The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions

1. A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, “Western Native American
Writers: The Early Period,” in Literary History of the American
West, ed. Thomas J. Lyon et al., forthcoming.
2. See Hamilton A. Tyler’s recounting of the Salt Woman
tradition in Pueblo Gods and Myths (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1964), pp. 213–218. Another tale that bears
striking thematic similarities to Ceremony (New York: Viking,
1977) is the Hopi story of Tayo, a boy who brought the rain back
to Hopi after a severe drought, as recounted in G. M. Mullett,
Spider Woman Stories (Tucson: University of Arizona Press,
1979), pp. 7–43.
3. For a recent comprehensive discussion of myth criticism
and the present idea that “rites share their symbolic nature with
art, but their peculiar satisfaction lies in the experience of
community,” see Richard F. Hardin, “‘Ritual’ in Recent
Criticism: The Elusive Sense of Community,” PMLA 98 (1983),
pp. 846–862.
4. Mourning Dove (Humishuma), Cogewea, the Half-Blood:
A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range, by Hum-ishuma,
“Mourning Dove,” … Given Through Sho-pow-tan, with
notes and bibliographical sketch by Lucullus Virgil McWhorter
(1927; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, Basic
Books, 1981). All references in this paper are to the reprint
edition.
5. Ruoff, “Western Native American Writers.”
6. D’Arcy McNickle, The Surrounded (1936; reprint,
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1978). All
references are to the reprint edition. D’Arcy McNickle, Wind
from an Enemy Sky (New York: Harper and Row, 1968; New
York: Signet, 1969). All references are to the Signet edition.
7. I am indebted to poet Judy Grahn for insights about male
rituals that led to this understanding of male ritual elements in
the recent novels of American Indian men.