This paper examines two central dimensions of Linda Hogan's novel Mean Spirit: the character of Michael Horse and the roles women play in the narrative. Michael Horse is analyzed as a traditional water-diviner who maintains an authentic connection to the natural world and serves as a spiritual bridge between mundane life and ancestral wisdom, resisting the corrupting influences of money and government control. The paper then turns to Grace Blanket and other women in the novel, exploring how capitalist culture has eroded Native American values, how women become commodified as business investments, and what remnants of matriarchal or matrilineal power persist within a community devastated by oil wealth and colonial disruption.
Much of Linda Hogan's novel Mean Spirit is devoted to chronicling a world where Native Americans have lost their natural connection to the land. The central figure of the text is Grace Blanket, a wealthy Native woman who has styled herself as a European matriarch because of the oil wealth she has gained through proprietary land ownership. Grace is murdered at the beginning of the book, an event that represents the killing effects of Native Americans having adopted a "White" relationship with the land. The investigator called in by the government to examine the reasons for Grace's death, Stace Red Hawk, is also a Native American figure — yet he now serves the federal authorities that deprived Indians of their traditional livelihoods. Thus Michael Horse stands as one of the few Native Americans in the novel who is neither seduced by money and land ownership nor controlled by the government or powerful corporate oil interests.
By profession, Michael Horse fulfills the traditional, unpaid tribal role of a water-diviner. He represents an older, better way of life to much of the community, and plays an important role as a bridge figure between the real, mundane world of murder, money, and mayhem, and a higher spiritual life. Horse can communicate with the natural world and with the tribal ancestors. Fittingly, his image opens the novel — an image of a purer time. When he forecasts the two-week dry spell that will bring Grace's death, the other Native Americans believe him, for "Horse's predictions were known to be reliable…" (2). Alone among all the natives, he is a reliable voice, a truth-teller who is not seduced by White values or ways.
In contrast to Michael Horse, Grace Blanket represents the capacity of Euro-American culture to reshape Native American life. Grace lives in a house — a house that bakes its residents like an oven because it is too hot and poorly suited for life in the desert. Still, clinging to her status, Grace inhabits a European-style dwelling furnished with stiff, uncomfortable furniture as evidence of her wealth. Grace was born poor, but because of the oil-rich nature of her land she has acquired considerable status within her community. The piano she longed for as a young girl is never played and eventually rots, yet Grace does not care, because her ability to buy it is testimony, in her own eyes, that she has accomplished something significant with her life.
In short, Grace has fully embraced the myths of capitalism within American culture. At the beginning of the book, however, she is dead — murdered, it is implied, because of her wealth and the jealousy it stirs in the hearts of members of the community. Furthermore, despite her ability to acquire goods, Grace has not achieved real happiness. She has lost her traditional Native American values and her connection to the land. Even on the night before she dies, she longs for a husband and takes pride in the beauty of her daughter Lila almost as if Lila were a possession.
"Women commodified without capital assets"
"Erosion of matrilineal value in colonial economy"
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