Yellow Woman and a Beauty of Spirit

Although Native American tribes prophesized the European invasion and the Maya predicted Cortes’ landing to the day, both groups were surprised by the Europeans’ brutality, including the torture and death prescribed by the Catholic Church’s war against heretics. Silko notes that “Seventy million people throughout the Americas died in the first one hundred years” (147) following Europeans’ arrival to the continent. The prophesies also foretell bullets, aircrafts, droughts, famines, the disappearance of animals, and the gradual disappearance of Europeans, which will bring the return of the animals.

The great snake messenger for spirit beings and Mother Earth, named Quetzalcoatl, or Ma ah shra true ee, among others, was labeled as Satan by the Europeans and was attacked. But now the giant stone snake has appeared, looking to the south, waiting for the people to walk north.

The narrator repeats the words on the mural both in Spanish and English, saying that this war is the five-hundred-year war of indigenous resistance. Stories say the spirits cry out for justice: “There will be no peace in the Americas until there is justice for the earth and her children” (151). 

As a child at Kawaik, the Laguna Pueblo reservation, Silko listened to the powerful stories told by the old-time people, who said they had the power to heal because the stories were their ancestors who cared for them. The old-time stories were a place of justice and harmony, one that still exists, although greed blinds people to it. Silko states “there have always been those destroyers who delight in the suffering and destruction of Mother Earth and her children” (153), and offers Chiapas and the Maya Zapatistas as an example of a group resisting such efforts. The old stories foretold the Europeans and their technologies, but also Mother Earth’s eventual reclamation. The Maya Zapatistas are fighting the same indigenous war of resistance when they rise up against the Mexican government’s genocide, and the spirits and Mother Earth are helping them, ensuring that the Americas will not be at peace until there is justice. 

Books are a weapon the indigenous people use in their war of resistance, breaking stereotypes that white people can take Indian children and land because Indians cannot care for them. The Mayan codices were screenfolds that stored information on several simultaneously viewed pages which, when expanded, served as a mural. The language is mostly pictographs, with few phonetic symbols used for places, people, or dates. “The writing must be read like a painting” (156), in which layout, size, relational position, color, and so on influence the ultimate meaning, and express both concrete and abstract ideas. Silko offers that there is a divinity to the painting-writing as the Mayans brought the gods’ universe to life, and “the people ritually fed the books with sacrificial blood” (157). The Spaniards burned most of the books starting in 1520 to propagate the falsehood that the indigenous people were savages to be slaughtered and enslaved, although eight Mixtec, three Maya, and six unknown-origin screenfold books survive.

Books were always important to the Silko’s family, which lamented the disappearance of a signed first edition of Ben-Hur, of which a portion had been written at the mission church, according to local legend. The family had books everywhere, and they were constantly reading, even at dinner, which was different from the families of her friends, who suffered for their lack of books. One friend of Silko’s in particular “still suffers with insatiable lust for books” (159).

By contrast, cowboys distrusted books, much like the Spanish settlers before them, who disregarded papal and royal edicts to obey laws in the new lands. If they were illiterate and ignorant of the laws, they could not be held accountable for the horrors they committed against the native populations and their land, which was very profitable. In this way, greed and ignorance went hand in hand. The Pueblo people realized early on the power of the written word, as they had been granted their land by the King of Spain, and so fared better than other indigenous peoples. Silko notes that Grandma A’mooh used to read books to her as a child, and the narrator learned that loneliness can be softened through reading and started telling her siblings stories; in fifth grade, she found writing stories soothed her as well, even when she had to commute to Albuquerque for school.

However, a book caused a serious quarrel between A’mooh and Susie as well. Years before, the US government realized that the graduates of the Carlisle Indian School reverted to their traditional ways and returned home, despite the government’s attempts to forcefully sever contact between the younger and older generations. The government needed an extension program, and created a book called Stiya, The Story of an Indian Girl, which was written by a white woman. In the text, Stiya returns home after being “civilized,”The Pueblo community harbors hostility towards her new identity. Silko states that the author of Stiya“projected all of her own fears and prejudices toward Pueblo life into her Stiya character” (162), including a repulsion at village life and villagers who she alleged were bad and dirty. This fiction sharply contrasts with the authentic autobiographies and memoirs of Indian women, who show overwhelming communal love and attachment to land amidst their struggles to readjust to village life. All Carlisle graduates received a copy of Stiya when they returned home, and Susie was among the first to read it. A’mooh also read it, was outraged, and tried to burn it, although Susie kept it as proof of the racism and lies of the American government. Non-Native books about Native American life far outnumber those written by Indians, but now “a great blossoming of Native American writers is under way” (165).