The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

and the yellow wind
make me shiver and sweat
because now i believe her
but wont never say so 9
Tonguelessness. A dimension of alienation that is not
mentioned in the literature concerning it but that occurs
frequently in the work of American Indian poets and novelists.
The inability to speak is the prime symbol of powerlessness in
the novels of Momaday, Welch, and Leslie Marmon Silko. Abel,
in House Made of Dawn, is essentially an outsider to his people
even before he is drafted, but by the time he returns he has lost
the power of speech. Estranged from his own people as well as
from himself, he lives his days remembering events that marked
his strangeness and his isolation from all that should have been
familiar to him.
As a youngster, he is unable to perceive the geese as his
brother, Vidal, perceives them. He seems to be haunted, and the
deaths of his mother and soon after of his brother intensify his
preoccupation with the terrors of the unseen evil that seems to
stalk him. His grandfather, Francisco, no stranger to evil, has
made an uneasy peace with it, but perhaps he has been cursed:
his crippled leg, the deaths of all those he loved with the
exception of Abel, whose crippling is less visible but more
complete, indicate that he is a victim of some supernatural ill
will.
Francisco’s involvement with evil is echoed by his
grandson’s inability to participate in the ceremonial life of the
village. He is isolated from the traditions that organize the
seasons and human relationships into significant patterns. Even
his participation with the Bakyush in their eagle hunt is flawed
by his inability to accept necessary pain: when the eagle has
been captured, he cannot bear her captivity and the change that