The Golden Age
Ritual behavior always involves a symbolic return to the primordial conditions of existence, before the advent of time and the uncertainties and finalities associated with time. These primordial conditions are everywhere represented as a kind of paradise without death, suffering, or work; when man lived in harmony with the world, even with the other animals; when he had easy access from his world to the "real" world, heaven; and when he thereby could communicate directly with God. Between this timeless world and the present intervened a catastrophe, sundering ready access to heaven and God and marking the beginning of our present unfortunate condition, one characterized by temporality, death, and suffering.[32]
From a Freudian (one might as well here say "modern") point of view, this "paradise" might be the prenatal or preweaning period, which ends with a catastrophic "infantile trauma." An individual's personality, ac-
cording to this theory, is fixed by his attitude toward the circumstances of this primordial state. Stephen Jay Gould has developed this idea further, expanding upon the idea of prolonged infant dependency to explain what he sees as the ubiquitous human characteristic of neoteny. Some implications of this are that humans retain infantile characteristics throughout their lives. Manifestations include the life-long human capacity for learning and play.[33] Another implication, though, is that we retain the longing for a parental caretaker and "savior," casting our gods into this role and casting our parents (and more remote ancestors) as gods.[34] The importance of this human characteristic only increases as ritual becomes less formal (or "degraded") and "privatized" in the modern world, and each individual must assume more responsibility for constructing a meaningful universe for herself or himself from a cosmology, more and more idiosyncratic.
In such a cosmology, parents become increasingly important, and the ability to "differentiate" or "individuate" becomes crucial to successful socialization.[35] Successful socialization includes the ability to conceptualize and express oneself in an "elaborated" (rational and explicit) manner, as opposed to a "restricted" (context-bound and abbreviated) one.[36] Such a task is difficult. It is actually impossible to accomplish completely, as Bowen observed, and all too frequently differentiation is so incomplete as to render the individual dysfunctional in the modern world, in all but relatively structured environments. Reasons for inadequate socialization appear to be both idiosyncratic and cultural. Psychologists tend to focus on the idiosyncratic aspects of socialization. As we have seen, these assume much greater importance in the modern world.
Adequate socialization of the young in a modern industrial world is of interest from a cultural viewpoint. The modern world has been aptly characterized by Mary Douglas as ego-centered; that is, it is a world in which the "competence and luck" of each individual is believed to be responsible for his or her "success" or "failure." These latter terms really refer to whether a person has been able to construct a viable identity. Unsuccessful participants in such a world system are doomed to "social oblivion." Douglas summarizes the inherent problems of such a system as follows:
My own hypothesis is that a society so strongly centered on a structure of ego-focused grid is liable to recurrent breakdown from its inherent moral weakness. It cannot continually sustain the commitment of all its members to an egalitarian principle that favors a minority. It has no way of symbolizing or activating the collective conscious. One would anticipate an ego-focused grid
system to swing between the glorification of successful leaders and the celebration of the rights of the masses to enjoy success.[37]
What may come as more of a surprise than this statement by Douglas is her contention that other strongly gridded, ego-centered cultures include such "primitive" ones as those of New Guinea (who display what has been called the "Big Man" system) and that of the American Plains Indians. The ego-centered aspect of the Plains Indian culture, I suggest, derives from the influence of American (modern, capitalistic, and individualistic) culture. Ego-centered individualism was propagated largely by the social mechanism of ritual trade, which produced profound changes in cultures already traumatized by disease, defeat, and despair. Such an explanation is required to clear up confusion such as that expressed by the early ethnographer Robert Lowie at the "rank individualism" inherent in the religious structures of Plains Indians groups like the Crow.[38] Douglas observed:
Lowie pointed to this as an example of a religion that Durkheim's approach could not accommodate. This is the very type of society which Durkheim thought could not exist in primitive economic conditions: low level of economic interdependence combined with highly competitive individualism, and a religion of private guardian spirits for each man.[39]
In this system, whether among the American Indians or in New Guinea or here amongst ourselves, each person is committed to it by the lure of outstanding success (or even just moderate success) for himself.
All cultures, according to Eliade, display a yearning for the lost primordial world, which they regard as paradise. It may seem strange to modern observers that the yearning for paradise is most apparent among some of the most archaic of societies:
The most representative mystical experience of the archaic societies, that of Shamanism, betrays the Nostalgia for Paradise, the desire to recover the state of freedom and beatitude before "the Fall" the will to restore communication between Earth and Heaven; in a word, to abolish all the changes made in the very structure of the Cosmos and in the human mode of being by that primordial disruption. The shaman's ecstacy restores a great deal of paradisiac condition: it renews the friendship with the animals; by his flight or ascension, the shaman reconnects Earth with Heaven; up there, in Heaven, he once more meets the God of Heaven face to face and speaks directly to him, as man sometimes did in illo tempore .[40]
Nostalgia extends not only to the realm of the purely primordial but also to the dim reaches of what each group perceives to be its profane his-
tory. Thus, in the past, it was invariably easier to commune with the absolute: The gods were closer at hand, and shamans were more adept at their business of bringing the sacred to the profane.
Such nostalgia is not, of course, limited to archaic societies. More "modem" religions offer abundant examples: praying toward the east in the Muslim religion, baptism as reentry into paradise, the hope of paradise after death in the Christian religion, and so on. Christopher Columbus believed he had discovered paradise on his third voyage. Ponce de León searched for the fountain of youth, and as William Brandon has documented very well, early in their explorations of the New World the Spanish were guided by their belief in Quivira.[41]
Nostalgia exists in less obviously sacred realms, too. It is important to bear in mind that ritual exists as a social mechanism, and myth and symbol as social phenomena quite apart from the validity of their claim to a higher form of knowledge. Although belief in that higher form is essential, the more meaningful realm may exist apart from contemporary religious institutions. Ritual and myth are primary ways of organizing the world; they are, in fact, essential to "world construction" and so extend into areas where ritual has become degraded and the underlying mythology much more difficult to see or to attach to the obviously "sacred."
Such is the case in regard to the strange nostalgia for Native American culture—strange in the sense that the dominant Anglo culture did everything in its power to obliterate the Native American culture for a time and still behaves in a patronizing manner toward Native Americans. Nonetheless, it is obvious that "mainstream" America considers the Native American heritage to be part of its own. The American stake in Native American identity is particularly strong in regard to the Plains Indians, and, I think, even more especially the Cheyenne. Americans have a certain awe of the nineteenth-century Plains Indian way of life, and it is sometimes held up as a model for a more "wholesome" and "natural" way of life. A recent expression of this can be seen in the popularity of the motion picture Dances With Wolves. More revealing, there was little resistance to the idea, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Columbus's "discovery" of America, that European colonization had despoiled a Garden of Eden. While American popular attitudes toward Native Americans are ambivalent, it should be apparent that Native American culture, at least the romanticized conception of it, is a part of the mythological American paradise. Recognizing nostalgia for what it is acknowledges that such romanticism may be a part of a social dynamic that relegates Native Americans to a subordinate social position. It is as if we need our "primitives."
The fall 1990 issue of The American West Traveller, a "take-home copy" which I picked up in my hotel room in Denver, illustrates well some of the nuances of American romanticism about and nostalgia for the Native American way of life. There is a full-page ad for a bronze statue from the Franklin Mint which depicts an Indian, astride a horse, holding up a buffalo skull. The sculpture, titled "Prayer to the Healing Spirit," is remarkably similar to MacNiel's "The Sun Vow," although the advertised sculpture seems to have added one of Remington's horses and one of Bierstadt's buffalo skulls to the vignette. Christmas cards are offered on other pages, most with Western motifs, many depicting Native Americans. The message on one of the latter is, "May the warm winds of Heaven blow softly on your house, and the Great Spirit bless all who enter there. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year." I am urged to send for the 1990 Indian Market Magazine, which will guide me through the Santa Fe Indian Market. The guide not only will direct me to the "Hopi painter who delights in symbolism, and a Comanche couple who create miniature beadwork" but also will explain "why Indian art is hot around the world today."
As I page through the magazine, my attention is caught by a photograph of four men wearing Army fatigues, feathered headdresses, and (three of the four) Ray-Ban-type sunglasses. The photograph is an illustration for an article titled "Something to Crow About." The caption says, "The Crow color guard. The man on the right wears a genuine eagle feather war bonnet. Note the two men in the center wearing the blue and silver Combat Infantry Badge. To this day, the Crows elevate warriors to positions of respect in the tribe," as do Americans as a whole, I think.
The trans-Mississippi West occupies a position in American nationalistic mythology. somewhere between what Camelot and Sherwood Forest represent to the English. It is by means of the mythology associated with the West that we have, to a considerable extent, defined our country and ourselves. The importance of the West to our national identity is why so much of Western history begins with Frederick Jackson Turner's "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" and ends with discussions and arguments about this single work. Perhaps Turner would be less misunderstood if he had more clearly identified the West as the Eden of our national origin myth.
The role of Native Americans in the national mythology has unavoidably colored American and European perceptions of Native American groups. A recurring myth, and one that has gained increasing ascendancy, in the last twenty-five years or so, is one that employs the dichotomy noted by Claude Lévi-Strauss in The Raw and the Cooked .[42] Bi-
nary opposition is attributed here to that which is "raw and natural" on the one hand and "cooked and socialized" on the other, between what is "natural" and what is "artifice." That which is natural (cotton, rural life, "natural" foods, no make-up) is regarded as being superior to that which is artificial (plastic, city life, fast- or microwaved food, cosmetic surgery), the latter being not as (or at least less) "real" and valid. The merits or flaws of this position are well beyond the scope of this book; however, uncritically regarding Native Americans as the Noble Savage must impede to some degree the rational apprehension of the past. In reality, the Native American past was not quiescent, not a Garden of Eden nor a Peaceful Kingdom as is sometimes suggested by binary partitioning of the modem from the primitive and traditional. It was, instead, characterized by individual and collective attempts to secure meaning, security, and pleasure, and these efforts unavoidably generated conflict.
Archaeological evidence has clearly shown that these conflicts were often worked out in violent ways, ways which included scalping and other forms of mutilation.[43] Such evidence refutes recurring claims in the popular culture that scalping was a European invention.[44] In other words, the Native American past was a typically human adaptation, with conflicts and alliances arising at least in part from idiosyncrasies of personality and the accidental juxtaposition of individuals and events, rather than being an instinctive and harmonious collaboration with nature.
The images of southwestern Plains Native American groups that have realized popular currency not only in the United States but throughout the world are derived for the most part from observations made in the nineteenth century. These images, and the characteristics associated with them, have been incorporated into the national identity of the United States. Nineteenth-century images of Native Americans or Native American paraphernalia appear on coins (the "Indian Head" nickel), on stamps (the commemorative edition of Native American headdresses), in association with college and professional sport organizations (including the professional football team from the nation's capital, the Washington Redskins), as insignia on the uniforms of youth organizations (such as the Boy Scouts of America "Arrowhead" merit badges), on weapons and weapon systems (Tomahawk, Apache), on all-terrain vehicles (the Jeep Cherokee), and in any number of other places where they are generally intended to associate the bearer of the image with the qualities of independence, physical and especially military prowess, pride, endurance, and masculinity. In turn, there is a general implication that such characteristics are peculiarly American. A. Irving Hallowell has noted that
Carl Jung, who has probably analyzed more persons of various nationalities than anyone else, thought he could discern an Indian component in the character structure of his American patients, and D. H. Lawrence asked whether a dead Indian is nought. "Not that the Red Indian will ever possess the broad-lands of America," he said and then added, "but his ghost will."[45]
Not only are these images and characteristics taken from the nineteenth century, they are associated with the period of most intense interaction between Anglo and Native American groups—and that of the most extensive armed confrontation between the two.
Such a "snapshot" view of these groups—most notably the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Sioux, Comanche, Kiowa, Apache, and Navajo—disregards their histories before and after the nineteenth century. These images are ahistorical—timeless. They belong to a mythological "golden age," one that sprang forth fully blown, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. In the popular conception, these cultures existed in their natural and unchanging form from the dim recesses of the past until they were sullied by their collision with the white man's world. If they exist today, it must be only in some degraded manner.
The influence of nostalgia upon the modern perception of these particular Native American groups obscures popular, and to some extent academic, understanding of Native American groups in general. Not only does it focus on a few years out of many but also it ignores the fact that nineteenth-century southwestern Plains Native American groups developed in anything but a cultural vacuum. Their particular cultural configuration they owe in great part to interaction with the very Anglo-Americans who are often cast as their antithesis. In truth, we are much more alike than different, as Mary Douglas has pointed out. She categorized the Crow, and by extension the other Plains Indians, and the industrialized western cultures, high- and low-group societies that operate according to impersonal rules.[46] We should be alike; we are a part of the same cultural dynamic that has produced the modernity, capitalism, and individualism with which we all have since had to contend. Weston La Barre compared coup-counting and the behavior of the "Crazy Dogs" contraries with that of contemporary Americans, observing the similarities between a successful Crazy Dog and a broker who "makes a big killing on a stock market coup by the age of thirty-five—and then dies young of a coronary attack at age thirty-six."[47] Certainly, many American males would not be unflattered by the compar-
ison of their behavior in business with that of a Plains warrior in battle. And I suspect that were they faced with the same choice that confronted young Cheyenne males, that of risking all for "success" or leading what would probably be a longer life as a "failure," many would choose, as did the braves, the former over the latter. Such is the American way.