Blue Winds Dancing Symbolic Words,

Blue Winds Dancing

Symbolic words, phrases, acts, objects and the characters in this story are part of the power that is generated in Whitecloud's narrative. His use of metaphor, too, which offers symbolism to the mind's eye, is part of what captures a reader's attention to detail. In the opening of the story, a "fall wind" blows in the author's heart - which indicates a foreshadowing for an upcoming change. Or it could be just change, per se, and as the story goes along, it is change that is represented. As the geese "wedge southward" the reader can see the "V" shape of their flight, and that too symbolizes change. The fall in Wisconsin means the end of summer, a change of seasons from warm to cool and cold.

By painting such a lush picture of all the wonderful seasonal changes that are part of fall, by mentioning bear, loons, the tracks in the snow that indicate deer and rabbits have passed through, the chipmunks and squirrels - this all builds up the drama for the fact that the white man and his "civilization" or "society" has taken over the reins of power. White men want Indians to be like "them" - and they are "always dissatisfied" because if you give them a hill they want a mountain. Native Americans just want the world in its lovely simplicity, they want the natural world that has brought them so much peace and happiness.

The reader who is alert and reading without distractions will have a good understanding of the story because the author describes his home as "calm," a place where there is "no hurry to get anywhere" and no "hysterical preparing for life until that life is half over." The modern "white" society is hysterical in comparison to those humans who live in synchronicity with the natural world. That is the point of this part of the story. The Indian knows how to make music from the natural world; there is no need to listen to a radio to be able to create a song; songs are made up by Natives, and each man has his own song in the natural world.

All these descriptions of the loveliness and natural wonder of the wilderness, juxtaposed with the man-made shallowness of the "white man's world" set the reader up for the disappointment of learning that Indians are supposed to be "inferior." When a Native reads reports of tests that supposedly show his ethnic group is inferior, it is "terrible." And how embarrassing and awful to take a class and hear the instructor tell you that "your gods are all false" and that you're a loser because you worship "sticks of wood." Everyone reading this story can relate to having someone put down your culture and your way of life. So the author has done a good job of setting the stage here.

As he is riding east with a bum in a cattle car the author sees the Salton Sea "lying more lifeless than a mirage under a somber sun in a pale sky"; that phrase that seems to capture life as he sees it; "lifeless" is how he has seen the new world of radios and manmade objects; "mirage" suggests unreal things; and "somber sun" is an image of not quite as much natural light as usual streaming down from the heavens. Women he sees from his cattle car are selling pottery that he refers to as "The stone age offering its art to the twentieth century." But it makes the author angry to see his people hawking cheap pottery to tourists for a living; everything about this new modern society has taken away the joy for him, moved him to a place where he is a "stranger" to his own people. And indeed, this is a man without a country, because he not only doesn't fit in with the white man, he doesn't mesh with the older people within his culture.

The antagonist in this story is the white man's world of greed and "civilization." The values that the white man holds certainly clash with the Indian. The white man's beauty is in palm trees of California (that stand "stiffly" by the roadside while a struggling pine tree on a rocky outcropping is more beautiful), and the white man's beauty is also rows of fruit trees like military men all lined up perfectly. That is a man-made world, made by the antagonist in this story. The antagonist in this story is also the sociology professor "and his professing"; this professor won't have to worry about his student anymore and the student won't have to worry about "some man's opinion of my ideas." Besides, thinking is much easier for the Indian "while looking at dancing flames." And though the Indian was lonely in California, he will never be lonely because he loves "the snow and the pines," and he could never be lonely when the pines "are wearing white shawls and [the] snow crunches underfoot." So he personifies the trees, making them women, and loves the smell of wood smoke coming from chimneys.

A million people live in the city, but they walk around "without seeing one another" and the city itself sucks "the life from all the country around." He puts several of the antagonists in one grouping: "A city with stores and police and intellectuals and criminals..." And so to the Native American, an intellectual is no better or worse than a common criminal, because (it is implied) neither of them understands the real world of nature, of deer tracks in the snow and drum beats heard to be "like the pulse beat of the world." And the "blue winds" are dancing in the sky above the trees; he knows he's home. The protagonist has arrived at the peaceful place far from the classrooms of California, and they call it a reservation. The people in the box houses of the reservation have "dreams as beautiful as white snow on a tall pine."