!"#$%&'("$)*#'+,-.$/.0+-.$!'+,12(#' )3("&'4256$7-,$8+.2,&(($9+,1#((2 :&3',#6$;+2(&'<$&=$9#>+?+&.2@$A&>B$C@$%&B$D$4E+.(#'@$FGHH5@$IIB$JDKLJCM N3O>+2"#0$O<6$!"#$P.+Q#'2+(<$&=$R"+,-?&$N'#22 :(-O>#$P986$http://www.jstor.org/stable/1062118 ),,#22#06$DSTMCTDMMG$DM6MC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to History of .

http://www.jstor.org __ Mac Linscott Ricketts T H E N O R T H AMERICAN INDIAN

One of the most perplexing problems confronting those who wish to understand the and folk tales of the North American Indians is the figure of the "trickster," who is also the creative transformer of the world and the heroic bringer of . This "trickster-transformer-culture " (or "trickster-fixer," for short) is a problem because he combines in one personage no less than two and sometimes three or more seemingly different and contrary roles. Oftentimes he is the maker of the earth and/or he is the one who changes the chaotic -world into the ordered creation of today; he is the slayer of monsters, the thief of daylight, fire, water, and the like for the benefit of man; he is the teacher of cultural skills and customs; but he is also a prankster who is grossly erotic, insatiably hungry, inordinately vain, deceitful, and cunning toward friends as well as foes; a restless wanderer upon the face of the earth; and a blunderer who is often the victim of his own tricks and follies. What kind of logic combines all these disparate elements into one mythical personality? The figure who embraces all these traits of character is known throughout Indian North America by various names. Over much This article is based on the author's doctoral dissertation, "The Structure and Religious Significance of the Trickster-Transformer-Culture Hero in the Myth- ology of the North American Indians" (University of Chicago, 1964). 327 The North American Indian Trickster of the Great Plains, the Great Basin, the Plateau, the Southwest, and California he is ""; on the Northwest Coast he is "Raven" or "Mink"; in a small area of Washington State he is called "Bluejay"; in the Southeast and probably among the ancient Algonkian Indians he was the "Hare." Among modern Algonkians, Siouans, and others he usually appears as an anthro- pomorphic being with a proper name, such as Gluskabe, Iktomi, Wisaka, Wakdajunkaga, Old Man, and Widower-from-across-the Ocean. Generally speaking, the more strongly the tribe has been influ- enced by an agricultural way of life, the less important is the place of the trickster-fixer in the total mythology of the tribe, and the more he tends to be known only as a trickster. This fact alone would seem to indicate that he is an extremely archaic figure, belonging to the culture of primitive hunters and gatherers, and other evidence also points in this direction. In the Southwest and Southeast, where the agricultural influence has been strong, the figure is almost entirely "trickster," and in the priestly mythology of the Oglala1 he is regarded as a positively evil being, one who must be combated by the shaman-priests. After reading exten- sively in the collected oral traditions of these Indians, one is impressed with the persistence of the trickster-fixer, who seem- ingly cannot be extirpated from the affections of the people-for everywhere he is an immensely popular character. A number of theories have been proposed to explain the reason for the combination of clownish, heroic, and sometimes even divine elements in one figure. Daniel Brinton, nineteenth-century stu- dent of Indian folklore, believed that the trickster elements in the character of the Algonkian Manabozho/Wisaka were late and foreign accretions to the character of an originally high and noble deity of light.2 Apparently under the influence of Max Miiller's theories about the development of the Indo-European gods, Brinton postulated a "disease of language" type of theory to account for the degeneration of the Great God of Light (as Brinton conceived the original figure) into the ignoble trickster, the Great Hare. Noting that the words for "light" and for "white rabbit" are similar in Algonkian languages, Brinton proposed that the latter had come to be mistaken for the former with the passage

1 J. R. Walker, "The Sun Dance and other Ceremonies of the Oglala Division of the Teton Dakota," in Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, XVI, Part II (New York, 1917), 164 ff., 181-82. 2 Daniel G. Brinton, Myths of the New World (3d. ed.; Philadelphia: David McKay Co., 1896), p. 194. 328 of time, and thus gave rise to the confusion of two separate figures.3 It is my contention, however, that the trickster elements in the character of Manabozho and the others cannot be regarded as modern, but on the contrary are older than the divine attributes, and at least as old as the heroic characteristics. Brinton's view was called into question in 1891 by Franz Boas, dean of American anthropologists,4 and it is the latter's view, sometimes modified by psychological embellishments, which is generally accepted today by American folklorists. In his criticism of Brinton, Boas asked why all the higher beings of the North American Indians should have suffered the same accidental fate that Brinton claimed had befallen Michabo. It did not seem likely to him that the culture hero should have become debased in all the tribal mythologies; rather, it appeared more probable that the trickster elements were the most primitive aspects of the char- acter in question. It was Boas' opinion that the complex figure evolved from an earlier character who was basically self-centered, amoral, and motivated by no higher impulses than his own desires. Out of this trickster, whose egotistical acts sometimes benefited mankind incidentally, there evolved with the progress of human thought the idea of a culture hero who brings good things to men intentionally. In the more highly developed phases of Indian mythology, the culture hero became a figure separate from the trickster; but in many cases the complete separation had not yet taken place, Boas thought. Thus the trickster and heroic elements are found mingled inconsistently in one personage. Boas' argument is grounded more upon a theory of progress than it is upon factual data, however. Nowhere do we find a trickster who is not also, in some respects, a culture hero. Boas was right in saying that the trickster and culture hero split into two characters in a late stage of mythical development, for we do often find in whom heroic traits are quite minor and residual, while in the same tribe some other myth figure serves as culture hero. However, Boas' original purely egotistical trickster is entirely hypothetical. In the most archaic hunting of North America the trickster and hero roles are always combined in the same figure. While this does not prove that Boas' theory is absolutely wrong, it does throw the hypothesis into question. A 3 Ibid., pp. 197-98. 4 James Teit, Introduction to Traditions of the Thompson River Indians ("Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society," Vol. VI [New York: Houghton Miffin & Co., 1898]), pp. 4-10. 6-H.O.R. 329 The North American Indian Trickster theory better supported by the evidence is that the trickster and culture hero are, from earliest times, combined in one figure; and therefore, if we wish to understand this character, we should attempt to do so not by splitting him up into logical parts, but by attempting to see what meaning he might have in all his com- plexity. Paul Radin, a distinguished anthropologist and close student of the American Indians, was much interested in primitive .5 He tended to view religion as arising out of the economic and psychological needs of human beings. The shaman in the more primitive societies and the priest-philosopher of the higher cul- tures are the systemizers and organizers of the religious senti- ments which remain vague among the common people. With these religious specialists true religion developed, Radin believes. In an article written early in his career, Radin6 contrasts the popular folklore trickster-hero with the spirits and gods of the shamans in North American Indian belief. Without attempting to account for the mingling of heroic traits with buffoonery in such figures as Raven and Coyote, Radin explains that the divine attri- butes sometimes ascribed to these personages are due to the sha- man who "works with the general folklorist material on hand."7 Radin draws a perceptive distinction between the world view of the common man, as evidenced by his folklore, and that of the shaman:

The granting of power to man is popularly believed to have been the work of the early culture heroes. True, man never prayed to them for power; but then it had been given to them for all time when they transformed this world and made it habitable.... It is interesting to note that the same attitude, the main feature of which seems to be a lack of direct relation to man's needs, is characteristic of the tricksters and transformers of North American mythology. The shaman's viewpoint is characteristically different.... The emphasis upon the association of the power to grant man all his socio- economic needs with the realization of the direct relationships between the maintenance of these needs and the spirits, is almost exclusively the work of the shaman.... The creative animal heroes [trickster- fixers] had to give way to these newcomers [spirits] as the original source of power, unless they themselves were elevated to the dignity of spirits.8 5 Cf. Paul Radin, Primitive Religion (New York: Dover Publications, 1957; 1st ed. 1937), pp. 5-7, 23, 40-58. 6 "Religion of the North American Indians," Journal of the American Folk Lore Society, Vol. XXVII (1914). 7 Ibid., p. 352. 8 Ibid., pp. 358-59. 330 The important point here is that, for the common man, all the powers that are needed for life were granted "in the beginning" by the culture heroes (who also, quite frequently, were tricksters). The common man does not pray to them-and this fact, for Radin, apparently, means that apart from the shamans (or prior to them) there is no religion. Most people, Radin says, are spontaneously religious only at the crises of life, while those who are religious at all times are always few in number.9 It is these latter who produce religious rites, that is, what is usually called religion, and for them the spirits and gods are a real and necessary adjunct to life. The shaman takes the position that the world as given, including man's powers, is inadequate and must be augmented by transcen- dent experiences and supernatural graces.10 The shaman teaches the common man that he must gain the favor and help of the beings of the spirit world if he would live successfully on earth; while the popular view, embodied in the myths of the trickster- transformer-culture hero, is that man needs only to use what has been given to him and follow in the paths laid down for him by those who traveled before. Radin continues to explain how the popular theriomorphic beings of folklore sometimes are elevated by the shamans to the status of spirits and divine beings. For Radin, the "trickster- deity," such as Raven on the Northwest Coast and Coyote in California, represents the shaman's acknowledgement of the power of popular beliefs, and likewise an admission that he too shares many of them. His reconstructed trickster is generally more consistent as a creator, more directly and consciously benevolent [than originally], but his origin is indicated in a number of features. Indeed, it could not be otherwise, for the shaman's reinterpretation is never thorough and complete, and no matter how clarified his conception may be, the people as such have never lost their conception of the trickster.11 Wherever the trickster-heroes have retained more of the primeval character, it has been due to the development by the shaman of "another deity in which he was more interested" (the high god). While my own view, in part, coincides closely with these opinions of Radin's, I think Radin errs in failing to recognize that the world view of the common people (as he sees it) is also a religious stance in the world, a religious way of life parallel to that of the shamans. (More will be said on this point later.) 9 Radin, Primitive Religion, 358-59. 10 pp. Radin, "Religion of the North American Indians," p. 343. 11 Ibid., p. 360. 331 The North American Indian Trickster

Adolf E. Jensen, German ethnologist, in his Myth and Cult among Primitive Peoples,12 does not mention the trickster, but he shows persuasively that the culture hero must be regarded as a religious figure, even when he lacks a cult. Jensen includes the culture hero within a class of mythic beings which he designates "Dema deities." These are beings who lived in the myth times, who transformed the earlier world into the world as we know it and then, their work finished, they ceased to exist. A deity such as this is not "present," and it would be senseless to address prayers to it, for it does not control fate. Man's religious atti- tude consists of continued awareness of the divine order which the deity engendered.13 Jensen writes principally concerning the Dema deities of the archaic planters, and he admits to little knowledge of the more primitive hunters and gatherers; but what he says about the culture heroes of the planters has application to the trickster- fixers of the older culture. I object to the use of the term "deity" for the culture hero, but as Jensen defines it,14 perhaps it is not improper. I prefer, however, to retain the term "trickster-culture hero," or some similar designation for the figure, at least as he appears in the myths of the American Indians; and to reserve the name "god" for transcendent, living, spiritual beings of shaman- istic or priestly provenance. I agree with Jensen, however, that both kinds of beings are truly religious, despite the lack of a formal cult in the case of the culture heroes. In an important book written late in his lifetime,15 Radin developed a theory about the trickster which is largely psycho- logical in its orientation. Radin assumes here that the trickster is the most ancient figure in Indian mythology and "probably in all mythologies."16 Originally, his cycle "began with an account of a nondescript person obsessed by hunger, by an uncontrollable urge to wander, and by sexuality." 7 This trickster cycle was separate, Radin thinks, from culture-hero cycles, and where the two are found together (in a trickster-fixer) we have a "mixed" myth cycle.18 These last are very common, Radin admits, but he offers no explanation as to why they should so often become mixed. 12 Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963 (English ed.). 13 Ibid., p. 92 14 Ibid., p. 91. 15 Paul Radin, The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956). This book is a convenient source for a large number of typical trickster stories. 16 Ibid., p. 164. I agree, and I hope in the future to examine similar figures in the mythologies of other primitive peoples. 17 Ibid., p. 165. 18 Ibid., pp. 166-67. 332 The trickster, in his primal purity, Radin concludes, represents human mentality in the primordial past. He is the symbol of an "undifferentiated psyche" in the process of attaining differentia- tion and orientation.19 Radin's view here closely parallels that of the psychologist Carl Jung, who contributed a chapter to Radin's book. Jung says: He is obviously a "psychologem," an archetypal psychic structure of extreme antiquity. In his clearest manifestations he is a faithful copy of an absolutely undifferentiated human consciousness, corresponding to a psyche that has hardly left the animal level.20 The trickster, according to Jung, is the objectified memory of the primal mental state, or the collective projection of a part of the unconscious that is known and welcomed by the individual be- cause it answers to something inside himself. The Trickster is a collective shadow figure, an epitome of all the inferior traits of character in individuals. And since the individual shadow is never absent as a component of personality, the collective figure can construct itself out of it continually.21 For this reason, says Jung, the trickster has persisted for ages in mythology and crops out again and again in higher cultures, as in the "fool's feast," the festum asinarium, and the like, of medieval times. These psychological interpretations depend largely upon the peculiar terminology and viewpoint of Jungian psychology which I am not willing to accept as my own. Apart from the question of psychology, however, both Radin and Jung are to be criticized, I believe, for basing their interpretation of the trickster in myth- ology too largely upon one particular tribal account of this figure. They have used, primarily, the Wakdajunkaga saga of the Winne- bago, which Radin himself has called a unique literary creation. Radin takes this cycle as the "best example" of a series of trickster stories. He traces in it a "psychological pilgrimage," as it were, which he then claims to be one of the essential features of the trickster cycle, although he fails to illustrate this psychological progression in myth cycles from other tribes. Jung, seizing eagerly upon the Winnebago cycle because it lends itself so admirably to his interpretation, states that it "preserves the shadow in its pristine mythological form."22 Jung may be excused for not 19 Ibid., p. 168. 20 Ibid., p. 200. The article is entitled "On the Psychology of the Trickster Figure." 21 Ibid., p. 209. 22 Ibid., p. 202. 333 The North American Indian Trickster

knowing that this Winnebago cycle was unique; Radin should have based his opinions on a more typically native collection of trickster stories. Radin, it seems to me, errs (as did Boas) in separating the pure trickster stories from myths of heroic theft, the regulation of destructive forces in nature, destruction of monsters, the origin of death, and in general, the establishment of the world as it is.23 There is simply too much evidence that all these deeds belong to the trickster in his roles of culture hero and transformer. However, these faults in Radin's view do not invalidate his further state- ments about the trickster representing man's coming to con- sciousness. This idea, I believe, has independent merit and may be used to shed light on a true understanding of the strange trickster-fixer.

I believe that I have accumulated sufficient evidence (which cannot, of course, be reproduced here 24) to establish conclusively that the trickster-transformer-culture hero is in origin a unitary figure, despite his complexity. In this article I can only allude to the main types of myths which are associated with this figure. From these, something of the essential structure of the trickster- fixer can be discerned. The earliest and most typical kind of trickster-hero myth is that of the theft of fire. This legend, which is regarded generally as one of the world's oldest myths, becomes the pattern for a whole series of tales of theft: theft of the sun; theft of water; theft of fish; theft of game animals; theft of acorns; and once, even theft of cereal grains.25 The structure of the myth, when analyzed, consists of the journey of the hero (alone or accompanied by others) to the place where some substance vitally needed by man is being kept by a superior being; the outwitting of the superior being by some device of cunning (often deceit) on the part of the hero who is admittedly weaker; and his successful theft of the valuable com- modity, often at the cost of some permanent injury to himself or the world (the animal's fur is burned, the world is set on fire or is flooded, etc.). The myth presupposes that there are supernatural, transcendent powers which are hostile to man and which are try- 23 Ibid., p. 166. 24 This material has been summarized by geographical areas in my dissertation. 25 It would be impossible to cite specific references here without enlarging the footnotes unduly. Stith Thompson's works on folklore themes may be consulted. The hero of these stories usually is the principal trickster, but this is not invari- ably so. If the hero is not the currently recognized trickster, he is an older trick- ster-type. 334 ing to keep the "good things of life" away from him; therefore, if man is to advance, he must use all his cunning and wit, fair means and foul, to overcome these superior forces. At first glance it might appear that the theft-of-fire myth is shamanistic in type: the hero-thief, like the shaman, goes to a transcendent realm in order to bring back something from the spirits who are hostile to man. But there is this crucial difference between the trickster-hero of the myth and the shaman: the former relies on his own strength alone, on his own innate powers of mind and body; while the shaman employs the aid of other spirits who assist him in doing what he could not do with his own strength.26 Both the myth-maker and the shaman believe in the existence of superior, transcendent, personal spiritual beings; and that these beings have (or had) things which man needs (or needed), which they will or would not willingly give to mankind. Here the similarity between the two viewpoints ends. The myth-maker believes that in the beginning the hero went with his own strength and wit and obtained these boons for man; while the shaman believes that there are yet other gifts which the spirits can impart and which a man may obtain through gaining the friendship of one or more spirits who can help him. The shaman has respect for the supernatural powers and is humble before them, while the trickster-hero of the myths sees them only as a challenge to his own will to power, and as enemies to be overcome. In the myth of the theft of fire, then, we have the most basic elements of the trickster-transformer-culture hero united in one figure, and we have presupposed also the essential difference between the two world views represented by this myth figure and the shaman. The mythical character is a trickster in that he de- ceives the owner of the fire by some stratagem; he is a culture hero in that he brings a benefit to augment the culture of mankind; and he is a transformer in that what he does permanently changes the world, and usually leaves its mark on his own animal body. (Etiology enters the myth here.) That he accomplishes all this by himself, unassisted by supernatural helpers, shows his scorn for the "way of the shamans" who have a lesser opinion of the innate capabilities of man. 26 The failure to recognize this difference has led Joseph Campbell to draw the false conclusion that the trickster-hero is the ideal of the shaman (Masks of God: Primitive Mythology [New York: Viking Press, 1959], p. 279). Campbell has rightly noted the difference between the "titanic" attitude of the trickster and the humble, subssrvient posture of the priest, but he is wrong to class the shaman with the former type of religious attitude. The shaman, in this respect at least, is more akin to the priest. 335 The North American Indian Trickster

It must be plain by this time that, as I see him, the trickster- fixer is the embodiment of a certain mythic apprehension of the nature of man and his place in the cosmos. In these myths of theft we see the trickster as man fighting alone against a universe of hostile, spiritual powers-and winning-by virtue of his clever- ness. The trickster is man, according to an archaic intuition, struggling by himself to become what he feels he must become- master of his universe. Closely related in form and logic to the theft myth is the type in which the trickster-hero vanquishes a supernatural being who is afflicting mankind. Usually the creature is a "cannibal monster" (which means that it probably represents disease or famine or baleful influences in general) which eats up mankind. These are among the spiritual powers which shamans combat with the aid of other spirits. The trickster-fixer deals with them alone by employ- ing some stratagem, such as entering into a vomiting contest in which the trickster makes the monster think that he, too, is a cannibal; or by persuading the monster that he has obtained his powers through some painful ordeal which, when the evil being lets himself be so treated, proves fatal. The trickster often suffers from fright after he has volunteered to go on the dangerous mis- sion to "slay the dragon," but he goes anyway, and succeeds in spite of fears-even as do real men, who also cower inwardly in the face of mortal danger. Trickster is no god or ideal hero; he is very human, with weaknesses and fears; yet in spite of these he prevails. At other times the trickster boasts inordinately before setting out to match wits with the cannibal; but this, we know, is only another way that fear is manifested in real human beings. In ancient times the trickster-fixer rid the world of the worst of evil beings, and made it habitable for mankind. His descendants today celebrate him for his victories, for they know that if he succeeded in his perilous conflicts, so can they in theirs, for he is their prototype. We have noted that the trickster stands for a different attitude toward the supernatural realm than that typified by the shamans. It is not suprising, therefore, that in many myths this cleavage between the mythical hero and the shamans is manifest. Very often some deed of the trickster is a parody and caricature of some shamanistic experience or sacred priestly rite. For example, in the Plateau, Great Basin, and California area, the dependence upon guardian spirits is mocked by Coyote with his "excrement advisors." Like the warrior who is counseled by his familiar 336 spirits, and like the shaman who calls up a "pain" (sacred object) from within his body to enable him to perform his healing acts, Coyote has his "counselors" who come forth from his bowels when he is in danger. These talking excrements tell him what to do, but he will never admit that they have told him anything he did not know already! He always says, "Why, of course! I knew it all the time !" and puts them back in place. The ubiquitous story of the trickster's flight with the birds (or on the back of a single bird), which ends always in a fall and often in a disintegration of the trickster's body (temporarily), is a patent parody of the spiritual flight of the shaman and his experi- ence of being reduced to bones and made whole again. Stories of this sort are found in every region and nearly every tribe. The episode of the trickster's diving into the water in pursuit of a reflection (a widespread legend) is a gibe at the shamanistic practice of plunging into pools to obtain guardian-spirit power. Sometimes the trickster simply impersonates a doctor in order to gratify his desire for food (the doctor's fee) or sex (while he is supposedly performing his secret healing rites alone inside a tent with a girl). The delightful Plains story of the trickster getting his head stuck inside an old elk skull, falling into a river, and being mistaken for a supernatural being by the Indians who see him floundering in the water, is one further example of this large class of anti-shaman stories.27 The bungling-host motif, and other tales of the failure of the trickster to imitate some deed of another person whose powers are different from his own, present another aspect of the multifaceted apprehension of man's nature which is expressed in the trickster- fixer. These stories show the trickster being surprised at some food-getting technique (or other ability) of another animal, admiring the skill, and then trying to duplicate it, with disastrous results. He is unwilling that anyone shall be able to do something that he cannot do. In some instances he simply fixes himself up to be like the other person outwardly (ties an awl on his face to resemble the kingfisher, for example) and tries to act just as he observed the other act (dives into the water to spear a fish). In other types of stories, he begs the other person to give him some of his power, or to teach him how to do his trick: as when he gets three "shots" of musk from the skunk, or learns to juggle his eyeballs like the birds or the rabbit. In all events, he comes to grief sooner or later; he 27 Several of these stories are contained in the Winnebago cycle, conveniently related in Radin's The Trickster. 337 The North American Indian Trickster fails as the bungling host because he lacks the food-getting powers of the other; or he loses the power given or taught to him because he soon abuses it. All these stories, it seems to me, have basically the same point, although there are different shades of meanings. These stories say that there is, after all, some limit to the powers of man. He is exceedingly clever, he can outwit the highest supernatural beings, but there are some things he cannot do. He should not feel too badly about this state of affairs-it is better just to make a joke of it. If a man tries to do things for which he was never intended, the result can be only that he will make a fool of himself and probably get hurt in the process. Of course trickster, like man, never learns this lesson; but he keeps on trying again and again to do everything that others can do: get food by slicing his thigh like the bear, peck worms out of tree trunks like the woodpecker, make his children to be spotted like the deer's fawns, eat grass like the bison, etc. The trickster is clever, but at times he can be incredibly foolish. But in these stories of attempts at imitation we can see also, I believe, a deeper meaning. Again there appears to be ridicule for the shaman. The shaman is precisely the man who claims to have obtained more-than-human powers. He flies like a bird, he has supersight, he wounds himself but is not injured. Shamans' per- formances, known all over Indian America, were filled with exhibitions of these and other powers which have their counter- parts in tales of the trickster. Shamans obtained their powers, it should be remarked, from guardian spirits who were, for the most part, animal in form. The trickster in the myths tries to imitate various animals whose powers are not his own. His blundering efforts to do what the animals (who are in some way superior to him) do, are a mockery of the shamans and all other men who think they can get higher powers from the animal spirits. All their dancing, costumes, and exhibitions are silly, these myths say. See how ridiculous the trickster is when dressed up like the king- fisher, or when he tries to fly with the geese! In those stories in which he actually obtains superhuman powers, only to lose them shortly, the point is a little different: the trickster fails to keep the power because he is unsuited by nature (it would seem) to have it. True, if he had obeyed instructions he could have retained the power, but the point is that he could not obey them; it just was not in him to be that way! We should notice that the trickster does not deny that there are 338 supernatural powers. He is not "atheistic"-he knows that the spirit beings exist and are real-but he does not ask their help (or if he does, as in the case of obtaining powers from other animals, he accepts it on his own conditions: that is, he will not obey the taboos). He is a believer, but not a worshiper. On this level of culture, atheism would be impossible. But he is anti-god, and he is bent upon destroying the gods, even though he knows they possess powers he does not have. The shaman and those who follow him seek to win the blessings of these spiritual beings; the trickster, unwilling to humble himself, tries only to imitate their powers. And because man has his limitations, the trickster fails often. However, in no case are these failures presented as very serious matters. Man does not, after all, really need anything he does not already possess! He does not need to obtain his food in some supernatural fashion, or to soar through the clouds, or to be able to juggle his eyeballs, or to expel musk like a skunk. Life is a struggle for man, to be sure, but he has been endowed by nature (and by the successful deeds of the trickster-fixer in the beginning) with sufficient resources, if he will but make use of them, to be victorious. The relationship of the trickster-transformer-culture hero to myths of creation and the high god is a complex one, which I can allude to only briefly here. On the one hand, the high god is mostly a priestly shamanistic construct, based on the hierophany of the sky and the experience of transcendence associated with it. The essential elements in the structure of the high god are transcen- dence, omniscience, and sovereignty,28 to which frequently is added (as I believe) the attribute of original creativity. The god who is supreme is a natural candidate for the office of creator. Moreover, since he is a product of shamanistic experience, and since he possesses other shamanistic traits (omniscience, especi- ally), he easily acquires the attribute of creativity, making the earth to appear from nothing or next-to-nothing, as the shaman similarly can cause things to appear magically. Like the shaman when he is conjuring, the creator frequently is pictured as singing while creating. The trickster-fixer, however, is also a "natural" for the role of creator, since he has been here from the beginning; and since he is known as the one who has caused things to be arranged as they are.

28 Cf. Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958), pp. 38-40, 52, 109; and R. Pettazzoni, The All-knowing God (London: Methuen & Co., 1956), pp. 5, 22-26. 339 The North American Indian Trickster

It would appear to be almost inevitable that the trickster- transformer should become the rival of the high-god, for two reasons: first, the trickster belongs to the anti-spiritualistic type of religious experience while the high god arises from the intuition of transcendence and is the product of shamanistic experience; second, the trickster-transformer is the only "creator" the people have known before the high god comes on the scene in the role of creator. As a matter of fact, we do find the two figures in opposi- tion in the mythology of North America; as for example, among the Western Algonkians (Arapaho, Blackfoot, Gros Ventre) and several tribes of central California.29 This is not to say that the trickster was always held to be the creator of the world. It seems highly unlikely that the idea of world creation is as old as the apprehension of reality embodied in our trickster-fixer. In the oldest layers of myth (as they seem to be), the trickster appears in a world which has always existed, so far as the myths say-a world, however, which is chaotic and needs to be set in order. Indeed, the origin of the trickster usually is not accounted for, or if it is, it seems not to be an essential part of the traditions. Moreover, the trickster himself is something of a "chaos," with his uncontrollable appetites, his enormous sexual apparatus, his unsociability, his amorality, his ability to change shape at will, etc. He is a microcosmic counter- part of the macrocosm in which he lives and moves-before he has set it in order. Paul Radin and Carl Jung, as we have men- tioned before, find in the trickster a reflection of the early, undifferentiated state of human consciousness. In this view, the trickster is man at a certain stage of his psychic development: man in the chaotic mental state from which he has emerged and into which he seems always ready to revert, man in the process of becoming a created, ordered being. The idea of the world as something which has been made, and the concept of a time when the world was not, belong not to the earliest stages of Indian mythology and are not, I believe, a part of the original trickster mythology. If the trickster was not the creator from the first, how did this function come to be attached to

29 Pettazzoni (ibid., p. 370) considers Coyote, the trickster in central California (and elsewhere) to be a degraded lord of animals who has "fallen from the sacred into the profane sphere." However, the evidence seems to me to point to quite different origins for Coyote and the animal masters. Indeed, in myths of some tribes, the tricksters and the lord of animals are mutually hostile figures. The lord of animals is a transcendent being in structure, while Coyote and other tricksters are worldly. 340 him later, sometimes, instead of the high-god, who is supreme and transcendent ? The answer is not, I think, difficult to find. The trickster- transformer-culture hero is from the first a kind of creator. He brings order out of the chaotic myth world, and in the process he becomes less chaotic himself. He changes things into the forms they have retained ever since; he ordains patterns and laws for all times. When he finishes his transforming work, he has indeed created the world-the world-as-it-is. He is no less a creator because he did not bring the earth and life itself into being. At an early stage of thought, the question of how the earth came to be does not present itself. The question, "How did the world come to be as it is? " is much more fundamental and, presumably, more ancient. But when the latter question was asked, it was natural that the work of cosmic creation, too, should be ascribed sometimes to the one who was known already as the transformer and ordainer of the world order, the earliest and best-loved character in mythology. Quite often in the mythology of Indian North America we find a conflict existing between the high god as creator and the trickster-fixer who also wishes to be a creator; or, alternatively, we find a confusion in the minds of the people as to whether the trickster is or is not identical with the high god. The reason for this conflict and confusion is apparent: both the supreme being and the trickster-fixer can, with logic, become earth-makers. Which one receives the honor will depend upon the relative strengths of the mythical and shamanistic world-views in a given culture. If the high god wins out, the trickster probably will be- come a demiurge or a marplot, and a dualistic system will result. If the trickster wins, then he himself will come to be regarded as something of a high god (as in the case of Raven on the Northwest Coast). All the major alternatives are found in central California: Coyote as creator (Pomo), as the assistant to the high god (Yuki), and as counter-creator (Maidu). Dualism can come about also when the trickster-transformer- culture hero comes into conflict with a "pure" transformer or culture hero. Boas was partly right when he spoke of a develop- ment in mythology of the idea of culture hero and transformer, from one who is also a trickster to one who is a purely heroic and beneficient being. But such a development, in my view, is not "progress," as Boas thought, but it is what Jensen calls a "seman- tic depletion" or a "degeneration from expression to applica- 341 The North American Indian Trickster

tion." 30 It signifies a loss of understanding of the meaning of the original "seizure" which produced the trickster-transformer- culture hero. The religious value of the craftiness and blundering of the trickster has been forgotten, and a new figure, who lacks most or all of these human characteristics of the trickster, rises to claim the affections of the people. All the works of this new character are admirable and bene- ficial to mankind. He is pre-eminently a monster-slayer (like Hare among the Winnebago, or the numerous transformers of the Fraser River and coastal Salish tribes), and he strides through the world as a youthful, godlike hero, worthy of everyone's full admiration. He lacks the well-developed characterization of the older figure, and his adventures are rather routine and stereo- typed. The myth cycles connected with this type of hero make dull reading, since the plots show little imagination. When he comes into contact with the trickster, there is instant hostility and conflict, and the latter usually emerges as the loser. The trickster tries to best his young rival by employing the devices that have enabled him to survive hitherto: by cheating and deceiving him. The widespread story of the trickster sending a young man up a magically growing tree or cliff and abandoning him there, stealing his clothes and attempting to take his place on earth, is perhaps the best example of this type of tale. (The young man always gets down again, sometimes after having been super- naturally endowed through his visit to the sky, and gets his revenge on the trickster.) Another widely told Indian story of this type is that of the hero-boy who shoots an arrow at a menacing bird at the same time that the trickster shoots; the boy's arrow hits its mark, but the trickster claims it was his arrow that killed the evil bird. For a while, the trickster seems to have succeeded in his deception; but, as in the other story, the youthful hero wins in the end, and the trickster is banished in humiliation. Still another example is that of the hare in the Southeast: he is bested by a youth in a series of magic feats which the trickster is unable to duplicate. Thus the trickster loses his position as the central and most sacred myth figure, giving place to one who is endowed with supernatural power from the gods. The people, under the influence of "religious genuises," have come to prize a different type of hero- the ideal hero, who is free from faults, and who has sought and obtained spiritual power. The consequence for mythology is that 0sOp. cit., pp. 4-5, 324. 342 the trickster and his stories fall into the realm of the profane (as in the mythologies of the Plains tribes and the Southwest, generally), or else, as in the case of the Iroquois, the Klamath, and perhaps the Mandan-Hidatsa, a splitting of the original character into two takes place, and we find a good and an evil (or foolish) creator- pair. (In the Plateau region, however, Coyote has held his own against the young hero, and remains the principal culture hero among these peoples.) The essential elements in the structure of the myth figure who is the subject of this article, then, are these: (a) he is a trickster, a worldly being of uncertain origin who lives by his wits and is often injured and embarrassed by his foolish imitations and pranks, yet who never takes himself too seriously and never admits defeat; (b) he is a transformer, a being of myth times who goes about doing things that set the pattern and form of the world for all time, acting customarily without apparent plan or forethought, and leaving the world as it is today, having thus prepared it for man- kind, his "children"; and (c) he is a culture hero, who, unassisted, risks his life and limb in daring entanglements with supernatural powers in order that the world may be a better place for those who are to come. All these elements are integrated into one character, who, in reality, is none other than Man.

I have referred repeatedly to the trickster-fixer as a religious figure, and to the apprehension of reality which he embodies as "religious." I have said that the stance which the trickster takes in the world is a religious stance. But what does "religious" mean in reference to the trickster? How can one so foolish, gross, immoral, and so forth be called "religious"? In holding the trick- ster-fixer to be a religious figure, I am obviously assuming a definition of religion which is broader than that which is usually understood and accepted. It is plain that the trickster is not, properly, the object of wor- ship. He is not a spirit or a god, but a myth-being, a person of the mythical age, the primordial era. His present "location" is inde- finite in most Indian mythologies, and is variously given. In general, we can say that he has "gone away" and no longer has any direct influence on mankind. Even more than the high god, the trickster is otiose. Like the Dema deities, he has no "presence" in the world, except in the order of the world itself, as he made it. Like an ancestor, he lives on earth in his descendants-mankind- and otherwise he exists perhaps "far away" in the place of the 343 The North American Indian Trickster dead who have gone before. Only exceptionally and aberrantly is the trickster held to be a spirit or a god. In each instance it can be shown that this feature is a secondary development. The trickster-fixer is the leading figure of the myth age, until his place is taken by heroes and gods in "higher" mythologies. The trickster himself, is never held in awe; but, significantly, his myths are. They are surrounded by taboos: they can be told only at night, only in the winter, etc. The myths are sacred because they establish and explain the reality of things. We might almost say that, while the trickster is not worshiped, his myths are. Not the trickster as a living being, but the deeds he does and what they reveal about man and the world, are the sacred reality. This is because the trickster is Man Himself, while his actions as related in the myths disclose man transcending himself. What the myths reveal is the experience of the self-trancending quality of the human mind. Unlike the animals, man considers himself and his situation objectively. He transcends his immediate environment of time and space-even his own body and mind-in his thought. The myths of the trickster testify to no higher experience of trans- cendence than this one: the transcendent mind of man. And what, in essence is this transcendence? It is a desire, yes, a compulsion, to know. Man is not content, as are the beasts, just to exist. He must ask questions about his existence (think), change the conditions of his surroundings (act), and thereby become master of all he surveys. This is precisely what the trickster is doing continually. Van der Leeuw has seen this.31 He has seen also that the goal of all man's strivings is power. Man experiences a powerfulness in himself, and also power in the world about him. He wishes to master and harness all power for himself, but much of the power around him is mysterious. He may adopt one or more of several possible methods to attempt to remove the mystery and make the power his own, but chiefly he does one of two things: either he bows down to the powers, worships them, tries to appease them and win their aid and co-operation so that they become his powers; or else he assaults them in a frontal attack and tries to overcome them with his own strength and mental prowess. The first way, ob- viously, is the way of the shaman, the priest, and the pious wor- shiper. The second is the way of the trickster-hero. The former attitude often assumes and claims that it is the only "religious"

31 G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), pp. 339-40, 543-47, et passim. 344 one, and that the other is irreligious because it is anti-god. Such an opinion is understandable from the viewpoint of the man who believes that human life is innately deficient and must be aug- mented by supernatural graces if it is to be lived most fully. But in the study of the history of religions we must not limit ourselves to this vantage point only. Is it not possible to speak truly of a "religion of man," of a "wordly religion," for which the only experience of sacredness is of the self-transcending mind of man and its accomplishments ? Such a definition of religion as implied here requires a second look at the "idea of the Holy" as set forth in classic form by Rudolph Otto. Otto speaks of the Holy as that which is beyond us, yet manifests itself to us as an alien, numinous presence, a mysterium both tremendum and fascinans. Man's response to this religious experience is both to withdraw from it in fear and to be drawn to it with a sense of dependency. There are, indeed, abun- dant witnesses in the history of the race bearing testimony to such an experience, and the formal religions of men can be described as varieties of responses to it, in which both dread and love are mingled in varying degrees. But is this dual response the only possible one (save indifference) that can be made to the Great Unknown? (I call it the "Great Unknown," for what is this wholly Other but the apprehension in man's mind of the great fund of potency in the universe over which man has no control because he does not understand it?) Cannot the mind of man respond to the experience of "The Holy" by challenging it, by demanding that it yield up its secrets to him, by commanding it to submit to his own powerfulness, and thus be no longer mysterious and "other"? And is this not also a religious response, since its object is ultimate reality? The various religions are really, in many respects, attempts to reduce the fearfulness of the unknown by understanding it, regulating it, manipulating it through rites and ceremonies, formulas and prayers, and thus appropriating its power to man, the worshiper. As van der Leeuw has so vividly stated it: Like the child, then, man pushes his barrow, but his sense of aliena- tion causes him to apply some fixed standard to his activities, so that dread may be silenced and he may feel at home therein. Then he places his god in it: now he pushes Power itself! But he can also pause, and kneel before the god in the cart of his life.32 32 Ibid., p. 340. 345 The North American Indian Trickster

Ignorance of the unknown gives rise to the experience of the "beyond" and the "other," and ignorance is equivalent to power- lessness and helplessness. Religion, as the term usually is used, seeks to reduce the fear by replacing ignorance with knowledge of God (sacred myths and theology), knowledge of how to approach him (rituals), and please him (moral laws). Thus, religion's unrecognized goal is to make itself unnecessary. Its goal is to re- move its cause, awe, by explaining that which is awesome, and thereby gaining control over it. But there is another way by which man has sought the same goal (mastery of the unknown through understanding), and that is directly, by conquest. Like the trickster who ventures into the very camp of the unknown powers to steal fire, so man, in various ways, asking the help of no supernatural agency, often has sought to wrest from the universe all its secrets so that man may be in complete control and may know all. This way of worldly know- ledge has always existed side by side with the other, the religious way; and, in fact, has usually coexisted in the same persons, with only a few choosing one way or the other exclusively. Shamanistic and priestly religions, in which man submits to the gods and beseeches them to aid him and bless him with power and understanding, is the too early abandonment of the quest to know and thereby control. It is a short-cut method to security, in which man bows before the inscrutable and ungovernable powers, per- sonifies them, and asks them to help him and give him what he wants, even though he cannot compel them. (But religious rituals become something of a way of forcing the gods to do man's will!) The way of the trickster-hero, the way of "titanic insubordination" (van der Leeuw), the way of worldly religion and science, never reaches the goal of the complete conquest of the unknown; but it does not delude itself that it has found all the answers and ac- quired all power by calling the unknown "God," and worshiping it. The trickster-transformer-culture hero is man being religious in "the other way," the godless way of humanism. He is man, mud- dling through some of life's problems, discovering his own powers of mind and body, and using them, sometimes wisely, sometimes foolishly, but always enthusiastically. The trickster refuses the way of the fideists, and prefers to make his mistakes by himself and take the consequences for them. He is downed-quite fre- quently-but never defeated. He remains true to the original impulse that started man on the mental pilgrimage that has pro- 346 duced all his culture-the instinctual confidence that man can master the universe with all its powers and mysteries. The real religious quest of man is to obtain omniscience, and through it, omnipotence. The various religions of the world are the many indirect pathways to that goal; the way of the trickster is the direct path. The trickster does not yield to the temptation to turn aside to worship strange gods, but he holds sacred only the struggle itself and the sum of its past victories: culture, the world-as-it-is, and the world as it has been arranged and under- stood by man. For such a religion, "man is the measure." The trickster may best be understood as the personification of all the traits of man raised to the highest degree. Man is sexual; the trickster is grossly erotic. Man is driven by hunger; the trickster will do anything to obtain a meal. Man is slow to learn from his mistakes; the trick- ster repeats the same blunders again and again. Man's lot is hard in this world, yet life has its pleasures and joys also; the trickster is continually being buffeted about, but he also has his fun and he always comes up laughing. Laughter has an important place in the life of man; truly it is one of his saving graces. The trickster is the embodiment of humor-all kinds of humor. He plays tricks on others, he ridicules sacred customs, he breaks taboos, he boasts when he should blush, he is the world's greatest clown, and he can laugh at himself. For the religious viewpoint which the trickster represents, laughter has a religious value and function. In laughing at the incredible antics of the trickster, the people laugh at themselves. The myths of the trickster enabled the Indians to laugh off their failures in hunting, in fighting, in romance, and in combatting the limitations imposed upon them by their environment, since they saw in the trickster how foolish man is, and how useless it is to take life too seriously. Even death becomes laughable, for after the trickster had ordained it, his decision backfired, and his own child was the first to die. To be sure, the trickster does not laugh, but others do, for the whole business is a bitter joke on him. These values, which appear to me to be religious, account for the continued popularity of this myth figure among the common people long after the sophisticated religious elite and their fol- lowers have renounced his blasphemous ways and his coarse humor. He meets a human need directly, by enabling men to endure the burden of the failures of their lives in self-forgetful laughter. The telling of his tales is a kind of liturgy, and the 347 The North American Indian Trickster laughter of the people is a sort of ritual response. They laugh at him until they are laughing at themselves. He endures their ridi- cule like a suffering savior, and in the end he saves them, through their laughter. When the religious values of humor are lost or for- gotten, heroic religion is deprived of one of its principal techniques for meeting life's defeats; and in its place tragedy enters, and despair-if heroic religion does not give place to faith. Because the trickster, in the beginning, established the world- as-it-is, this world (as it is perceived and ordered by the mind of man) becomes the sphere of sacred reality. Not the transcendent realm, but this world; not the confined space of the dance ground or the temple, but the whole earth, is holy. Not simply the time of the ceremonials, but all times are sacred, if one lives according to the patterns laid down by the trickster-transformer-culture hero in the beginning, and accepts gratefully the world that he has left to his "children." For this reason and others we may term this viewpoint a "worldly religion," meaning a religion for this world. This religion exists in tension between two poles: the acceptance of the world-as-it-is; and the belief that man can change the world, even as the trickster did before him. That is to say, this viewpoint acknowledges (even as the trickster is forced to do) that there are limits to the possibilities open to man. Some of these are imposed by "nature," some by the environment man has made for himself in the world. Within these limitations each man has a life to live, which he is to live with all his powers; and, by dint of struggle, he is to win from the powers of the universe all the goods of this life that he can. At the same time, he must not take life or himself too seriously, or he will miss the fun that is to be had in expressing one's personality. (The trickster certainly is not inhibited!) The myths seem to say that human nature never changes, although it matures, and certain facts of life are immut- able and must be accepted; but what man can do in his own power alone "eye hath not seen and ear hath not heard." The tension between the "possible" and the "given" focuses sharply in the myths about the origin of death, and the trickster's part in that event. As the one who ordained things in the world to be as they are, the trickster usually is held responsible for the permanency of death. In the Far West the most common story is that he simply decreed death, against the wishes of some other more benevolent being or against the wishes of the people. Usually the trickster-fixer gives some practical reason for his decision, such as that it is necessary lest the world become overcrowded. 348 Sometimes he rules for death because he wishes to see people enjoy themselves at funerals! But after the fatal sentence has been uttered, the trickster's child is the first to die. Now the trickster regrets his degree and begs to have it reversed, but it is too late. The trickster weeps, and often at this time institutes mourning customs. But when the period of mourning is past, he is off to some new adventure, his sorrow quite forgotten. What does this myth disclose about the nature of man and the meaning of life? It is frankly realistic about death. Death is final and cannot be avoided, nor can the dead return. Death is neces- sary, but it is also sad, and the trickster who established it knows well its pangs. Death is not viewed as a positive good, as it seems to be by Jensen's archaic planters who celebrate the first death as the event that brought food plants and other life into the world (such stories, incidentally, are known to agricultural Indian tribes of the Southeast and Southwest), but neither is it a positive evil. Death is sad, but in a world where sex has been established (the trickster usually has a hand in this too) death is necessary lest the world become overfilled with people. The myth stresses that the trickster decided for death, and even though he later wants to reverse the decision, we have the impres- sion that he knows it is best in the long run. That is to say, the apprehension of life and the world view which the trickster em- bodies is that man must accept death and affirm it as his ultimate fate. (He might as well!) Yet the goal of much of the religious striving and longing of mankind has been to circumvent his mortality, and to become immortal, like the gods. But for the trickster, who has rejected all supernatural aid and has elected for freedom, there is no hope for immortality. Man must accept the fact of his mortal nature, and even choose it, as the trickster did, for the good of himself and the human race as a whole. To a different type of mind, the trickster's decision for death, as well as his other "hard" creations, are viewed as evil. From such a point of view the trickster comes to be considered a marplot and villain, the spoiler of the purely "good" plan of the beneficient creator god. This gives rise to some of the examples of dualism found in North American Indian mythology. Of course, the trickster of the myths never dies; or, more pre- cisely, whenever he dies he rises up again. This is because he is a symbol of mankind, the race, which, according to this mythic vision, is unconquerable and immortal. But individual men must die, and the trickster's child who represents us, dies and does not 349 The North American Indian Trickster return. The trickster's only remedy for death is tears, followed by laughter. He cannot save us from our mortal destiny, but he does something better: he gives us a purpose for living this life. He says that this life is good, that it is to be grasped with enthusiasm and enjoyed to the hilt. He ridicules the shaman and the priest, and he mocks the gods they serve, yet he is not punished for his impiety. For what can the gods do to the man who does not fear them and who knows that they exist, not to be served, but to be conquered ?

350