Jacob Quanbeck

English III

02/05/2014

Ms. Fordahl

Native Voices

We learned about Native Americans their beliefs, and their special places over the last couple weeks. We went over “The Way to Rainy Mountain” by N. Scott Momaday. Another story we went over was “Saint Marie” by Louise Erdrich. We also watched the video series “American Passages: A Literary Survey” by Prairie Public Broadcasting. One theme that is consistent through not only these stories but Native American culture in general is special places. Let’s find out a bit more about these places…

Special places can be anywhere that is special to you for any particular reason(s). A special place could be where you grew up in, like “the bush”. Special places could be a place you wish to be, like the church in “Saint Marie”. It could be a place that was important to your ancestors like in “The Way to Rainy Mountain”. All of these places can be considered special to you or somebody else.

In “The Way to Rainy Mountain” Momaday describes the land that was special to the Kiowa which he finds out more about after his grandmother’s death. Devil’s Tower is a place that is described in this story. Momaday describes this place as being “...upthrust against the gray sky as if in birth of time the core of the earth had broken through its crust…”. The Kiowa had a legend about how Devil’s tower came about. The story goes that there were eight children that were playing, seven sisters and one brother, the only boy was struck dumb and transformed into a bear. The sisters had ran away, terrified of this bear, they climbed up to the stump of a great tree and the tree spoke to them, telling them to climb unto it and as they did it began to grow. The bear had come to kill them, but the sisters were too high, so he started scratching at the bark with his claws. The sisters became the stars of the Big Dipper and he became the Devil’s Tower.

In “The Saint Marie” the main character is from the rez, or “The Bush” as she calls it. She grew up there and though it was special to her, she wanted something more. She went to the church which is pretty much the place they send the crazy nuns. The nuns looked down on the girl and the rest of “The Bush” which made this girl want to become one and be praised by these nuns. After meeting sister Leopolda, a crazy nun that thought the devil was in the girl. She did many things to torture “the devil” out of this little girl, from pouring boiling water down her back to making her burn herself on the stove, this caused the girl to realise how bad an idea this was, so the church really was only a false special place for her.

I personally have places that are special to me, like most other people. One of these places would be this spot, a camp if you will, in Park River that I used to go to as a kid. I would go there with my brother for a day camp every summer until I was old enough to stay the whole week. I met a lot of friends there and went there until fairly recently, when I got too old to continue going, though I might be a counselor there this summer.