Assigned Section: Page 349: “ Well,” says Coyote, “here we are at Fort Marion again.” …. To page 354: “Norma stuck her stick in the earth. “We’ll start here, she said.”
In this section, which includes the penultimate chapters of Thomas King’s Green Grass Running Water, the author does not shy away from maintaining his practice of veiled allusions, cunning connections, and humorous commentary as he makes connections to literary, historical and mythical references. Broken into two chapters, this section includes one from the “fantasy” plot line of the novel, which includes scenes with the narrator “I” and Coyote as well as those set in Fort Marion, and it also features one chapter from the “real” plot line of the novel, following the aftermath of the dam burst in Blossom, Alberta. Below are a pair of the references in these two chapters that I particularly enjoyed in my reading of Green Grass Running Water.
“Well,” says Coyote, “here we are at Fort Marion again.”….So those soldiers get to Fort Marion and they throw Old Woman off the train and throw her in Fort Marion.
In his spinning of history into myth, King shapes the real life history of Fort Marion as an important nexus for his mythical, time-travelling band of Indians—“Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye.” Fort Marion—known today by its original name Castillo de San Marcos—is located in St. Augustine, Florida, and is the oldest masonry fort in the United States. St. Augustine is a city rich with history; as North America’s oldest continuously occupied European settlement, the city played an important role in the colonization of the United States, first by the Spaniards and then by the British. The Fort was built in 1565 on the site of a former Native American village and functioned as an critical defence fortification by the Spanish Empire. By the time it was the control of the United States, concerns for safety had subsided and it was converted into a military prison to incarcerate members of various Native American tribes—including the famous Seminole war chief, Osceola, and Geronimo’s band of Chiricahua Apache. These are all facts that King retains in his novel.
In Green Grass Running Water, Fort Marion has an important function in the past and in the present: it is used as a military prison in the temporally-warped plot line that follows the Woman who fell from the sky and her manifestations as the four travelling Indians, as well the site for Dr. Joseph Hovaugh’s mental institution in the present—from which the four Indians mysteriously disappear from.
Originally, I had intended to write about how Fort Marion, and its transfer from any hands in history provides an interesting commentary on colonial affairs in North America; after the territory was claimed violently from the Yamasee people, it was exchanged on six occasions between the Spanish Empire, the Kingdom of Great Britain, the Confederate States of America and finally, the United States of America. Indeed, it is celebrated for these exchanges as is that were some special distinction but the fact remains that it was not only a fort built on stolen land, it was land converted into a prison for those it was stolen from generations later. Like the neighbouring Caribbean Islands, Florida has a tragic and storied history of colonial violence.
But what fascinates me more about this reference King makes is how he uses it as a location that is in time but also out of time. Like many elements in this book, it is hard and perhaps futile to rationalize with logic how events occurs, how people move, how time passes, etc., but here lies one of the most confounding “facts” in this malleable novel: The Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye—already representing an array of television, biblical and literary traditions—escape from Fort Marion only to have to escape from Dr. Hovaugh’s hospital later on. In the simplest of phrasing, the whole plot line in Fort Marion seems concerned with how this group will arrive individually and form together to plot an escape—which is no more than the anti-climatic walking away and waving at the guards—while the present plot line is partly concerned with Dr. Hovaugh’s search for the mysteriously vanished four patients.
This one allusion is testimony, for me at least, to the fun King is having with his readers through his novel. To take concrete places and histories and to manipulate them to fit into your own story is one thing, but to take those things, manipulate them once and then mould them to fit another, simultaneously running plane of action is quite the feat. It is a fine example of King honouring a tradition of oral-storytelling that needs not abide by any literary conventions or rules while also working to make sense of a history of colonialism that seems as convoluted as the fiction he is weaving.
So the Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye walk west, and pretty soon they come to a river. Big river. Big muddy river.
Ho, ho, ho, ho says that Big Muddy River. I suppose you want to get to the other side.
After “escaping” from Fort Marion, King’s adventurous foursome encounters a big, muddy river, who—by the powers of King’s storytelling—becomes a character in the novel and a critical one at that. Big Muddy River, according to Jane Flick, is “Probably the Mississippi” (164). If this identification is correct, then Big Muddy Riven is essential for The Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye to cross so that might reach Blossom, Alberta. Travelling from the Atlantic Coast of Florida, the Mississippi River is one of the first geographical obstacles on their way westward. Measuring 3,730 kilometres long as it meanders through 31 US states and 2 Canadian provinces to the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi has as much value to North American history as it does to the distribution of water across the continent.
In the history of colonization, it played an important role as a natural border between New Spain, New France, and the Early United States and after these border would fall, it assumed a vital role in the transportation and communication arteries of America. But prior to all this, the Mississippi functioned very much like the Nile and Indus Rivers—it was the heart of some of North America’s oldest civilization. Native American settlement in the Mississippi River basin can be traced as far back as the 4th millennium BCE and in what would eventually culminate into an advanced agricultural society referred to as the Mississippian culture. The larges of these, Cahokia, was occupied between 600 and 1400 CE and at its height had a population of between 8,000 and 40,000 inhabitants—larger than London.
But beyond this history, and perhaps more pertinent to King’s usage of the Mississippi in this critical scene is the cultural worth the River carries. Not only does it play a remarkably fundamental role in the identity and fabric of American Literature, it is referred to as “The Backbone of America”—a body of water that transcends geographical significance. It has entered the American psyche as a symbol of a powerful constant that, regardless of who owns it or occupies it, will flow.
In the song “Ol’ Man River” from the 1927 musical Show Boat, a African-American dockworker (played by the incomparable Paul Robeson) sings: “Dere’s an ol’ man called de Mississippi / Dat’s de ol’ man dat I’d like to be / What does he care if de world’s got troubles / What does he care if de land ain’t free.” There is acknowledgement in these lyrics that the River is an indifferent constant, in spite of all of man’s troubles it will flow endlessly. In King’s novel, however, the River recognizes the problem of the Indians—they need to get to the other side—and it takes an active role in helping them, bouncing and shaking the ground so that they might cross. Interestingly—and to great effect—King is allying a typically passive nature with his Four Indians so that they might go out and fix the world. In the same way the Israelites crossed the River Jordan into the Promised Land, the Four Natives are passing from an East Coast desiccated by colonial destruction towards the allure and promise of the Western frontier. We as readers know, however, that this frontier is far from untouched. But what the Lone Ranger and Ishmael and Robinson Crusoe and Hawkeye do upon crossing over is “reclaim the frontier” by tearing down the artificial dam. Through this allusion, though a minor one that is easily forgotten, to the Mississippi and through it to colonial history and through that to the crossing of the River Jordan, King raises a question that remains unanswered: where is the Promised Land in America?
Works Cited
222pj222. “Paul Robeson – Ol’ Man River (Showboat – 1936) J.Kern O. Hammerstein II.” YouTube. YouTube, 28 Oct. 2008. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.
“European Exploration and Colonization.” Florida Department of State. State of Florida, n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2016.
Flick, Jane. “Reading Notes for Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water.”Canadian Literature 161.162 (1999): 140-72. 1999. Web. 23 Mar. 2016.
King, Thomas. Green Grass Running Water. Toronto: Harper Collins, 1993. Print.
“The Fort Marion Prisoners.” Native American Netroots. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2016.
Van Alstyne, Richard W. “The Frontier In American History: Chapter VI.” The Frontier In American History: Chapter VI. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2016.
“Voices of Mississippi.” PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2016.
