The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

James Welch’s Winter in the Blood (1974) is no happier a
book than House Made of Dawn, though it is appreciably more
comic. 10 Welch skillfully disguises the ritual basis of his novel
within a style that is witty and satiric and a form that can be seen
as surreal. It is important to keep in mind that surrealism is a
European mode that derives from psychoanalytic notions about
the nature of the mind; the style and form of the American Indian
writers, however, are based on the tribal notion about the nature
of existence. It happens that both see dream as a primary vehicle
of creative power, but they approach the dream differently and
understand the nature and source of creative power differently.
In the arcane tradition from which Welch writes, dream and
vision are synonymous. For men, obtaining a vision is related to
the warrior tradition, and a man who has had a vision is a fully
functioning adult, possessing an identity that is of both ritual and
practical significance to himself and his peers.
Both of Welch’s novels ( Winter in the Blood and The Death
of Jim Loney) are developed along the general lines of visionquesting
or “crying for pity” as it is practiced on the Northern
Plains. As the plot of Winter in the Blood unfolds, the nameless
protagonist, who is also the narrator, locates the balance and
sense of identity that the ritual is designed to bring about. 11
Seeking a vision, or “crying for pity,” is a ritual practiced
widely among traditional Native Americans. In different forms it
is done by both women and men, though its male form is the one
that Welch uses in his work. In the ritual a youth goes out to find
himself through prayer, fasting, wandering, and, in some
traditions, mutilation. The seeker hopes to gain a vision because
through doing so he will also gain a secure adult identity and
some “medicine,” that is, some personally owned item that will
empower him in certain ways. He might get a song or a ritual.
He might get a powerful crystal, a particularly charged stone, or
a spirit guide who is some creature like an eagle, a wolf, a