When Calico Came to Kotzebue Some Musings on the Power of Language and the Language of Power by Jim Vandergriff for Dr. N. Scott Momaday April 22, 1997 All human societies acknowledge the power of words: for the Greeks that power was in Logos, the word and the wisdom that were the basis for reason and reality; for the Hebrew that power was manifest in the True Name of God, never spoken aloud; for some African societies the power resided in an individual’s name, which was kept secret from the world at large, and a nickname used in its place; for the native American and many other cultures of the earth, that power is felt in what Margot Astrov calls "the magic creativeness of the word. The singing of songs and the telling of tales, with the American Indian," Astrov says, "is but seldom a means of mere spontaneous self-expression. More often than not, the singer aims with the chanted word to exert a strong influence and to bring about a change, either in himself or in nature or in his fellow beings." Rodney Frey expresses it thus: "Spoken words are not just semantic means of communication or descriptions of phenomena. They are also endowed with power that can affect the context in which they are expressed. In fact, words can bring about phenomena...." Frey concludes that the words and symbols of stories and songs are themselves "inundated with creative power." (Pijoan, pp. 10-11) Words can indeed "bring about phenomena," though the empiricist in me adds, "depending on how one defines ‘phenomena.’" When I was a boy of 10 or so in the early 1950s, I spent a couple of weeks each summer with my grandmother. To while away the long pre-television summer evenings, Grandma told me stories. She was an old woman then, nearing 80. Though she was the daughter of a well-off newspaper publisher, she had not been educated beyond the rudiments, so her stories were not always artful, and were often hard for me to follow and remember, though most were rich, exciting anecdotes from her own early life in the 1880s and 90s, and of our family in the generations before her. I lacked the folklorist’s appreciation that I would later bring to those tales, but I nonetheless found them both entertaining and affecting. Grandma married when she was 16 and moved to Oklahoma with her husband, who was a deputy U. S. Marshal there for a time. One of the tales Grandma told me was of the time her husband was transporting a Cherokee prisoner, whom she called "Black Pete," to jail. Granddad was too exhausted to go on to his destination, so he took Pete to their cabin. They blocked the front door with a cot for Pete, and Granddad slept in the other room. Grandma sat in a rocking chair all night with a shotgun in her lap and guarded Pete while Granddad slept. I still have a clear, sharp picture of the rocking chair, of Grandma holding the shotgun across her knee, and of Pete sprawled on the cot. I can see him look up at her as he cajoles and flatters and flirts, and does all the things the story recounted to try to get Grandma to release him. I clearly picture Pete’s handsome face, the shape and texture of the door his bed is blocking, the pattern of the linoleum on the floor, even the cast of light in the room. It was only when I realized that the Grandma I was picturing was the wrinkled 80 year-old that I knew instead of the 17 year-old she was then that I began to question how much of the story was my mind’s construction. Both the linoleum and the cast of light in the room are from the farmhouse in which she lived in the Ozarks when I was a child. The door is from one of the houses I lived in. Pete’s face is also my fabrication. So I now question the power of Grandma’s words. Her words generated phenomena -- images -- that I believed real, but the images they called up were my thoughts, not hers. Wherein lies the power -- in her words or in my thoughts? I didn’t begin to seriously ponder the stories and their effects until about 10 years ago when a colleague sent one of her students to see me. The student was writing a research paper on a legend she had heard from her husband’s grandfather. But her version was quite a bit different from the one I knew. This chance encounter with the young woman made me begin to question that story and my understanding of it. The questioning of it led me to question the others I had heard. Briefly, there is a cave in my birth region called "Joe’s Cave," so named because my great-great-great grandfather Dodson had, in 1839, taken the body of an ex-slave named Joe into the cave and dissected it. For some two weeks, he studied the muscles, nerves, etc., then boiled the flesh from the bones, re-articulated the skeleton, and used it in his medical practice. I had heard the story from Grandma and simply believed it. Dr. Dodson was her grandfather, and, I assumed, she had heard it directly from him; in short, I had no reason to disbelieve. But, after hearing the young lady’s version, I set out to learn the "real" story. Ten years later, I know a lot more than I used to about what really happened in southeastern Camden County, Missouri, in the summer of 1839, but I still don’t have all the answers. One thing I have learned is that words have power to shape perceptions of reality. (My articles on the story are attached FYI.) In 1991, while I was researching the story, I stumbled onto a review of a new book, Mary Donoho: First Lady of the Santa Fe Trail. The review mentioned that Mary Donoho was the sister of Dr. Dodson, that is, the sister of my great-great-great grandfather. In the book, I learned that Mary’s husband, William Donoho, a Santa Fe trader prior to the rebellion in the early 1840s, had ransomed three women from the Comanches and sent them back to Missouri to his wife’s mother’s home, where they remained while he tried to locate their families in Texas. The women were Sarah Horn, Clarissa Plummer, and Rachel Harris. Mary Donoho’s mother’s farm, of course, is where Joe’s Cave is located, the cave being about a mile from the house. The more I studied, the more the historiographic skein tangled and twined. Dr. Dodson, I learned, built the second Methodist Church building west of the Mississippi River, and Mary Dodson Donoho, not Susan Magoffin, was the first Anglo woman in Santa Fe. It has been sort of like trying to trace all the strands of a spider’s web in the dark. My purpose in relating my quest here is that it speaks of the power of language and of the oral tradition. The one story, the legend of Joe’s Cave, has led me into new understandings of my family’s history, as well as of the "westward expansion." Though it pleases me that my family was instrumental in rescuing those women, I am generally skeptical of the veracity of captivity narratives, and I have to question Mary’s right even to be in Santa Fe. On the one hand, it pleases me to have a personal connection, for instance, to Kit Carson, the Santa Fe Trail, and Bent’s Fort. On the other, it saddens me that my relatives are among those whom I condemn for the rape of the American continent. My grandmother’s stories and my ancestors’ intimate involvement in the playing out of Western American history (for good or ill) have influenced my view of the power of language. Especially in describing American history, words have had great power to deceive. My grandfather Dodson was a wealthy and powerful man who controlled a large estate of some six or seven miles in length and nearly the same in breadth (stolen, incidentally, from the Osage people and worked by Black slaves). In 1842, he gave his church and the land it occupied to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. After the Civil War, during which he lost much of his property and, of course, all of his slaves, he underwent a change of heart. Because the congregation refused to repudiate a biblical basis for Black slavery and refused to submit to the reunification of the Methodist Episcopal Church, he withdrew his gift of the land and the church building. In short, he expected his wishes to be heeded and used his economic and social power to enforce them. Conversely, in all the oral stories handed down about him, he is characterized as a noble figure, devout, generous, avuncular. In fact, he is generally referred to as either "Uncle Billy" or "Dr. Dodson." As I researched the story of Joe’s Cave, I learned much about him that didn’t support the images I had been raised on, and I ultimately came to believe that the stories served more to justify later generations than to accurately record him. The historical documents that survive, and his own brief autobiography, written in his late 70s, belie those characterizations of him. Words were used to create a reality. Grandma’s words convinced me at the time of telling, and convinced my mother, and dozens upon dozens of others who heard the story of the naming of Joe’s Cave. Almost 160 years after the event, the story of Joe’s Cave is still current in that corner of the Ozarks, and still shaping people’s views of themselves, of their past, and of the place. So, rightly or wrongly, Dr. Dodson lives in local history as a kind and devout man, a doer of good deeds. When I read and think about Native Americans’ words of power, I start from that intellectual grounding. When Dr. Dodson’s father arrived in the beautiful valley where the Osage had camped for centuries -- the place is still called "Campground Spring" -- he said, "This place is mine," and, by his insistence, made his words reality. Mary and William Donoho, likewise, built their La Fonda where the La Fonda Hotel now stands on the Santa Fe Plaza, asserting their right to be there, and the Anglo presence in Santa Fe became a fact. Words are powerful things if their speakers and/or hearers believe them. I don’t accept the idea of word power at face value, though. I don’t believe that, merely because a Cherokee man recites a word formula four times, cause and effect relationship between the words and the event makes the woman’s parents sleep. On the other hand, I accept the idea that words have power to influence perceptions. If the woman’s parents believed, then the desired effect might have come about. But, to my mind, that is more coincidence than causality, or at least indirect effect rather than direct. However, if the desired effect occurs, then how doesn’t really matter. If the speaker is convinced that his or her words will have the desired effect, then he or she will proceed as if they had the effect and nothing will convince him or her otherwise. The speaker shapes his or her own reality. My great-great-great-great grandfather believed the Osage land was his. He and his family continued to believe it and to act on it, and the Osage, finally accepting his reality, quit coming around. Much has been written on the idea that language shapes reality (the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,). The notion is that one can only think what one has language for -- an idea with which I disagree substantially. Certainly, I accept the idea that cultures articulate reality in different ways -- I reference Farb’s discussion of color names in various cultures. But I’m reminded of some of the semantic problems I encountered in my studies of Inuit English. The Kotzebue people, for example, have the word "keliku," which names the summer parka (or parka cover) worn by females. The term is derived from the English word "calico," the fabric of which those garments are often made. In my efforts to pin down the semantic range of the term, I frequently encountered an Inupiat term for the same garment: "quspuk," a term previously used to name the skin parka covers worn by women. Two things seem to have happened to language and reality when calico came to Kotzebue. One is that an existing Inupiat word extended its semantic range to cover the new item. Another is that a new word was coined from the foreign word: "keliku." Languages bend and twist and grow to accommodate thought. Language names and describes what is thought, so thought shapes language. If I have an idea, I will find a way to express it. I’ll create a word for it, borrow a word from another language, or extend the range of an existing word to cover it. Thus, I have to disagree with the idea inherent in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language precedes thought. I believe that language sometimes shapes thought and that thought sometimes shapes language. Certainly, language permits us to express thought, but I don’t accept the idea that we can’t have thoughts if we can’t articulate or name them in language. As I have been attempting to show with my grandmother’s stories, though, words can certainly influence thought. Several years ago, I wrote a narrative poem from my experiences in Kotzebue. I call it "Boyuk" after the main character. (Copy appended FYI.) Boyuk was, rumor had it, a bootlegger and a drug-dealer, but what struck me most about him was the social power he had. Let me back up just a bit to contextualize my association with him. When I went into Kotzebue to buy fish, I would build a boat dock, position a mobile crane, build an office shack, and lay down a forklift driveway of landing mats to the water’s edge. Then I would position my fish tubs near the road edge on the level ground. The "culture" of the business, honored by buyers and fishermen and nearly everyone else, was that the merely curious on-lookers did not obstruct my driveway. When the fish were running heavy, we always had lots of tourists and curious locals hanging around, but they always parked or stood out of the range of our swinging crane booms and racing forklifts. Except Boyuk. Boyuk always parked his battered old red Ford pickup where he had the best view of who was selling and who had what kind of catch. My local contact told me not to ask Boyuk to move, as I would have done anyone else. When I asked why, I was told, "Boyuk saved the village once." It was several years later before I got the full story of how young Boyuk had gone hunting alone one winter when game was scarce and had come back with a sled full of caribou that saved the village from starvation. When I read Bierhorst’s The Mythology of North America, his discussions of "culture heroes" helped me to understand (a) the reverence accorded Boyuk and (b) the power of language. Most of the people in Kotzebue are too young to remember when Boyuk made his hunt, and have not, apparently, considered that his sled could not have held enough caribou to feed the whole village. Rather, they seem to have simply believed the legend and to have accorded Boyuk his status on that basis. Because Boyuk has been accorded culture hero status, he is above both tradition and law. The word has become the deed; the myth has become the reality. When I compare the story of Boyuk to the oral stories of my family’s history, I see the same process at work. I imbibed the stories with my mother’s milk, as it were, and did not question them until I was in my forties, and would not have done so then had it not been for several particular things that occurred in my life that did not occur in the lives of others who grew up on the stories -- my studies of Literature, Linguistics, and Folklore, for instance. My questioning is the anomalous behavior; their accepting is the norm. My great-great-great grandfather, like Boyuk, is a social construct, a personality created by the stories and serving an important function for the tellers and the hearers. He, too, is a culture hero. By resolving the dilemma of how to dispose of Joe’s body he brought the community back together, "reintegrated" it, as Northrop Frye would say (see Anatomy of Criticism, for instance). Word has created reality in both the instances of Boyuk and my grandfather. It matters little that Boyuk could not have literally saved the village. The people of Kotzebue believe that he did, and behave accordingly. Likewise, though hundreds of people have heard or read my analyses of the historical underpinnings of the Joe’s Cave story, I know of no one who has changed his or her beliefs as a result. Dr. Dodson is still the quintessential Ozarks pioneer -- fiery preacher, selfless country doctor, kind slaveowner, Confederate patriot, paternal landowner, everybody’s rich uncle, who died blind and in near poverty because the Civil War stripped him of wealth and health. My family members -- and others whose roots are in that corner of the Ozarks -- somehow need this image of him. Like Boyuk’s people, they believe the legend and behave accordingly. As Allen and Montell have said, "[P]eople would not continue to tell such stories if they did not convey some kind of truth." (p. 95) My ruminations, then, lead me to this: Words evolve to name and express one’s thoughts, but also have power to shape one’s perceptions, to bring about particular views of the world. Just as words create phenomena, phenomena engender words. If the Inca lover believes his words have power, he will believe that his lover will sleep where he can find her. If the Pawnee hunter believes he must sing his buffalo song when he first sees a buffalo, then sing it he must. The power is in believing. Momaday’s story of the old one-eyed woman in The Man Made of Words captures it well: "You see, I have existence, whole being, in your imagination. It is but one kind of being, to be sure, but it is perhaps the best of all kinds." (pp. 44-45) My grandmother created a past world for me because I believed her words, and, as long as I believed her words, that past was real. Now that I no longer believe them, my past is different than it used to be. Words have power. Reference Allen, Barbara, and Lynwood Montell. From Memory to History: Using Oral Sources in Local Historical Research. (Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1981) Bierhorst, John. The Mythology of North America. New York: Quill, 1985. Bierhorst, John, Ed. The Sacred Path: Spells, Prayers & Power Songs of the American Indians. New York: Quill, 1984. Frye, Northrop. Fables of Identity: Studies in Poetic Mythology. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963. Meyer, Marian. Mary Donoho: First Lady of the Santa Fe Trail. Santa Fe: Ancient City Press, 1991. Momaday, N. Scott. The Man Made of Words. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Pijoan, Teresa. White Wolf Woman: Native American Transformation Myths. Little Rock: August House Publishers, 1992. Vandergriff, Jim. "The Legend of Joe’s Cave: Murder, Medicine, Counterfeiting and Vigilantism." Missouri Folklore Society Journal 15-16 (1993-94): 29-50. ___. "The Legend of Joe’s Cave: An Update and a Response to My Critics," Missouri Folklore Society Journal 17 (1995): 117-22. BOYUK Old Boyuk sits in his pickup truck, Day after day, and watches me work. He always parks his faded red Ford, Fittingly seamy and lusterless Like all things exposed to Arctic seasons, In the way of machines I need to move quickly, In the worst of all places, From my point of view. But one does not ask him to move. It just isn't done. Once, a long time ago, people tell me -- As if it explained everything -- The winter was hard in Kotzebue Sound, Where the People lived from hand to mouth, Slaves to fickle seasons, To runs of suicidal salmon, Which spawn in frenzy, and die, To migrations of caribou, Which themselves move At the mercy of wolves; Where humans hung onto life each day With tenuous grip, Subject to depth of snow And thickness of pack ice.   Once, a long time ago, people tell me, The winter was hard in Kotzebue Sound And the fish and caribou did not come. Young Boyuk, with rifle, dogs and sled, Followed the frozen Noatak, alone, Toward its mountain source. When he returned after many days From the lowlands of the Brooks Range, His sled was full of caribou And he fed the starving villagers.   Now the People's lives Do not depend on fish and caribou, But on Native Land-claim checks And speculators such as I, Who bring in cash to buy the trucks and alcohol. Still Boyuk carries the name Of the one who saved his village Once, a long time ago, When the winter was hard. It is said, in prideful public whispers, That he deals in dope and bootleg booze; But the People's memories are long, So one does not ask Old Boyuk To move his faded red pickup. He saved his village once, A long time ago, When the winter was hard.