Assignment 3:5, Q5 | What’s in a Name?
5. Narratives assume, in Blanca Chester’s words, “a common matrix of cultural knowledge.” The Four Old Indians are perhaps the best examples of characters that belong to a matrix of cultural knowledge, which excludes many non-First Nations. What were your first questions about and impressions of these characters? How have you come to understand their place in the novel.
It is undeniable that the characters in Green Grass, Running Water are exceptionally layered and complex. Of these characters, arguably the most layered are the “Four Old Indians.” We first see these characters, introduced as Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, and Hawkeye, as they prepare to “tell the story.” On my first reading, my initial thought was that were young boys playing at being some of their favourite characters and getting ready to embark on a make-believe adventure. I pictured the characters in homemade costumes huddled secretively in a treehouse or fort – but as the first part of the story progressed and we followed the story of First Woman, I began to realize who these “young boys” might actually be. Throughout the novel, King refers to the Four Old Indians by many names; First Woman/Lone Ranger/Mr. Red, Changing Woman/Ishmael/Mr. White, Thought Woman/Robinson Crusoe/Mr. Black, and Old Woman/Hawkeye/Mr. Blue. Their gender changes depending on who is discussing them, and they have a unique relationship with time that allows them to appear across all the threads of the story. When I realized that “Lone Ranger” was, in fact, First Woman, I was forced to re-examine my initial thoughts. I began to understand that the tendrils of story were much more entwined than I had expected and started to think about possible connections between the changing appellations.
The names given to the Four Old Indians when we first see them correspond to well-known characters from Western culture: The Lone Ranger (Western books, radio, TV, and movies), Ishmael (Moby Dick), Robinson Crusoe (Robinson Crusoe), and Hawkeye (frontier hero, films, MASH). As it happens, I have no first-hand experience with any of these stories; I have never read or seen any of their books or films! So these particular references may have been less impactful for me than for those more familiar with the source material. Despite that fact, these characters are recognizable to me due to their prominence in the culture in which I am surrounded (with the exception of Hawkeye – I had never encountered the Natty Bumppoo character; instead, having recently watched all the MCU films, my mind immediately went to the Marvel comic book hero. Oops!). They are part of my “common matrix of cultural knowledge” (Chester); while I may never have experienced their stories as originally written, I nevertheless have some concept of who they might be. To me, the Lone Ranger is linked to the William Tell Overture and horses; Ishmael to adventure on the high seas; and Robinson Crusoe to survival on a desert island – only Hawkeye is a blank canvas for me.
Conversely, the characters of First Woman, Changing Woman, Thought Woman, and Old Woman are (for me) new figures. The way that King writes them does bring to mind associations from my own cultural matrix: pairing First Woman with “Ahdamn” in a garden links her inexorably with the Biblical Eve in my mind, Changing Woman puts me in mind of shapeshifters, Thought Woman reminds me of Athena from the Greek pantheon, and Old Woman brings to mind the archetypical kindly wise Grandmother. However, I recognize that these characters must mean much more, and quite likely something much different, to those for whom they are firmly entrenched in the cultural matrix.
As I become more familiar with Green Grass, Running Water and the many layers of the characters within, I find myself uncovering more and more references, oblique or overt, that I only now begin to understand as I dive into research. And I think that this is exactly what King had in mind when he wrote the novel. In order to get the most out of it, you have to “listen up” – to be willing to re-think your initial assumptions and approach the novel with an open mind. Including the Four Old Indians, characters approachable from different cultural matrixes, allows for a unique mix of familiar and unknown that serves as a springboard into the view from the other side.
Additional Thoughts on Lesson 3:2
Just a quick comment: I was so thrilled to watch “I’m Not the Indian You Had in Mind,” as it stars Lorne Cardinal – who I know best as Sgt. Davis Quinton on Corner Gas! As I mentioned in some of my early posts, Corner Gas is much loved by my family and Lorne Cardinal as Davis is particularly compelling. Check out this interview with Lorne Cardinal to learn a bit more about him – he also touches on cultural connections between different communities, in this case between common ground found between Indigenous and deaf community experiences. 🙂
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Works Cited
Cardinal, Lorne. Interview by Lindsay Richardson. “Actor Lorne Cardinal Wants Indigenous People to Break Through the White Ceiling.” APTN News. 17 May 2019. https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/actor-lorne-cardinal-wants-indigenous-people-to-break-through-the-white-ceiling/. Accessed 18 Mar 2021.
Chester, Blanca. “Green Grass Running Water: Theorizing the World of the Novel.” Canadian Literature 161-162. 1999. https://canlit.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/canlit161-162-GreenChester.pdf. Accessed 18 Mar 2021.
Corner Gas Official. “Best of Davis Quinton | Corner Gas Season 5.” YouTube. 3 Apr 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgZ01HKMxVs. Accessed 18 Mar 2021.
King, Thomas. Green Grass, Running Water . Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Kindle Edition.
King, Thomas. “I’m not the Indian You had in Mind.” Video. Producer Laura J. Milliken. National Screen Institute. 2007. Web. http://www.nsi-canada.ca/2012/03/im-not-the-indian-you-had-in-mind/. Accessed 18 Mar 2021.
“Pop culture and circumstance.” The Writer. 8 July 2015. https://www.writermag.com/blog/pop-culture-and-circumstance/. Accessed 18 Mar 2021.
Hi Magda,
I have to tell you that I did not get that the four old Indians were First Woman, Changing Woman, Thought Woman and Old Woman. When I read your post a lot of pieces came together for me! I even felt a bit foolish for not having figured this out – or, perhaps more accurately, for not having held the story close enough or listened attentively enough to make this connection. So thank you for enlightening me!
The more I read and think on this story, the more cyclical and connected it all becomes, as your post pointed out so well. Like you, I am not familiar with the literary characters of Crusoe, Hawkeye, Lone Ranger or Ishmael, but I wonder how the traits and stories of these characters connect to/overlap with the medicine wheel and the traits of First Woman, Thought Woman, Changing Woman and Old Woman.
Haha! That is the beauty of this novel – each time you read it, or read about it, you discover something new! 🙂 You’re so right: the cyclical nature and interconnectivity is simply astounding!
Great post! Your perspective on the Old Indians as somebody who hasn’t read or seen any of the books/films from which King derives their names is quite illuminating and unique. King’s work is rife with allusory complexities and subjective experiences of the novel will clearly vastly differ base on one’s specific pop culture experiences and knowledges. The book in some sense replicates what we are doing here with our blogs and hyperlinks, stringing together a multimedial web of references and shared cultural and historical perspectives and morals, that knowledge matrix Professor Paterson writes of.
As somebody who’s read/seen some of the works King is alluding to with the Old Indians, I was quite confused when they were first introduced. I think, like your post argues, King is examining names here – the appropriation of names, the act of naming, the significance of titles and self (or external) identifiers. “Call me Ishmael,” proclaims Ishmael in that iconic first sentence of Moby-Dick’ there is no more famous of an act of literary identification. Ishmael is also a figure from Genesis as well as the Quran and Tanakh (Moby-Dick is saturated with scripture), the son of Abraham and a patriarch. The name itself, originally “Yishma’el,” is theophoric, meaning it carries the name of a god inside of it – in this case it can be translated as “god will hear.” So there’s another God in King’s novel.
Robinson Crusoe was, as the character himself explains in the opening page of the novel he comes from, originally named “Robinson Kreutznaer,” but “by the usual corruption of words in English…we call ourselves…and write our name ‘Cruesoe'” (Defoe 1). So in that name itself, there is misidentification through what the novel deems a “corruption” of language. There’s a lot of references to “corruption” or misunderstanding throughout King’s novel – as with the references to Sacajawea as “Sally Jo Weyha” (182) , Sacajawea being a historical figure whose story and identity, as written down and appropriated by white men, has been misunderstood to the point that her name is now generally mispronounced by most English speakers. There is also King’s “Ahdamn,” what we can perhaps label as a corruption of the Biblical Adam. King is saying a lot with these small, hidden allusions, about how we treat identity through literature and literacy, through the passing-down of myth and legend through perspectives skewed this way or that. In “Robinson Crusoe,” Robinson Crusoe meets a Native man and decides to name him “Friday” simply after the day they met – the colonizers naming the colonized, with no room for self-identification on the part of the subaltern or the marginalized.
I’m not as familiar with Hawkeye or the Lone Ranger. But neither of them are really “names,” not even for the characters that King is referencing. Hawkeye is always an alias – in the MCU, in the original Leatherstocking novels, in M*A*S*H. I don’t think the Lone Ranger is actually ever given a name – though I could be wrong. And then there is Tonto, translatable basically as “fool” in Spanish.
With your connecting the Old Indians to the four Women. I’m wondering how we can take into account the strange gender mysteries surrounding the characters: Dr. Hovaugh calls them “old men,” but then Cereno corrects him by calling them “women” – which Hovaugh quickly objects to (King 75). What do you consider to be the significance of this, particularly in terms of our discussion on identity and names?
A lexical source for a linguistic analysis of “Yishma’el”: https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?t=kjv&strongs=h3458
About the (mis)pronunciation of Sacajawea: https://news.stlpublicradio.org/show/st-louis-on-the-air/2014-04-28/listen-to-why-youre-probably-pronouncing-sacagawea-wrong
Noticed some grammatical errors in my original reply, rewrote a few bits fixed down below (wish I could edit comments!):
* “Call me Ishmael,” proclaims Ishmael in that iconic first sentence of Moby-Dick: there is no more famous of an act of literary identification.
* There are a lot of references to “corruption” or misunderstanding throughout King’s novel – as with the reference to Sacajawea as “Sally Jo Weyha” (182), Sacajawea being a historical figure whose story and identity, as written down and appropriated by white men, has been misunderstood to the point that her name is now generally mispronounced by most English speakers.
Hi Leo,
Oh, that’s fascinating!! Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge on those topics! The numerous references to “corrupted” names is particularly interesting, particularly given King’s own proclivity for allusion and the means by which he accomplishes it.
I’m still working toward understanding what King’s point regarding the shifting gender forms might be – it does seem to be a recurring feature in both King and Robinson’s stories, particularly when discussing mythological First Nations figures. Hopefully working through the hyperlinking assignment and reading everyone’s contributions will help illuminate that issue!
Hi Magda,
I really enjoyed your post, its always interesting to see the fictional references hinted to in texts that are unexpected. Specially since some stories, and names today are associated with other text that may not refer to the authors original intentions. As a somewhat huge M*A*S*H* fan and Marvel fan I totally understand the confusion ( if it helps comic book Hawkeye, Kate dressed as M*A*S*H* Hawkeye for Halloween once.) Comic book tangent aside, I do wonder if perhaps if you find the reliance for the audience to be familiar with these popular references, that appear as outdated today as a bit of a road block, to forming a connection with the text? As I personally know that a lack of familiarity with certain references at times falls flat, and is often overlooked.
I also really appreciated your opening paragraph about the change in your perception of the story, the more you read, and am curious if you still had hindering of the same images upon your later read throughs of the text, or rather you simply saw the characters as you did by the end of the first reading, no longer children playing dress up, but as the four Old Indians?
Thank you for your thought provoking and enjoyable post.
Mia
Hi Mia!
Ahh, so that’s what Kate’s costume was referencing! Makes a lot more sense now!
Returning to the novel: I think there was definitely an element of a road block given my lack of familiarity with King’s references; however, given the nature of this book it was not perhaps as distracting as it may otherwise have been. I was expecting to find references I did not understand, so my mind was perhaps more open than usual! 🙂
My mental view of the characters definitely changed upon re-reading, but there was still an element of my initial assumptions that lingered. It reminds me of how my mental image of book characters tends to change after watching a film version of the same story; for example, I can no longer think of Harry Potter without imagining Daniel Radcliffe, but despite that my mental image of Harry has green eyes as described in the book. A bizarre amalgamation of the two! I have to work to move away from the images my mind conjured up the first time, but each time I do it becomes easier. Re-reading Green Grass Running Water has a similar effect: my mind first jumps to the same conclusions it did the first time, but then pauses to reflect on what I learned, and slowly my mental images change.