to them thus:--

"We have now dwelt together, Tetons, for forty summers, and, during that
time, there has been a pure, unclouded sky in our village. We have been
friends, and so we will part. I cannot abide longer on the earth; I go
to take the soul of my beloved husband to the mansion prepared for him
in my own bright clime of the north. My children I leave to the care of
the brave warriors and good hunters, bidding one to protect, and the
other to feed them, till the Good Spirit sees fit to deprive them of the
life he has given. Be this your recompense.

"It is known that, among all the red men of the forest, none are so fond
of dancing, and none so excellent therein, as the Tetons. Ask any man,
or any woman, of any nation, who best and most gracefully perform the
War Dance, and the Scalp Dance, and the Calumet Dance, and the Dance of
Green Corn, and he will answer, 'The Burntwood Tetons.' Now, if ye will
continue to watch over my helpless children till their days of
helplessness are past, ye shall continue to dance even after death--the
spirit released from the flesh shall still caper as merrily as ever over
the clear skies of the north. Those skies were once mine--to-morrow I
shall resume dominion over them."

"It is cold, very cold in those regions," said the great chief. "The
dance will not keep us warm, and our way will be impeded by the ice and
snow."

"Neither shall be an impediment," answered the beautiful Spirit. "I will
cause my little people to kindle huge fires, the flames of which,
flashing over the northern skies, shall at once dissipate the flaky
mists, and be a light to the steps of the dancers. And thus shall it be.
When a Teton departs, his spirit shall go to the northern skies, which
henceforth shall be the Teton's Paradise. There shall he enjoy,
uninterrupted, his beloved pastime; and, till time shall be no more,
have full permission to foot it as joyfully as he did on earth."

These were the concluding words of the Spirit-wife. When they looked up
she was gone from their sight, no one knew whither. Presently there was
a slight fall of snow, which soon, however, again gave place to the
beams of the warm and refreshing sun. They never saw her again. They
never saw her again, but they forgot neither her nor her wishes. The
children she left were adopted by the nation, and became in time so many
of them fathers and mothers, that, at this day, half the tribe are
descended from them.

My brother asks, if the good Spirit-wife kept her promise to the Tetons.
She did, as he will see, if he will but look at the northern skies in
the time of summer and autumn. He will then see flashing over the face
of the broad heavens the flames which the good people kindle to thaw the
frosty air, and thus remove the impediments which exist to the merry
dance of the souls of those Tetons, who have repaired to the Happy
Abode. He will hear very plain the laugh[A] of the sprightly dancers;
and frequently, when the air is very clear, he will see their nimble
forms dancing up and down the moonbeams. Who would not wish that his
spirit might be permitted to go to THE TETON'S PARADISE?

[Footnote A: The _aurora borealis_, or "northern light," as my readers
know, is usually attended by a whizzing sound, somewhat resembling
laughter.]

Brother, this is no lie.


NOTES.

(1) _String of Wampum_.--p. 293.

A party of Indians, intending to go to war, first observe a rigorous and
protracted fast. When the fast is ended, he who is to command it
assembles his friends, and, holding in his hand a string of wampum,
makes a speech, in which the causes of war, and the injuries and insults
which justify it, are fully and artfully set forth. When he has
finished, he lays the collar on the ground, and he who takes it up, by
so doing, declares himself embarked in the same expedition.

(2) _Eat up the Nation_.--p. 294.

This is a frequent figure of the Indian orator, when endeavouring to
inflame the passions of his hearers. It signifies that a war is to be
waged against the nation respecting whom the "talk" is held, in the most
outrageous and destructive manner. When they wish to engage in their
quarrel an ally who is not present, they send a belt of wampum, with an
invitation to him to drink the "blood" or "the broth of the flesh of
their enemies." It is not to be inferred from this, that the North
American Indians are _Anthropophagi_. It is undoubtedly an allegorical
manner of speaking, with frequent examples of which the Scriptures
furnish us, _e.g._ Psalms xxvii. 2.

(3) _The stormy Lake of Michabou._--p. 294.

The Indians believe that Michabou, the God of the Waters, formed Lake
Superior to serve as a nursery for beavers. The rocks at the _Sault de
Saint Marie_, or Falls of St. Mary, according to the tradition of the
Indians, are the remains of a causeway made by the God in order to dam
up the waters of the rivers, which supply this great lake. At the time
he did this, he lived, they add, at Michillimackinac, _i.e._ a great
place for turtles, pronounced Mak-i-naw. He it was who taught the
ancestors of the Indians to fish, and invented nets, of which he took
the idea from the spider's web. Very many of the northern tribes
recognise this same divinity, but the Hurons alone assign Lake Superior
as the place of his residence.

(4) _House of Death._--p. 302.

The funeral customs of the Indians are very various, and all are
sufficiently curious to merit a place in this note. I have only space
for a few. The first extract relates rather to the place of deposit for
the dead, than to the dead themselves. It describes the common cemetery
of the tribes living west of the Rocky Mountains.

"Among the Pishquitpaws, who live beyond the Rocky Mountains, the place
in which the dead are deposited is a building about sixty feet long, and
twelve feet wide, and is formed by placing in the ground poles or forks
six feet high, across which a long pole is extended the whole length of
the structure. Against this ridge-pole are placed broad boards and
pieces of canoes in a slanting direction, so as to form a shed. It
stands east and west, and neither of the extremities are closed. On
entering the western end we observed a number of bodies, wrapped
carefully in leather robes, and arranged in rows on boards, which were
then covered with mats. This was the part destined for those who had
recently died: a little further on, bones half decayed were scattered
about, and in the centre of the building was a large pile of them heaped
promiscuously on each other. At the western extremity was a mat on which
twenty-one sculls were placed in a circular form, the mode of interment
being first to wrap the body in robes, and as it decays the bones are
thrown into the heap, and the sculls placed together. From the different
boards and pieces of canoes which form the vault were suspended on the
inside fishing-nets, baskets, wooden bowls, robes, skins, trenchers, and
trinkets of various kinds, obviously intended as offerings of affection
to deceased relatives. On the outside of the vault were the skeletons of
several horses, and great quantities of bones were in the neighbourhood,
which induced us to believe that these animals were most probably
sacrificed at the funeral rites of their masters."--_Lewis and Clarke_,
ii, 24.

It was not worth while for these travellers to imply a doubt that those
animals were sacrificed. The custom obtains among all the tribes of the
Western continent, from Labrador to Cape Horn, of sacrificing the most
valuable animals, on the death of their master. In this they are
actuated by a common belief that the deceased will need their assistance
in the land of spirits. See the various traditions.

The Choctaws, a tribe living near the gulf of Mexico, till very late
years had a practice similar to that of the Pishquitpaws, of exposing
their dead upon scaffolds, till such time as the flesh was decayed; it
was then separated from the bones by a set of old men, who devoted
themselves to this custom, and were called "bone-pickers;" after which,
the bones were interred in some place set apart for the purpose.

With the tribes living far towards the northern lakes, the ceremonies
and superstitions which formerly preceded inhumation, were
these:--Charlevoix, the best writer that ever treated of the Indians, is
my authority. "As soon as the sick person expires, the place is filled
with mournful cries. The dead body, dressed in the finest robe, with the
face painted, the arms, and all that belonged to the deceased, by his
side, is exposed at the door of the cabin, in the posture it is to be
laid in the tomb; and this posture is the same in many places as that of
a child in the mother's womb. The custom of some nations is for the
relations to fast to the end of the funeral; and all this interval is
passed in tears and cries, in treating their visiters, in praising the
dead, and in mutual compliments. In other places, they hire women to
weep, who perform their part punctually: they sing, they dance, they
weep, without ceasing, always keeping time: but these demonstrations of
a borrowed sorrow do not prevent what nature requires from the relations
of the deceased.

"It appears that they carry the body without ceremony to the place of
interment, at least I find no mention made about it in any relation:
but, when it is in the grave, they take care to cover it in such a
manner that the earth does not touch it. It lies as in a little cave
lined with skin, much richer and better adorned than their cabins. Then
they set up a post on the grave, and fix on it every thing that may shew
the esteem they had for the deceased. They sometimes put on it his
portrait, and every thing that may serve to shew to passengers who he
was, and the finest actions of his life. They carry fresh provisions to
the tomb every morning; and, as the dogs and other beasts do not fail to
reap the benefit of it, they are willing to persuade themselves that
these things have been eaten by the souls of the dead.

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