I received news today that the Women’s Voices in Magic anthology is now in print! Order a copy of the book online through either amazon.com or the publisher. Please note that Immanion’s US fulfillment team won’t have copies in hand until the latter half of December, but they’ll keep track of pending orders.

Last week, the editor passed along a nice scan of the book’s cover art. All of the contributor’s names are included on the back. Enjoy!

When “Pop Culture Grimoire” came out and I saw my name in print there, I wanted more opportunities to write for the pagan community. I dream that one day I’ll have a whole book on tarot out in the stores. A few months ago, my friend Lupa put out a call for submissions on totem essays. It’s for an anthology Megalithica Press plans on releasing sometime next year. I briefly considered the idea but figured that I didn’t know much about what she wanted. She had read my tale (and excitement) about having been published and prompted me to go ahead and contribute something.

At first, I had no idea what to write about. Sure, I’ve worked a little bit with totems and have my own personal beliefs about who mine are and what lessons I need to learn. But writing about totems felt like a completely different thing. I thought about the idea, and fretted a lot, I even made an appointment to see if she and I could generate some ideas. And then the idea came to me. Ember came over a few weekends ago and asked me to help her create a portable totem alter.

That’s when the light came on in my head and I got VERY EXCITED. I pitched the idea to Lupa, and she green light it. And with NaNoWriMo season complete, and some time on my hands. I figured I’d put my creativity and talent to use and sit down to finish the essay.

I had some troubles researching exactly when pocket shrine art first came to be popular. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of info online about pocket shrine history; although there are tons of photo galleries out there. So I wrote the draft with what I knew and what research I have. Three thousand words later I have, I think, a pretty good first draft. It’s now in her inbox for review. I do have a few more things to add and a bio to complete but I hope it’ll be accepted for the anthology. With luck, next year will see a second article offering some new ways to work with totems.

We used them, not all of them, but we DID use them during Beltane festival last weekend. I put two on the makeshift dining table; two sat on the table Ember brought with her; I put two in our hotel motel; and I gave one or two to Ember for her tent. They gave off some light Friday and Saturday and all was good.

Kender decided to stay at camp Saturday night. He’s not into the big bonfires. So Ember, her friend, and I hung out with the community, our new Queen and King. We were warm by the fire and watched the antics and swapped stories. It was a good, mellow evening. Later on, I wandered back to our campsite and Kender had made a fire in our makeshift fire pit. Going into the tent, he also had taken some of these Everlasting Tealights and made a heart out of them. For me. They were sitting on my bedroll. It was perfect and very much a loving surprise.

We had to “put the lights out” before going to bed. Except, this one candle refused to go out. I clicked the switch and expected it to dim, but it refused. Clicked it again and still nothing. So, instead of ticking off the “everlasting tealight goddess” we decided to leave it on. A nightlight of sorts. I placed it on our altar table where it could “dance” the night away.

It was still burning when we packed it up with its sleeping brothers and sisters the next day.
It was still burning when I unpacked the box when we got home.

It still burns where I have it sitting on our kitchen counter. The light… refuses to go out. Today is Beltane proper. And when I left for work an hour ago, it was still glowing. I’ve decided that this little fake candle, this battery operated toy, is our Beltane Fire. The fire of our passion, of the seeds of ideas and hearth and community, that will grow throughout the year. The fire of the change in weather.

The package claims the candles “burn” for 120 hours, but I think it’s been longer than that by now.

*************************************
Happy Beltane everyone!

Your excellence is your generosity and compassion which reflect your love and loyality to us all. You are the sustainer of life, the bringer of the seasons. Your gifts for us are bountiful and many. We are now, as in the past generations of humankind, forever thankful to you for all that you have done for us and for our brothers and sisters- the animals and trees.

A mother is giving, not only out of duty to her kin but because she desires to. You too, give of yourself, as a mother does for her child. Your generosity grows from the gifts of our planet. You give to us the fruit that sustains us, from the nutrient-rich soil. You give to us of the bounty that is the trees and the flowers and the animals. You give us the cool, wet rain to quench our throats when it is hot and we are tired from work. You give us the sky, filled with clouds, when we are contemplative and seek guidance. When it is dark you bring the night and the stars to provide the stepping stone that brings us back to our houses when we are lost. You are the perfection of generosity, giving without the want or need of recognition. You give all these things and more in the love for us, your children.

Compassion is shown through your admiration for us, the people, and our brothers and sisters- the animals. You walk with us as we journey down the trails of life, as we grow and learn about the world that you have provided us. You are with us in the last reserves of the wild. Not only are you beside us as we walk in the forests and the plains of the planet, but you are also with us in the paved trails of the villages that we call cities. But, you are the most prominent in the peoples faces that I can see with the eyes that you have given me.

You are there to support us in the times when we seek solitude away from the companionship of others. From the sounds of the birds as they sing the answers to our questions to the sounds of the wind rustling in the trees, you provide companionship in any direction that we go. Just knowing that you are beside me always, gives me strength. You show us the happiness that life has to offer and you show us the sorrow that comes when one departs from your heart. Our comfort can be found in the roots that lie deep within the soil, deep within our connection to your soul.

From every mountain peak to the very depths of the seas, our mother, the Earth is home. You are the home to the thousands of species of animals, birds and plants. You are the home to all the colors of the tribes. More importantly you are the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of home. You are giving. You are the sustenance of the delicate life on the planet, and you are the purveyor of our inspiration. You are love and compassion. You share in the spirit of us all, our triumphs and our failures. You share in the joy of the song and in the greif for those who are forgotten. In the words of our brothers, the Navajo: Ya’ at’ eeh shima. Ya’ at’ eeh. It is good, my mother. It is good.

He pulled the cassette tape case out from the inside of his jacket and for the first time in my life I got to see what a hit of acid truly looked like. All my friends were doing it, talking about it and loving it. It all made me curious and now my turn had come. No bigger than the tip of a pen’s cap, the tablet was black and square. And I thought all forms of acid were paper based. For only five bucks a hit, it was sitting right there, awaiting my purchase.

“This is the best the market has to offer,” he told me. “Two hits of the regular stuff is equal to one off the blotter. They call it Black Pyramid. And I’ve seen people do some kooky stuff while on this.”

So many new terms, I worried, as an rush of excitement coupled with danger ran throughout me. What will this do for me?

He handed me the cassette tape case and as I stared at the little tablet, I wondered why people were afraid of such a tiny little thing. Sure I had heard all the rumors about the hallucinations, the delusions one was supposed to have while being on it, not to mention the idea of going crazy or having permanent problems scared me. But staring at the hit of acid really made me wonder what it could do for me.

“Have you ever done acid?” I asked him.

“Sure many times. And I have never had a bad trip. The stuff is supposed to be mind expanding. And the visuals you’ll see are awesome. Compared to `shrooms, this stuff is way better. Wish it wasn’t so illegal. Fucking government officials don’t know what they’re missing out on. They’re just making rules without knowing how good for the mind this stuff really is.”

“But, what are the side effects. And if this is such a cool drug, then why are people dying from it. And why is it considered illegal?” I wondered.

What is LSD (acid)?

LSD, otherwise known as lysergic acid diethylamide, was “discovered in 1938 by Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist” purely by accident (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 53) while trying to develop a “series of compounds derived from ergot alkaloids” (Ray and Ksir 326). It wasn’t until 1943, however, when he actually ingested 25 micrograms of it to record the effects (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 53). LSD itself is a clear and odorous liquid that is ingested to produce strong hallucinations and perspective altering chemicals. The average dose is equal to that of ” 30 to 50 micrograms” in which the effects of higher doses can “persist for 10 to 12 hours” (Lyman and Potter 35).

There are many different types of acid available on the street. Lyman and Potter’s book, Drugs in Society, describes three different forms :

1. Window Pane, a gelatinous square, that is ingested throughout the mouth and contains one dose (hit) of acid. (35)

2. Blotter Acid, the most common form on the market, which is composed of tiny squares of paper that has LSD dropped on it. (35)

3. Micro Dot, or the tablet version, is a recent form of acid that contains the most potent forms of the drug. (35)

In order for the effects to occur, LSD must be ingested. The most common effects of ingestion of this drug include modification of one’s perceptions (mostly visual) and distortions in spatial relations ( Ray and Ksir 331). I’ve also been told stories about how some people “hear colors and see sounds” while under LSD’s influence.

Why would someone drop acid?
People take drugs for various reasons. Some do it to expand their perspectives of the world, others do it to escape from their daily routine. Taking LSD is no different than any other drug, and like any other drug these reasons apply to those who drop acid. The government, hoping to discover a drug to cure mental disorders, used LSD as a test drug due to its properties of accessing different brain areas (Ray and Ksir 328). Aldous Huxley, an American writer and LSD user, stated once that, “psychedelic drugs wash away the many years of rigid socialization and programming we have been exposed to, and permit us to perceive that which we have learned to ignore” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 54).

It triggers emotions, visions and sometimes it even paralyses. There are even stories about how it triggers something in the brain that allows one to “bowl a 220 score” or get straight A’s in class. The grid appeared after 15 minutes of my digestion. My guide (one that helps first timers through their experience) warned me about this. He was there the entire time, showing me the world through my new vision. For the most part, I was completely unaware he existed. It was a voice inside my head, a reassurance that things were going to be aright and that nothing would happen to me. The world melted together in a rush of color and sound, my mind awake to take in the new beauty. I felt as if the world had been transported into a computer and everything composed of byte-sized squares. God I never hope this feeling leaves my soul, I whispered. But this thought , along with the thousand other ideas my mind reaches to grasp, fleet.

I had taken only one hit. Yet the trip lasted for over 6 hours and each wave receding a little less than the last. I talked to God and learned what it is like to be a part of a higher organization, free from the limitations of this mortal coil. I melted into the past, I danced with the future. That day, I learned what it was to really be alive and free from worry.

Why does society label LSD dropping a form of deviance?

The social construction of LSD as a deviant behavior mostly appeared because it “posed a uniquely damaging potential; to some, the threat it seemed to pose [against our society and its moral fabrics] was massive” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 56). Therefore a panic occurred in the late 1960’s over the behavior of taking acid. It was during this period that dropping acid was considered amoral and deviant not because of overuse and abuse but because of the “effects” LSD allegedly has. These effects were then reported falsely by the media who in turn fueled the public’s acid scare.

Fueled by the media and inaccurate reports sent out by scientists, this moral panic began at a grassroots level (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 54). The grassroots theory of moral panics occurs when the panic begins at the public level. The media during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s portrayed drugs as a popular way to escape the social issues of the changing world. Namely, LSD provided Americans with a way to escape from thinking about the Vietnam conflict or the civil rights movements fueled by student “hippie” activists, during the 1960’s. In March 1967, Science magazine published a report demonstrating “that LSD damaged human chromosomes” when in fact later it was reported that it “is an extremely weak gene-altering agent, exceedingly unlikely to cause chromosomal abnormalities in the doses typically taken (Dishotsky et.al. cited in Goode and Ben-Yehuda 56).

This type of reporting and false information lead the public to believe that LSD was indeed a major problem and that the government had to do something about the problem. However, once the public and sensationalized media targeted LSD as a source of concern in the United States, the government had to do something about it. Contrary to many beliefs, LSD is the only drug “taken by users most episodically and occasionally, least regularly and chronically” so much so that the Great Acid Scare of the 1960’s nowadays seems comical to us (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 56). Yet, the proponents for the use of LSD in controlled environments believed otherwise.

Proponents for the use of acid included scholars and writers who were using the drug to expand their mental awareness. Writers like Aldous Huxley who, in 1954, “took mescaline and described his experiences in slim, poetic volume” that fueled the public’s desire to experiment with the drug along with psychologist Timothy Leary who spearheaded the advocacy of LSD as a beneficial drug to humanity (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 54). Once the book was published, the American youth decided that acid may be a new thrill and they wanted to “try it and see what it was like.” This aspect of the thrill seekers along with the scientific reports on the effects of acid on the human chromosome lead the government to crack down the FDA drug laws, so that LSD became outlawed and an example of deviant behavior.

Re-entering the Test
So that was it. My first experience. Nothing wrong with me at all. As a matter of fact I feel better, more aware of life and what it offers than I had been before I took it. I will probably do it again and again, to regain this incredible experience. Even the thrill of buying it, defying the government sent shocks up and down my spine. Let the public think what they want about acid. It’s their fault that such a mind altering drug isn’t available to them.

To buy and try or not to buy and try is a personal question. Even though the government believes there are destructive physical and emotional effects of dropping acid, ultimately the decision to use it is up to the individual. In controlled environments, usually done with a guide or used for medical research purposes, LSD can be a benefit to our society.

Works Cited
Goode, Erich and Nachman Ben-Yehuda. Moral Panics : the Social Construction of Deviance. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. 54-56.

Lyman, Michael D. and Gary W. Potter. Drugs in Society. Ohio : Anderson Publishing Co., 1991.

Ray, Oakley and Charles Ksir. Drugs, Society, and Human Behavior,6th edition. St. Louis : Mosby, 1990. 324- 335.

There are more than 300 known Native American tribes living on the North American continent. Each with their own unique world view, belief system, rituals and ceremonies. The Indians of the great Pacific Northwest are no different. These indian’s traditional beliefs are seen within ancient mythology and stories. These stories teach certain attitudes, values and they speak of creation and why things are the way they are. Throughout the daily activities of the indians they used objects they felt were sacred representations of their beliefs. Their spiritual lives intermingled with the daily rounds. This essay attempts to place some of these practices into context, but by no means is it an exhaustive source for all Pacific Northwest Indian religious traditions (or within the nation-for that matter), it is just a smattering of ideals, objects, rituals and positions they saw fit to include in their spiritual teachings.

Indian spiritual beliefs are best described in the mythology which detail the world view of a particular tribe. For the most part these stories were recited orally, as they didn’t have a written language yet (Gill 45). It was the storyteller’s function to relate the stories and keep the traditions alive and fresh in the hearts of the people. Sometimes as illustrated in Write It on Your Heart, indian mythology recorded important human events (such as the white man’s infringement onto their territories) and they acted like a catalog in recording everyday activities. For the most part, these myths were told as creation allegories that told people how the world was created and why things were the way they were. The characters of these creation myths told of the times before the coming of man and had characters who took the form of animals with human characteristics.

The most common was Coyote, a figure represented in indian literature throughout all of North America. Coyote is a trickster figure, neither good or bad- he just is. Usually Coyote is seen in stories teaching taboos, or creation myths. Gill describes the trickster motif as “the human desire to be free of rules, to be unbound by time, space, or society” (26). Along with Coyote are several other figures each representing a trait or a position that a tribe holds of value. Cosminsky’s thesis of Wasco-Wishram mythology cites some other important anthromorphized characters (39). These include: Eagle who “is always brave and strong ,” Weasel who is “woman crazy, foolish, jealous and illustrates how a younger brother should not act,” and Salmon who is mostly equated with eagle as a chief (39, 44).

Native American mythology is important to the Native Americans for a variety of reasons. First, mythology is a vehicle of expression which allows the cultures to understand the connections within life and the meanings behind them (Gill 43-44). Second, and most importantly, mythology defines a culture’s perceptions of the world and reality, and the meaning behind the actions and symbols represented throughout daily life (50). By repeating the myth orally a storyteller guarantees the remembrance of essential elements within the story and a tradition (48). Since the vocal presence is always about, it guarantees the continuation and survival of the beliefs and traditions from one generation to the next.

The second aspect of all native american religions is the use of objects both sacred and common. Each of these items represent a certain pattern of symbolism unique to each culture. Gill states that, “it’s not the symbols in isolation (that are important)…it is rather what is done with them it is the action they perform” which contains meaning (66). This is an important point to remember when discussing religious items; for each item can symbolize something,but, to the indians it’s the function a item has that gives the object a spiritual quality.

Some objects are given personal value, such “medicine” bundles containing items that have special meaning to the wearer. These items vary in meaning from tribe to tribe and person to person, although Gill points out that some bundles may contain similar items with similar meanings and purposes throughout different tribes. It’s ” in the power they generate, in the significance they evoke, in the awe and respect that they command that the symbolic powers of these sacred medicine bundles must be understood and appreciated” (68).

Among the Kwakiutl, masks are important religious objects. Commonly masks are used to hide or disguise reality or a person. However the Kwakiutl see their reality as “identified with a grid of relationships described in primordial times…” to each “belongs a name…Another way of designating the standing places that constitute reality is by crests, which in their highest form are masks” (72). To the Kwakiutl, masks symbolize their reality, where a person can only participate through wearing a mask (73). As Gill states the masks’ symbolism can’t be deciphered because the meaning that’s attributed to them is inseparable from what they show, the manifestation of the “deepest reality.” It is also in the religious ceremonies that objects becomes sacred.

Ritual and ceremony are fundamental aspects of Native American religions. Once again rituals and ceremonies are unique to each tribe and region. Many of these rituals and ceremonies are common throughout the North American continent but for simplicity’s sake only two are discussed herein. These are the sweat lodge rituals and vision quests. For the Pacific Northwest Indians, sweating in a sweat lodge is an important event which both men and women partake in. Mourning Dove’s autobiography and Hunn’s ethnography of the Columbia River peoples describe the ritual involved in sweating. Usually people do it to purify and cleanse themselves of unnecessary spirits or energy, such as that brought by sickness. It was, also, a necessary preparation for hunting parties as a sign of respect for the spirits (Hunn 268). Hunn also points out that the sweat lodge also serves as an important reminder that the daily routine is equated with worship (268).

The other common ritual that all Native religions seem to partake in, within some form or another is the idea of the vision quest. The vision quest is a personal journey that a child, at the onset of puberty goes through. He searches in the wilderness (without food and water) to seek from nature a spirit guardian-guide that will be with him for the rest of his life. Hunn states that the vision quest gives a person “the unique talents that distinguished an individual” from one another (Hunn 237). Both Mourning Dove and Hunn also agree that it wasn’t unusual for everyone to be successful in receiving a spirit guardian and sometimes it took several quests to find a worthy spirit. In some cases, such as Mourning Dove’s, a child never receives one. In general a spirit guide acts as a helper to the person who has the totem. It follows the person throughout their life helping whenever needed. As pointed out in Mourning Dove’s autobiography, sometimes finding a strong spirit guide was all that was required to become a shaman (37). However, most major ceremonies are unique to a particular tribe.

The Kwakiutl tribe has a curious ritual ceremony described in Gill’s book, Native American Religions. During the winter season, they hold a feast called Hamastsa whose purpose is to rescue a boy from the “Man Eater,” who was earlier caught and consumed (Gill 124).The Man Eater is representative of death and he is seen as a source of life (127). The men dance to lure the boy back into a lodge where “corpses, skulls, and worms are the ever-present symbols of death” (124). This is seen as a revival process for the boy’s humanity and must be done to save him. A pole is then erected, and this is followed by the reappearance of the “deranged youth.” He as well as the other members of the society then proceed to eat items symbolizing flesh from a human corpse. This also represents the devouring of the youth. Then he is brought back to indian society and life with “seawater and eagle-down feathers” signifying life and wealth (125).

This ceremony, also known the Devourer Society, pertain’s to the Kwakiutl’s belief in the relationships between man and animal as life sustaining (125). “Eating of the animal flesh,” he begins, “causes the animals to become one with human beings but in human form” (126). However, in the Hamastsa ceremony this belief is reversed and it is the human flesh that must be consumed in order for them to gain their “primordial identity of human and animal in animal form” (126). This ceremony also shows the concept of reciprocity that all indians believe in. During the summer the Kwakiutl kill animals for food and continued survival, but in the winter “it is the human beings who descend into darkness and death, thus restoring the animal spirits” (126).

Along the Columbia River an ancient spirit guardian watches over the dead and protects the living from sickness. This figure’s name is Tsagaiglalal, or “She Who Watches.” Her appearance over the cemeteries fashions some native groups as a death cult, however this isn’t the case. As the white settlers moved into indian territory they brought more than just trade items and religious ideals. They brought foreign disease which threatened to wipe out the entire populations of some of the tribes. Traditional shamans couldn’t figure why it was happening so they and the survivors of the tribes erected Tsagaiglalal as a protector of the dead, so they don’t come back to haunt the living (notes from Keyser’s lecture). Thus began the entrance of the whiteman influence on the Native American culture and religions.

This essay discusses some of the main ideals and rituals that Native Americans participated in before the coming of the Whiteman and his concept of a God. Although the white missionaries did their best to eradicate the Native American’s sense of religion, many rituals and beliefs are still performed, practiced, and preserved. Storytellers still relate to listeners the tales of the old days, before the coming of the whiteman, when Coyote ran in the hearts of his peoples. Sweat lodges and the concepts of sweating oneself is still practiced all over the continent as well as the Kwakiutl Potlatches. On reservations it is also common to see indian shamanism working with western medicine to treat people’s illnesses. What they future holds for these people and their religions is unknown but to be sure they will fuse it with the knowledge of the traditional ways.

Works Cited
Cosminsky, S. An Analysis of Wasco-Wishram Mythology. Diss. Washington State University, 1964. Pullman: 1964.

Gill, S. D. Native American Religions, An Introduction. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1982.

Hunn, E.S. with James Selam Nch’i- Wa’na. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990.

Mourning Dove Mourning Dove, A Salishan Autobiography. Ed. J. Miller. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.

Robinson, H. Write It on Your Heart. Ed. Wendy Wickwire. Vancouver: Talonbooks Publications, 1989.

First discovered in 1775, by Bruno de Hezeta, later named by the American Robert Gray in 1792 (Lang 1992 : 4) the Columbia River was the most densely populated in Indian tribes (Zuker, et.al. 1983 : 6). Among these people were the Chinookan Wishram who lived on the Washington side of the Lower portion of the river. This paper documents the ethnohistory of these peoples and utilizes a three section format first introduced by David French in his article “Wasco- Wishram.” This article recorded and categorized the Wishram cultural changes occurring within society and divided their history into three parts : the period from 1750 to 1858, 1858 to 1920, and 1920 to the present (which at that time was 1961). Inter dispersed among these descriptions I will go into further detail depicting the major historical events that could have lead to these changes.

1750 to 1858
Descendants from the Chinookan language stock (Zuker, et.al. 1983 : 49), the Wishram’s lifestyle was based on salmon fishing, and their culture placed a heavy emphasis on fishing as well as trade and social rank (Zuker, et.al. 1983 : 8). Some of the Wishram’s main activities during this time was the production of large surpluses of salmon, an appreciation for a diversity of imported articles (received in trade with whites and other Indians), the inclusion of whites and other strangers within their system, a lack of emphasis on political structure, and the lack of concern with the social-political boundaries (probably those set up by the Whites during the early treaty years) (French 1961 : 370).

For the most part Wishram culture remained virtually unchanged except for the changes brought on from early contact with other races and cultures while trading at The Dalles (French 1961 : 341). The biggest change in their culture was the addition of new cultural materials (French 1961 : 341). The first white contact the Wishram saw came in the form of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805 who were sent by President Jefferson (Zucker, et. al. 1981 :58). Later fur traders, missionaries, and immigrants and settlers were also frequent visitors to Wishram lands (French 1961 : 349).

As stated above, salmon was their biggest source for subsistence and has continued to be a main source of food for Indians along the Columbia even today (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 16). In addition to being treated as a major source of nutrition, the salmon is also a predominate figure in their religion (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 16). The salmon, once after being caught, is then dried on racks to be later eaten during the winter months of starvation (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 17). In addition to salmon the tribes along the river also ate wappatp, game animals, and berries. Other secondary sources of nutrition included sturgeon, steelhead, flatfish, and suckers which were also caught in the Columbia River (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 20). Plant sources were also important supplements to the fish and were also used for teas, medicines, and as dyes to color clothes and baskets.

As far as labor patterns went during the “pre-contact” era, the women were the gathers of plants whereas men did most of the fishing and hunting (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 17). Interestingly, there wasn’t much agriculture within the Lower Columbia area. “Women were expert botanists” and understood what parts of plants to use and when certain plants could be gathered (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 21). Women, however, also helped in preparations for fishing expeditions, cooking, and processing and preparing the food (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 17).

In hunting large game, bows and arrows were the principal hunting weapon (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 26), while fish hooks, nets or traps, and spears were used in catching salmon and other aquatic foods (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 18). Many of the traditional tools, used for fishing are still used today. The women, on the other hand, used large baskets, and bone or wooden digging sticks to gather and process plant subsistence (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 21). The baskets vary in size, with each basket having its own special use. In addition, many women used stones to grind gathered seeds (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 21).

Early social organization amongst the Wishram was organized into a chiefdom (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 56). Chiefs and their families, along with shamans, held what we would call the upper class division. Chiefs were chosen due to their position within a family (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 56). Wealth and natural authority skill was also a major consideration (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 56). Shamans are placed in this category due to their knowledge and connection to the spirit realms, shamans commanded great respect from the people (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 56). What is interesting is that the Wishram supposedly had different chief tailored to each situation’s needs (Spier and Sapir 1930 : 212). Any command or order given by these chiefs was generally obeyed with no questions asked (Spier and Sapir 1930 : 212).

A second social class made of wealthy commoners came about due to the booming trade (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 56). These people, although they were wealthy, did not have the ability to hold any social positions. However, the second social class could raise their status by gaining wealth and intermarriage into a prestigious family (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 56). Finally the Wishram peoples even had a class devoted to the slaves who were normally acquired through trades or captured in battle (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 41). Being the lowest on the totem pole these people were cast aside and were generally ignored.

Councils were formed to decided important decisions like intertribal disputes, or to give formal orders (in which case headdresses were worn) (Spier and Sapir 1930 : 213). Only men were active participants in councils although the decisions made within these councils did have a direct bearing on the women and children as well (Spier and Sapir 1930 : 213).

Trade was the most important cultural aspect to the Wishram as well as for all the Indians situated along the Columbia River. The Dalles, a place along the Columbia River, found along the Oregon side, is famous for it’s trading sessions. Although the Wishram Indians lived across the river from this area, it is suggested that they never went to trade at The Dalles or anyplace else (Sapier and Sapir 1930 : 224). To this Sapier and Sapir attribute that “there was no evidence of it” (224). Rather they were the middlemen, shuttling goods to and from The Dalles to the rest of the Pacific Northwest. They did have direct trades with the Umitilla where they acquired buffalo skins (Spier and Sapir 1930 : 227). But, most of the items they received were from indirect trades with the Wasco tribe who lived on the opposite bank of the river, near The Dalles (Spier and Sapir 1930 : 225).

The Dalles was the major trading hub along the Columbia River (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 42). These major trading sessions were called “trade fairs” and also involved dancing, ceremonial displays, lots of gambling, intertribal marriages, and games for all the attendants (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 42). But, most of the time spent away from trading was used to share experiences and ideas (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 42). Most items didn’t originate in the this area, rather they were brought in from afar by other traders (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 42). Regional goods including salmon were traded here as well as new ideas and cultural motifs (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 42).

Trade and food items such as smoked salmon was highly sought after, for use when wintertime came (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 17). Slaves were another commodity to be found during the trade fairs (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 41). Slaves, for the most part, were from distant tribes captured during battle where there was a less chance for escape (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 41). New materials traded included bone, stone and animal skins (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 42). But, not all trade items were utilitarian. The peoples at the trade fairs also exchanged religious ceremonies, and social/political concepts (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 42).

Gambling at The Dalles and amongst the Wishram took the form of the hand game (Spier and Sapier 1930 : 267). Traditionally men were the only ones to play it but by the time Spier and Sapier’s research was done, women also played a form of it (267). The object of the game was to guess where the male bone(clear bone) is hidden in the opponents hands. If it is correctly guessed then the victor’s side took a pair of bones. Markers made of sticks were used to determine each sides gains or losses. The actual guessing is done with elaborate hand gestures with one for each position (Spier and Sapier 1930 : 267).

In addition to speaking the Chinookan language the Wishram as well as other traders at The Dalles used a form of Jargon that allowed for trade and ease of interaction among the different tribes (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 52). Formally called Chinook Jargon, it is a variation of “English” where the language is composed of words taken from various other cultures surrounding and trading with the Dalles peoples. Unlike the efficiency of the Chinookan language, much of what was said in the Jargon was misinterpreted. The Chinook language however, was capable of transmitting any kind of information. It also incorporated the use of metaphors, puns and other idioms commonly associated with oral poetry and prose (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 49).

The overall cosmology and religion of the Wishram was based around the world in which they lived in and in Nature itself (Wendt 1982 : 4). Their religion was heavily centered around the life cycle of the salmon (Wendt 1982 : 16), in which many of the ceremonies are linked (Wendt 1982 : 29). To the Indians who worshipped the salmon, its cycle represented a renewal of life in that the fish always came back, to support and sustain the new generations. In spring the Indians saw the return of the salmon, and celebrated this return of the new season in the first salmon rites (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 16). Today, despite decreases in the catching of salmon as a profitable market the ceremonial use of salmon is still prized by the Wishram (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 20). However, this precontact lifestyle changed when the White man invaded Wishram territory.

The Wishram’s first contact with non-indian settlement occurred during 1770 to 1830 when exploration and trade effected the indian’s way of life (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 58). Not only did the whites bring the indians trade goods and new technology but they also brought disease with them as well (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 58). Among the new diseases were small pox, malaria, flu, measles, and venereal diseases (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 60). Massive epidemics were caused due to the Indians intolerance to these diseases, the first epidemic taking its toll in 1775, when small pox claimed more than 15% of some tribes population along the Columbia River (Lang 1992 : 5). Sometimes the diseases were spread long before any of the Whites were physically seen. It is estimated that by the time the Lewis and Clark Expedition hit the Columbia “one half of the Native population had succumbed to disease” (Lang 1992 : 5). The death toll in Oregon was estimated to range from 75% to 90% (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 60).

Trade was also affected after the appearance of the White man. Trade differed from before in that it became the focus and major source of information for both sides. “For many Columbia River Indians, whites and trade were nearly synonymous” (Lang 1992 : 6). On many occasions during these exchanges many keen observations were made about how each side operated (Lang 1992 : 6). Thus many stereotypes were created. The White commented on how astute the Indians were on trading tactics and how they also drove hard bargains (Lang 1992 : 7). It was also during this time when the women “desired the blue beads, rings and other trifles” (Lang 1992 : 7). To the Indians, trade with the Whites meant new goods. “They welcomed the Whites and what they had to offer them,” (Lang 1992 : 9) but they also rejected those areas they didn’t like by stealing and altering the trade rules (Lang 1992 : 9). The Wishram saw trade as being an unimportant aspect of their lives for it had not dominated their lives during this early stage of contact.

On the European side, the Whites wanted stable trading conditions and as many advantages as possible (Lang 1992 : 7). The European Whites wanted to horde all trading rights to themselves and bar the Indians capabilities with the Americans. It was also noted that the fur men always tried to control this access to Indian trading partners in order to gain the upper hand in their trades (Lang 1992 : 7). They were appalled at the Indians lazy style of trading as it was dispersed throughout gambling (Lang 1992 : 8). By the 1840’s, however, Indians began requesting “dollars” on occasion instead of trade goods. For, by this time Indians recognized that the Whites were a growing power in their territory and understood that in order to deal with them they’d have to do it on the White’s terms.

Armed struggles were never a real threat before the White man, but they increased in frequency as the non-Indians shifted from trade to settlement desires during the late 1840’s (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 62). These early conflicts were due mostly to cultural misunderstandings and racial prejudices (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 62). The Wishram weren’t affected by the Yakima War of 1855-56, but those who didn’t want to be associated with the “rebellious Yakimas” moved southward to live with their Wasco relatives and ” to be near home and the Whites” (French 1961 : 372).

During this time period from 1850 to 1880, relationships with the Whites changed due to the new desire of the Whites. The United States was rapidly expanding at this point and began to organize the Pacific Northwest lands into territories for White settlement. But, in order to do so they had to make amends with the Indians living on these precious lands. Up until this point it is noted in French’s study that “the actually wanted relatively little from the Wasco-Wishram” until the missionaries came in 1838 (French 1961 : 351,354). The first missionaries to the Wishram were from the Methodist Church, who originally arrived at The Dalles to covert Indians (French 1961 : 351). They, like the United States federal government, sought to assimilate their culture into the mainstream culture of the Whites. Included in their duties were teaching agriculture to the natives, and to help them change their religious beliefs from their pagan rituals (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 73).

Treaty making was the other major change occurring during this time period. Treaties are said to grant ownership rights to water and other natural resources found on land (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 71). Some of the treaties also contain special permissions and grants. Two treaties involved the Wishram : The Yakima Treaty of 1855, signed at the Walla Walla Council and the Treaty with the Tribes of Middle Oregon, also signed in 1855. From each of the treaties came a reservation where even today the Wishram resides.

The first treaty which directly involved the Wishram was The Yakima Treaty of 1855 which came from a Council held at Walla Walla, Washington in the summer of 1855 (Meany 1909 : 171). By June 11, three treaties were completed and signed, among them was the “Treaty with the Yakima Nation of Indians” (Meany 1909 : 171). This treaty was signed by Kamiakin, Skloom, Owhi, and eleven other chiefs and subchiefs as well as the Governor of the Washington territory Isaac I. Stevens (Meany 1909 : 171).

The treaty held that the tribes of “Yakima, Palouse, Pisquouse, Wenatshapam, Klikatat, Klinquit, Kow-was-say-ee, Li-ay-was, Skin-pah, Wish-ham, Shyiks, Oche-chotes, Kah-milt, and Se-ap-cat” as one, confederated tribe united under the generic name of Yakama (US Government 1859 : 1). There are eleven articles in the treaty, each outlining what land and rights were to be given to the indians living on the reservations :

Article one described the lands, in meticulous detail, that they were to give up to the federal government (US Government 1859 : 3).

Article two defines the boundary of land “reserved from the lands above ceded for the use and occupation of the aforesaid confederated tribes and bands of Indians” (US Government 1859 : 4). United States citizens are given the right to enter and settle “any lands not actually occupied and cultivated by said Indians” (US Government 1859 : 4).

Article three grants the federal government permission to build roads through the reservation (US Government 1859 : 5). It also grants the indian’s “exclusive right of taking fish in all the streams, where running through or bordering said reservation, is further secured to said tribes…as also the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places, in common with citizens of the territory” (US Government 1859 : 5). In addition to fishing, permission is also granted to gather roots and berries and erect temporary homes at the places above (US Government 1859 : 5).

Article five states that the confederate tribes will be paid “in addition to the goods and provisions distributed to them at the time of signing this treaty, two hundred thousand dollars” to compensate them for the lands taken by the federal government (US Government 1859 : 5). The rest of this article then illustrated in detail the exact amounts that are to be given within the first year of the reservations resurrection (US Government 1859 : 5).

Article six elects Kamaiakun (the Yakima head chief) as the reigning head chief over all tribes (US Government 1859 : 6). It also gives the Present of the United States the right to divide the reservation, whole or portions of it, into lots and then assign families and individuals to these lots (US Government 1859 : 6). This article may be a direct foreshadow of the government’s plan to instigate allotments to all Indian reservations.

Article seven states that the Indian’s annuities are not to be used to pay off individual debts accumulated in gambling (US Government 1859 : 6).
Article eight requires all tribes to acknowledge their dependance on the United States and “promise to be friendly with all citizens thereof” (US Government 1859 : 6). This article also gives measures on punishment if this and other laws are ever broken.

Article nine address the indian’s wish to exclude all alcoholic beverages from reservation premises to prevent them from drinking (US Government 1859 : 6). It is stated that those who do so have their annuities revoked.

Article ten sets up the boundaries for the “Wenatshapam fishery” (US Government 1859 : 7).

Finally, Article eleven, concludes the treaty with remarks made by both parties agreeing to abide by its laws as soon as it’s ratification by President James Buchanan (US Government 1859 : 7).

On April 18, 1859 this treaty and all that it outlined was ratified and the rest of the official Wishram history became adjoined with the reservation.

The other treaty that had an affect on the Wishram, those who moved to live near the Whites and the Wasco at the Dalles, was signed at The Dalles Treaty Council in 1855 (Wendt 1982 : 46). This council was called by the Agent R.R. Thompson in June of 1855 (Wendt 1982 : 46). The meetings were held until June 25 and most of the middle Oregon tribes met with the Indian Superintendent Joel Palmer (Wendt 1982 : 46). It was the same situation here, as it was in Washington.

The federal government wanted these indians to move 70 miles South to want is now known as the Warm Springs Reservation. The land here was a barren wasteland, filled with hot springs and arid lands (Wendt 1982 : 46). Under the treaty, which became known as “The Treaty with the Tribes of Middle Oregon” these Indians were placed under the care of the United States as wards (Wendt 1982 : 46). Of course, the government also wanted to “instruct them in ways of the white culture” as well (Wendt 1982 : 47). At first the chiefs generally disagreed with what the treaty had to say but they quickly bowed down to the white pressures and signed the treaty (Wendt 1982 : 47).

This Treaty once again outlined what lands were to be ceded from Indian occupation in exchange for a reservation, cash payments and rights from the government (Shane 1950 : 17). The treaty also included the statement from the Yakima treaty which gave these indians the exclusive right of taking fish in the streams as well (Shane 1950 : 19). This treaty was not ratified by Congress until March 8,1859 (Shane 1950 : 19). But it did ceded 10 million acres to the United States (Zucker, et. al 1981 : 88). Although its not stated anywhere there are Wishram located living on this reservation; however, the Wishram are officially recognized as a tribe is at the Yakima Reservation.

In 1865 the federal government attempted to impose a farming lifestyle on indians that spurred another treaty. This treaty was never accepted by the tribes and soon abandoned by the government (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 97). Then in 1871, Congress stopped the treaty making process all together (Zucker, et. al 1981 : 71). Between 1778 and 1871, it is estimated that North American Indian tribes “negotiated and signed 371 law binding treaties with the United States government” (Zucker, et. al 1981 : 69).

1858 to 1920
This era opened at a time when significant losses and replacement of elements of the earlier culture were happening (French 1961 : 371). One of the Wishram’s reactions to these crises was to sign the treaties proposed by the federal government and go live on reservation lands (French 1961 : 372). French states that the Chinookans signed these treaties without opposition to what they had to say (French 1961 : 372). It was during this time when the Wishram moved up north to live on the Yakima Reservation (French 1961 : 373). Aside from reservations, spearfishing came to be the most important Chinookan settlement (French 1961 : 376). For, it provided one of the better places for the Wishram to live (French 1961 : 376).

It was also during this period when the reservation social organization lead to unity and a higher emphasis on the structure of the tribal organization (French 1961 : 385). On the reservation, the white BIA agents behavior’s were inconsistent. Some wanted all the different groups to act as a unified tribe whereas other wanted them to be fully assimilated into White culture (French 1961 : 386). However, family structure and functions remained virtually unchanged unlike many other areas of their culture (French 1961 : 390).

Learning about white culture also caused many changes in the self-conceptions of the Wishram (French 1961 : 397). Their outward appearance and lifestyle conformed to the norms of the white society (French 1961 : 397). Many tribal members could now speak english as well the Chinookan languages (French 1961 : 396). Their religion went through several changes with most of the peoples converting to Christianity (French 1961 : 397).

The Yakima Reservation was created out of Washington’s Treaty of 1855 and the Yakima Wars (Loudon 1967 : 37). The government created the Reservation under the premise that it was necessary to locate the indians at one central location to protect and implement federal government policies that would administer to their needs (Loudon 1967 : 37). It is also under this reservation where the Wishram are officially recognized (Pratt 1994 : 48). The site chosen for the reservation was at Fort Simcoe and control of the reservation was then assigned to Agent Dr. Richard H. Lansdale in 1859 (Loudon 1967 : 37-38). During the implementation of the reservation its inhabitants were described as a leaderless and impoverish group (Loudon 1967 : 40). The size of the reservation, during its creation was 1,2000,000 acres (Loudon 1967 : 30).

The Warm Springs Reservation, on the other hand, was uninhabited by any tribe or band of Indians prior to 1950 (Shane 1950 : 3). This reservation was created out of the Treaty with the Tribes of Middle Oregon (also known as the Treaty of 1855) (Shane 1950 : 3). At the treaty’s signing the tribes of Tygh, Tenino, Wyam, Warm Springs, and Wasco Chinookans are officially located on the reservation lands along with some Wishram (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 97) Today, however, only the Warm Springs, Wasco and Paiute Indian tribes are registered here (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 97).

Land used for this reservation was ten percent less that what was stated in the 1855 treaty, and throughout the reservation’s history faulty surveys kept changing the boundaries therefore keeping some and from them (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 97). The most controversial being the conflicts over a strip of land known as the McQuinn Strip (97).

The next major historical event to occur was the General Allotment act of 1887, also known as the Dawes Act (Zucker, et.al. 1981 : 73). This act “allowed Indians reservations to be divided into sixty acre [or smaller] allotments for assignment to tribal members” (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 73). These plots of land then remained in federal trusts for 25 years after which the Secretary of the Interior could issue a fee patent on these tracts of land, if the owner was declared competent (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 73). The United States in issuing this law assumed that private ownership of land would cause the Indians to integrate outside ways faster (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 74). But, once the 25 year period expired, many Indians who weren’t accustomed or trained in new jobs or lifestyles refused to drop their tribal loyalties and adopt agriculture as their main staple of living (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 74). These indians soon became poverish.

This act also caused the reservation lands to diminish, due to the leasing and sales of these surplus lands to non-indians (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 74). Because of this last amendment, over 90 million acres of land was lost due to Allotment (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 74). Despite all the attempts of the United States government to assimilate Indians into American society, this Act along with many others failed in its attempt (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 74). However, the Warm Springs Reservation as well as the Klamath Reservation were able to keep tribal reserves of land (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 74).

By 1902, 2,484 allotments were created and “practically all of the land considered fit for irrigation had been taken” (Davidson, et. al 1955 : 37). Among these, 379 leases (totalling 28,559 acres of land) were issued to “non Indian operators” (Davidson, et. al 1955 : 37). By 1911, a grand total of 3,160 allotments were made and; in 1914 when the general allotment period ended 4,506 individuals had been granted over 444,000 acres of reservation land (Davidson, et. al 1955 : 37). Indians born since are without original assignments and any land gotten is from tribal or familial inheritance (Davidson, et. al 1955 : 37). It is estimated that the number of public domain allotments in 1959 equaled 31,226 acres of land (Loudon 1967 : 76).

Initially all Indians were opposed to the sale of unalloted lands (Loudon 1967 : 77). They knew the value of their lands and how this value would increase over the years (Loudon 1967 : 77). Later they agreed to the sales of the plots if the money gained went towards improving the living conditions on the reservations (Loudon 1967 : 77).

Another issue that popped up during the Reservation years was the education of Indian children and the institutions to teach them the skills needed to survive within the white man’s world. Therefore, boarding schools were instituted to teach these children the rhetorics of life. Indian schooling, however, dates back to 1606 when the Virginia colony desired to “bring the infidels and savages to human civility and a settled government” (Siegel 1940 : 5). Another instance of state supported education occurred on July 12, 1775 when the board of Indian commissioners established a program at Dartmouth College to educate Indian children (Siegel 1940 : 5).

The first boarding school was established on the Tulalip Reservation, in 1869 (Siegel 1940 : 6). It was maintained by missionaries (Siegel 1940 : 6). Later in 1893 a fourth of all appropriation for indian education was paid to these boarding schools (Siegel 1940 : 6). The philosophy on which the boarding schools were founded was in order to assimilate indians, the children had to be kept as far away from their parents as possible (Siegel 1940 : 7). Keeping them separate prevented any interference from the parents in converting the children away from their Indian lives. The usage of boarding schools across the nation reached its highest point around 1912 (Siegel 1940 : 8). On the Yakima Reservation the federal government opened a boarding school in 1860 within the old building of old Fort Simcoe (Siegel 1940 : 7).

In 1930 the State of Washington started to educate indian children (Siegel 1940 : 1). In return, the federal government reimbursed the state “on the basis of the average cost per pupil” (Siegel 1940 : 1). This contract known as the Contract for Indian Education 1935-36 was signed and put into effect during the school year of 1935 (Siegel 1940 : 1). The contract as written solved and created many problems. The plan failed to take into consideration the special services given to indian children before 1935 (Siegel 1940 : 2). Among these services given were free lunches, texts, transportation, and vocational classes (Siegel 1940 : 2). The main benefit was to create a better environment for indian children to grasp the most out of their school experiences.

By 1896, however, the idea of boarding schools were abandoned by the federal government (Siegel 1940 : 7). However, those schools that were established during this time were still allowed to operate until its official abandonment in the early 1900’s. At the time of Siegel’s thesis, in 1940, the average cost per pupil was between .01 and 3.57 dollars (Siegel 1940 : 41). This money went to the state of Washington for indian attendance where no more than an annual amount of $20,000 was allocated to fund indian schooling (Siegel 1940 : 41).

1920 to Present
The last major period of cultural change experienced by the Wishram was during the 1920’s to the present. French’s article is dated 1961 so the present information he gives had happened around that time. I will attempt to go further, and describe some of the more recent happenings with those living on the Yakima and Warm Springs Reservations

There are three main characteristics that define the Chinookan culture during this final period (French 1961 : 398). These changes being the immersement of the Wishram community within the money-oriented economy of the Pacific Northwest, the dwindling of the Chinookan culture in importance so that the Wishram living on the reservations are now likely to interact with Whites and other cultures in situations that they would have done with other Chinookans, and finally, they did not behave like indians at all in many situations (French 1961 : 398). When introducing themselves to outsiders, they would label themselves as “Yakima” rather than Wishram (French 1961 : 402).

“One the reservations, White-introduced systems for ownership and use of land had yielded a moderate degree of stability in family residence” (French 1961 : 399). Generally, farming became the way of life and brought in lots of cash until World War One when the marketability began to decrease (French 1961 : 407). Nowadays, they specialize in commercial fishing utilizing traditional methods for capturing fish (French 1961 : 407). Because of increasing opportunities in wage based work during the early 1930’s the population experienced a increase (French 1961 : 399).

Shamans and shamanism has almost ceased to exist for it is being replaced by western medicine and scientific attitudes (French 1961 : 413). Only a few Chinookans participate in the Longhouse religion and activities (French 1961 : 414). Artwork has also seen a change over the years. Where they once made their art for utilitarian purposes, now they paint their traditional designs on manufactured baskets and buckskins (French 1961 : 415). “Like other Americans, Indians are more likely to be collectors and passive consumers of the arts than to be creators” (415). Where once oral stories dominated the culture only a few Chinookans “if any, know more than fragments of the traditional body of oral literature” nowadays (French 1961 : 415). Television was also introduced to the population at Warm Springs and the shows became a regular attendance (French 1961 : 415). Overall, the indian behavior of the Wishrams was then limited to technology, class attitudes, family responsibilities, religious ceremonies, and music (French 1961 : 417). In 1924, Indians became full United State citizens due to their participation in World War I (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 74).

Starting in 1930, the federal government made another decision that had great importance on the way that reservations were to be run. The bill was called the Indian Reorganization Act and each tribe or confederation of tribes living on reservation lands were asked to submit a proposal for self-regulation (Hunn 1990 : 279). Generally, the bill was designed to further remove governmental control over the Indians and give them “greater freedom.” John Collier spearheaded the law, which also officially ended the allotment period of Indian lands (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 76). The IRA bill also made provisions for tribes to recover lands unclaimed during the allotment period (Zucker, et.al 1981 : 76). However, under this proposal the Indians were still under the supervision of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (hereafter referred to as the BIA) and their proposals had to be constructed similar to the United States government system (Hunn 1990 : 279).

Passed in 1934, the Law allowed tribes to form corporations for their own economic development (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 76). It also stated that the BIA had “to prefer Indians in [its] hiring practices” (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 76). The main benefit that came from this act was that tribes were able to consolidate many of the lands owned and continue some of the ongoing tribal enterprises (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 76). In 1938 Warm Springs submitted their proposal for independence later followed by the Yakima Reservation in 1944 (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 280). After the breakout of World War II, the period for tribal reorganization ended as well as anything else that the IRA could do for Indians (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 77).

Under the IRA the Yakima Reservation’s leadership was organized into a tribal council where all adults constituted a General Council which delegated administrative and executive authority to an elected Tribal Council of 14 members (this chosen by majority vote) (Hunn 1990 : 280). The members of this Council held their position in 14 year terms (Hunn 1990 : 280). The Warm Springs Tribal Council also works like the one based on the Yakima Reservation. Their tribal government includes the regulation and control of land management, court systems, and they have several human and business welfare departments (Zucker, et. al. 97). The Council elects “three chiefs for life” and other councilmen who serve for specified terms (Hunn 1990 : 281). People who live on the reservation vote by general consensus (Hunn 1990 : 281).

Instead of giving the tribes’ original land back, lands taken away during allotment and the treaty days, Congress authorized the Indian Claims Commission to determine these claims against the taking of native lands and award tribes money sums equal to the land taken (Zucker, et.al. : 122). Started in 1942, this Commission set up temporary measure to deal with the “unusual legal issues” (Zucker, et.al. : 122). To do this, Congress gave the Commission five years, until 1951, to settle all claims but later misjudged the amounts of claims and the time needed so that this proceeding were extended over five times (Zucker, et.al. : 123). The ruling minimized the extend of tribal territories and demanded that the tribes give proof and validation of living in these lands “until time immorial” (Zucker, et.al. : 125). This measure was only put in to reduce money award allotted to each tribes claim (Zucker, et.al. : 125). There were two cases that affected both the Yakima Reservation and the Warm Springs Reservation and the tribes living on it.

Claim number 234 affected the Chinook tribe and bands from the Yakima Reservation (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 116-17). The goal of this proceeding was to recover over $30 million dollars for Washington and Oregon lands taken in 1850. The tribes claimed that the 1912 payments given for these lands were a unconscionable amount (Zucker, et.al. : 117). The ICC decision ruled an award for the recovery of 76,630 acres, and the final award given was $42,251. This figure was computed by taking the over all value of the land which was $75,000 subtracting for the 1912 payment of $26,000 and legal expenses totaling $6,441 (Zucker, et.al. : 117).

Case number 198 affected the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs (Zucker, et.al. : 118-19). The goal of this proceeding was to recover $9,800,000 for lands ceded in 1855. They claim that the treaty payments were also a unconscionable amount of 10 million acres of Native lands (Zucker, et.al. : 119). The ICC’s first ruling was contested so that a second compromise had to be made (Zucker, et.al. : 119). This ruling dismissed the settlement and stated that since no acreage or boundaries were defined in the claim, but awarded a final money sum of $1,102,500 to the tribes as long as this award wasn’t appealed by either side (Zucker, et.al. : 119). Legal fees totaling $122,500 was also taken out of the final sum (Zucker, et.al. : 119). Some of the more recent restorations of land given back to the reservations included giving the McQuinn Strip back to the warm Springs Reservation in 1972 while the Yakima Reservation received Mount Adams (Zucker, et.al. : 125).

The termination of many tribes, located on property owned by the United States, took effect in August 1953 (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 77). It was during this time when Congress passed Concurrent Resolution 108 in which ” Congress wished to officially terminate its special relationship with all tribes” (Zucker, et.al. : 77). The effect of this Resolution was, once again, to further incorporate Indians into the mainstream society (Zucker, et.al. : 77). During 1954 to 1958, more than “thirteen different acts ended the status of more than 12,000 people in eight states” (Zucker, et.al. : 77). The BIA was given the task of determining which tribes were to be terminated. Luckily, the Wishram were not affected by this decision.

Tribal councils made of Indian elders composes most of the tribal authority on the reservations, during 1920 to the present. It seems that since the beginning of the White involvement with Indians they’ve wanted to control them (Goeppele 1990 : 418). After the reservation’s creation, Congress gave the state and federal government the right to “exercise their authority over Indians and their reservations” (Goeppele 1990 : 418). Sadly, this trend of limiting Indian authority in criminal and civil jurisdiction over non-Indians, is still the current trend (Goeppele 1990 : 419). However, there have been many court cases such as Brendale vs. the Confederated Tribes of the Yakima Indian Nation, disputing the authority of Indians over non-Indians (Goeppele 1990 : 417).

The Supreme Court had to decide whether or not the “Yakima tribe has authority to zone non-member fee land located on the Yakima Reservation” as jurisdiction over the case mentioned above (Goeppele 1990 : 417). Their ruling over this case stated that the Tribal Council does have some authority over Whites in their zones but only if non-Indians are living in the closed area of the reservation (Goeppele 1990 : 417,422). However, this ruling does not affect tribal powers over trust land or land allotted in trust for tribal members (Goeppele 1990 : 422).

On June 30, 1965 Yakima Reservation’s land acreage totalled 1,094,443 of which 780,500 acres are owned by the Confederation as a whole (Loudon 1967 : 14). Of that total figure there are 500,00 acres of forested land worth about 67 million dollars (Loudon 1967 : 115). This record states that forestry has become a stable basis for the economy and income of the reservation (Loudon 1967 : 115). As of 1990, the land reserve of the reservation has increased to 1,134,830 acres and the 1980 census was 75,00 persons (Hunn 1990 : 276).

In 1964, the Warm Springs Reservation opened the Kah-Nee-Tah recreational resort near the hot springs (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 98). In addition to its functions as a weekend getaway, they resort offers many sorts of gambling games from the traditional hand game to the popular Vegas style slot machines. It along with a small timber industry draws in most of the money for the reservation (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 98). The other activities the reservation is trying to do includes the preservation of the fish runs in Oregon through fish hatcheries, as well as the preservation and commitment to “proper” land use (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 98). In 1974, they opened the Warm Springs Museum which houses a permanent collection of hundreds of craftspeople’s work (Pratt 1995 : 50). This began as a project in 1968 when the tribal leaders saw how many tribal artifacts were being placed in private collections off reservation lands (Pratt 1995 : 51). Over $850,000 has been invested to build its current collection of 2,000 artifacts and 2,500 documents and photographs (Pratt 1995 : 51). The “artifact collection spans all aspects of tribal life, ceremonial, decorative, and utilitarian”(Pratt 1994 : 44). In December 1992, the reservation was also the first Indian tribe to have public offerings of tax-exempt bonds to help finance a early childhood center (Wana Chinook Tymoo 1992 : 3).

Another more recent issue that affects both reservations and all Indians living on the Columbia River deals with the salmon and the Indians rights to fish. Today there are fewer than 500,000 salmon swimming in the Columbia River Watershed and most of these come from fish hatcheries. (CRITFC 1994 : 1) Salmon spawn in the fresh water of the Columbia and grow until they’re juveniles when they swim downstream back into the oceans (CRITFC 1994 : 2). Most salmon die after spawning having competed their life cycle (CRITFC 1994 : 20).

The first court case over this issue appeared in 1905, when it was determined that a man named Mr. Winans blocked Indian access to traditional fishing sites covered by the 1855 treaty (Hunn 1990 : 285). This case, called the United States vs. Mr. Winans ruled in favor of the indian fishermen, also affirmed that the treaties remained enforced, it defined the “reserved rights doctrine” in that any rights not specified in treaties are reserved by the indians, and gave the possibility of state rights to indian regulation in special cases (Hunn 1990 : 285).

Later, another court case happened, SoHappy vs. Smith (later US vs. Oregon) was another landmark fishing rights case (Hunn 1990 : 286-7). The main cause for this case was that the SoHappy’s used traditional fishing methods that the state had earlier outlawed in the fishing regulations (286). Judge Belloni’s ruling required states to regulate fishing so that Indians were guaranteed a fair share of salmon (Hunn 1990 : 287).

However, the most influential decision regarding Indian rights to fish came in 1968 ruling from the Boldt Decision (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 196). The Supreme Court, in their ruling, gave the state of Washington the right to regulate Indian fisheries. This was done in the name of salmon conservation (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 169). The Boldt Decision’s effects began in 1970 and only regulated off-reservation fishing rights. Another subsequent decision came in 1974 which ruled that “treaty tribes had the right to an opportunity to take fifty percent of [all] harvestable catch of fish” (Zucker, et. al. 1981 : 169). It was this ruling which caused an uproar in the salmon fishing industry.

This later decision resolved an earlier ruling, made by Judge Belloni, of “fair and equitable share of all fish which it permits to be taken from a given run” (Hunn 1990 : 287). Boldt defined this as an equal or 50 percent cut of all harvestable fish destined to reach treaty sites (Hunn 1990 : 287). The fish from this was then shared among Washington treaty tribes.

This decision along with a strong desire to protect the Columbia River watershed, lead to the creation of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission in 1977 (Hunn 1990 : 287, CRITFC 1993 : 6). Who developed a five year plan to enhance Columbia fishing for all parties (Hunn 1990 : 287). This Commission is formed of representatives from the Yakima, Warm Springs, Umatilla, and Nez Perce Reservations (CRITFC 1993 : 6). Their main goal is to maintain the salmon population so that future generations will always have plentiful salmon to eat and use in traditional indian rituals (CRITFC 1993 : 7). From this four priorities were created :

To resolve conflicts with the Endangered Species Act in exercising treaty-protected fishing activities (CRITFC 1993 : 7).To increase and protect the rapidly decreasing salmon population (CRITFC 1993 : 7). To create a strong, unified tribal voice (CRITFC 1993 : 7). To find ways to bring together all the talents and skills of fisheries and staff to address the issues ESP and salmon runs (CRITFC 1993 : 7).

From these goals they hope to “achieve more integration between individual tribal goals and talents, and the intertribal goals and talents of the Commission and its central staff” (CRITFC 1993 : 7).

Conclusions
In researching the tribal history and ethnography of the Wishram I have noted many changes that took place during and after the first contact period with non-Indian cultural groups. However, my research has left many questions unanswered. For example, on both of the reservations where some of the Wishram population live none of my research materials stated whether or not they held Tribal Council positions or if they still acted like a tribe outside of being a part of the reservation.

A call to the Yakima Reservation did confirm that the Wishram religion is still honored and possibly practiced, but I was not able to reach the contact that could take my Wishram specific calls. Currently the reservation does not have a casino, but over 8,500 registered Indians are in support for one to be built and the plans for this are in the works. Their other stable means of economy is a small forestry service and many shops. The 1935 Washington State Indian Schooling Law is no longer in affect, they have several public schools which are consistent with both the state codes and their own. In addition to this they also have a tribal school which is helpful in giving students a second shot in education. This school helps students whose parents are too poor or those who are getting low grades or are having problems with the public system. I also was not able to find any information on how and what the procedures for land buy-back are, or if either Reservation has attempted to purchase lands back from the federal government in recent years.

I also found one interesting difference between the two reservations during my research. It seems that the Yakima Reservation was and still is more instrumental in trying to regain land lost in treaties or during the allotment period. There were many accounts and details depicting their struggles to purchase these lands from the federal government. On the other hand, the Warm Springs Reservation seemed less concerned with the actual purchase of land and more concerned with the development of the tribal cultures residing on the land. They have a wonderful museum, depicting the struggles and triumphs of these tribes as well as a Casino and Resort where people can live in tipis for a weekend.

What can be said for the future? It is my hope that the Wishram as well as the Reservations continue in their ways of the old, to educate and remind us what has happened to their traditions and in history. It is my hope that one day the Wishram will become a strong Indian voice and gain all the traditions that were lost due to the great American assimilation of their culture. Perhaps what they did in the past, in changing their lifestyles to fit in with the White man culture was seen as the only way for them to preserve their culture and their bloodline rather than being a traitorous gesture to the Indian way of life.

Not much has been written on what many scholars call Lovecraft’s dreamlands fiction, from which The Silver Key is taken. The major reason is that Lovecraft, himself, wrote many letters to friends and fans describing what his fiction was all about. However, The Silver Key is a horror story in that it describes how science distracts and misleads us. The story calls the notion of reality and all that defines it into question and describes the ways that it attempts to distill knowledge and reality into a one single thing. There are two ways Lovecraft does this. The first is described in how the dream state can prove more real than a waking state. The second is that science also contributes to the destruction of the imagination, and thus the human spirit.

Critics believe that Lovecraft saw the cosmos as “a pointless, random collocation of atoms, winding down toward total entropy like an expiring clock” (Burleson c1983 12) which is then projected into his fiction. Other critics believe that instead of creating a new universe to base his fiction in, Lovecraft chose to extend the boundaries of our world through the creation of new myths (Mariconda 188). He created these myths out of things he dreamt, read or learned about in history. And it was in these myths that Lovecraft “wanted to form an emotionally endurable set of illusions as to values and direction in existence’ from the arbitrary concepts and folkways bequeathed to [him] through [his] traditional culture-stream’ ” (McInnis 130). These new myths he created are collectively called the Cthulhu mythos, and within this mythos appear beings that have greater control over our lives and reality.

Cthulhu (pronounced kuh-thoo-loo) is the name that Lovecraft made up to give to one of his horrible god-like creatures. But he is more than just a character, Cthulhu is also a puzzle that describes Lovecraft’s personal mythos. McInnis breaks Cthulhu “into its respective components : cuth, l(ovecraft) h(oward’s) u(niverse)” (McInnis 131) and from it he came up with the idea that The Silver Key as well as all of his fiction are just pieces that fit into Lovecraft’s personal worldview. Apparently, cuth is an old anglo-saxon word that meant manifest or known. By using this word in conjunction with his own ideals, Lovecraft sculpted the mythos to teach his readers a little about himself and what he saw as the horrors in our world.

In one of his stories Lovecraft wrote that “science… will perhaps be the ultimate exterminator of our human species” (cited in Joshi 205) and this quote shows how passionately Lovecraft felt about trying to “free himself from the rapid, inevitable social and technological changes that were occurring on around him” (McInnis 125). He hated the modern world, and by using his imagination, as seen through his work, he was not only able to escape from the modern world and its terrors, but he was also able to write to his audience about what technology might do to us if relied on heavily. This facet of Lovecraft’s belief, to escape from the modern world, is present within The Silver Key where scientific knowledge has destroyed Randolph Carter’s ability to dream.

The narrator of the story tells us about Randolph Carter (also known as Lovecraft’s alter ego) and how he lost the “key of the gate of dreams” (Lovecraft 193) and how this mentally affected him. When Carter was a child, we are told he loved to dream. He built an elaborate dreamworld that became more real than his earthly life while he dreamt. Quite often he chose to remain in this dreamworld over being in reality. However, over time he grew to adapt to the modern world and listened to the “well-meaning philosophers [who] had taught him to look into the logical relations of things, and analyse the processes which shaped his thoughts and fancies” (Lovecraft 193). In doing so he began to lose the ability to dream because “they had chained him down to the things that are, and had then explained the workings of those things till mystery had gone out of the world” (Lovecraft 193).

As Carter grows older, he “tried to do as others did, and pretended that the common events and emotions of earthy minds were more important than the fantasies of rare and delicate souls” (Lovecraft 194). However this destroys him for he begins to realize how “shallow, fickle, and meaningless all human aspirations are and how emptily our real impulses contrast with those pompous ideals we profess to hold,” (Lovecraft 193) and because of this he tries to find a way back to the dreamlands of his childhood youth.

His first attempts at finding meaning through regaining his childhood dreamland brought him to disciplines which he felt valued the spiritualness of matter and the imagination over a materialist and science driven reality. Therefore, like any sane man, he turns to the church for guidance. Carter’s discovery is that religion is no better than science. What he finds here disturbs him for all he sees is “the starved fancy and beauty, the stale and prosy triteness, and the owlish gravity and grotesque of solid truth which reigned boresomely and overwhelmingly among most of its professors” that is contained within the church doctrines (Lovecraft 194). Lovecraft diction contains many double meanings to suggest that what the world sees as “spiritualness” is just a facade and a cover -up used by the church to propagate a creation definition of reality. For Carter it starves his “fancy” (or his imagination) and tries to profess “solid truths” to the followers and ignores once again any use of the imagination and what answers to our existence it may provide.

Carter then resumes his search for ways that can take him back to the dreamlands. This new path leads him to dabble “in the notions of the bizarre and the eccentric as an antidote for the commonplace” (Lovecraft 196). To Lovecraft, bizarre and eccentric knowledge comes in the form of the occult and magic. But even here Carter/Lovecraft sees how material reality has tainted these beliefs so that they are “as dry and inflexible as those of science” (Lovecraft 196) and not allowing the imagination to expand our worldview.

In his 1991 article Burleson defines five major themes seen in Lovecraft’s fiction . The first is the theme of denied primacy or “the theme that as human beings on this planet we were not first, will not be the last, and have never really been foremost” (136). The second theme is that of forbidden knowledge or “there are some types of knowledge only by the avoidance or suppression of which can humankind maintain a semblance of wellbeing” (136). Theme number three, or illusory surface appearances, states that “things are not always as they seem, that surface appearances mask a deeper and more terrible reality” (136). The fourth theme is the theme of unwholesome survival which states that there are some things that have outlived “from the ordinary human viewpoint their rightful existence” and that these beings still exist today under carefully constructed concealments (136). Finally the fifth theme, is the theme of “oneiric objectivism” or the notion that
there is at best an ambiguous distinction between dreaming and reality–
that the world of deep dream may be as real as, or more real than, the waking world; the suggestion is strongly present that the shared dream-world of humankind holds awesome secrets about the ultimate
nature of things ( 136)

and it is this theme which is the most prominent within Lovecraft’s story The Silver Key. This belief is seen within The Silver Key in that Lovecraft tells us we must never abandon our imagination because it provides the meaning within our reality. If we lose this ability to connect to the “dreamlands,” then our world becomes shallow and meaningless, just as it had in Carter’s world.

Lovecraft illustrates this by showing how to solve a dilemma of the mind by materialistic ways creates problems. Carter spends much of his life trying to bring back his dreams through the conventional means of science and religion. However, he soon realizes that this does not work and quickly succumbs to depression. “Having perceived at last the hollowness and futility of real things, Carter spent his last days in retirement, and in wistful disjointed memories of his dream-filled youth” (Lovecraft 197). Once he lets go of his conventional beliefs that science can solve his problem, Carter realizes that he has found the key to regain his dreams. And one day, through his dreams, he is given a message that later crosses over into the real world. “In the dust and shadows of the great attic he found it, remote and forgotten at the back of a drawer in a tall chest” (Lovecraft 198) describes the first appearance of a real material key, its location given to Carter through a dream, that will help him to recross back into the imagined dreamworld.

This description of the key does two things. It provides evidence to show how dreams hold real knowledge that can be withheld over to the waking state. Secondly, the physical appearance of the key itself seems to be a metaphor for Carter’s dreamworld, for it like the key, has been left in the back of some dusty chest within his mind. This suggests that if we concentrate too much on worldly matters then our imagination becomes weakened. And if we allow to this linger for too long then our senses become dulled enabling us to distinguish between what is reality and what is “fancy”–and ultimately this can destroy us, just as it has Carter.

Carter’s key, allows him to escape reality and enter the dreamlands. The key has given him the knowledge and the power (through possession) to return back to his childhood dreams and during a fit of nostalgia, he decides to return to the “old remembered way past graceful lines of rolling hill and stone-walled meadow, distant vale and hanging woodland” (Lovecraft 199) to his ancestral homelands. This passage is different than some of the others in the story for it marks a transition from a definite reality that has borders of tangible and abstract thoughts and objects, to a less defined and blurred one. For once Carter returns home his mind floods with memories, leaving what he perseeves as reality to be called into question.

When the novel begins, Carter is thirty and the progression throughout the years has left his imagination in tatters. Yet at this point in the story, as the “shadows thickened around him” (Lovecraft 199), Carter magically returns back to his childhood youth. And “through his puzzlement a voice piped, and he started again at its familiarity after long years. Old Benjiah Corey had been his Uncle Christopher’s hired man, and was aged even in those far-off times of his boyhood visits” marks the first time that Carter’s reality and imagination clash, redefining his world. Time no longer takes on a familiar linearity and instead of growing older to us it seems as if he has transported back into time and physically regained his youth. Upon remembering where he found the key, Carter remarks that
he tried to recall just where he had found the key but something seemed confused. He guessed it was in the attic at home in Boston, and dimly remembered bribing Parks with half his week’s allowance to help him open the box and keep quiet with it. (Lovecraft 200)

Lovecraft points out here that there are no definite boundaries between what is imagined and what is real for in this passage there are elements of both leaving us confused as to its interpretation. Is Carter really young again or has his old, feeble mind regained an imagination? The diction of this passage suggests both, for in it this new young Carter still has retained dreamlike qualities of where he used to live in Boston; yet words like “allowance” and “bribing” suggest the actions and the language of a young boy, leaving us with no real boundaries, no scientific logic to explain to us what Lovecraft has just said what has happened. However, because science cannot explain it doesn’t mean that it is real.

In the concluding passage of the story the narrator states that “Carter’s relatives talk much of these things because he has lately disappeared” (Lovecraft 202). This conclusion suggests that either Carter has found the key to cross over from our perceived reality into a imagined one, making the imagined one his new reality or that he has gone mad in his old age because of what science has taught him to disregard between fact and fiction. Whether or not Carter achieved his dream, no one will ever know; however, the narrator seems to believe that he did escape this reality, and that “I shall ask him when I see him, for I expect to meet him shortly in a certain dream-city we both used to haunt” (Lovecraft 203) leaving the mystery of what reality is and isn’t a mystery that science may never prove.

All reality is is a word and its definition can be whatever you want it to be. H.P. Lovecraft and his alter ego Randolph Carter prove, through the writings of imagination, that the illogical can exist with the logical and that science shall never be exact. The Silver Key is testimony to this idea. Lovecraft suggests in The Silver Key that we can’t rely on science to show us reality and because we all can’t live in a dreamworld of our own, we must allow science joined with the imagination to define for us the boundaries of reality. In a letter that Lovecraft wrote, he states ” my own attitude in writing is always that of a hoax weaver’ ” (Burleson c1983 15) and that stories that are woven with elements of both science and fantasy are the most hard to judge where the line between where true reality and the dreamworld exists. Perhaps for Lovecraft they exist on the same plane, in the same time, and the real hoax is played on humanity for thinking that science can prove otherwise.

Works Cited
Burleson, Donald. H.P. Lovecraft, A Critical Study. Westport, CT : Greenwood Press, c1983.

—–. “On Lovecraft’s Themes : Touching the Glass.” An Epicure in the Terrible. ed. David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi. London : Associated University Presses, 1991. 135-147.

Joshi, S.T. The Weird Tale : Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, Ambrose Bierce, H.P. Lovecraft. Austin, TX. : University of Texas Press, 1990.

Lovecraft, H. P. “The Silver Key”. from The Dream Cycle of H. P. Lovecraft : Dreams of Terror and Death. New York : Ballantine Books, 1995. 193- 203.

Mariconda, Steven J. “Lovecraft’s Cosmic Imagery.” An Epicure in the Terrible. ed. David E. Schultz and S.T. Joshi. London : Associated University Presses, 1991. 188-198.

McInnis, John. “H.P. Lovecraft’s Immortal Culture.” Death and the Serpent : Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy. ed. Carl B.Yoke and Donald M. Hassler. Westport, CT : Greenwood, 1985. 125-134.

Language gives us the ability to communicate with one another. It translates ideas, thoughts and images and can either be written or spoken. Words comprise our written language and are the tools writers use to construct fiction. Language gives the image of the story we have in our heads that fresh twist or spark. Using language we can write anything and everything. Using language is like putting together that jigsaw puzzle. It sounds simple, but if you ask most writers they will tell you it isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Getting the words to conform to the central idea in your head is tricky, if not down right impossible. How do you write about love or define what the senses see when you go to a baseball game? The answer lies in the ability to use and control language. Using language is simple; we do it everyday. However, controlling language to create a story or image that a reader will remember for a long time takes a little bit of extra knowledge of what goes on behind the writing process.
The way a writer uses language to create something meaningful depends on two factors. In everything written, authors must examine who their audience is and what the main goal of the written piece will be. Even in creative writing, the writer must be aware of who the audience is when composing his work. This article discusses some of the ways writers use language to create profound experimental prose. It offers tips on how you can make your prose better by examining the word choices you make. It will show you some writing techniques to help you bend language to match the picture of what you want to get across and then to make the word pieces fit together cohesively. This article also uses examples and writer interviews to give you insight into what editors and writers see in their own works as well as their contemporaries.

Experimental Writing– A Definition
When I say “experimental fiction,” what images do you get in your head?

The avant-garde publishing house Fiction Collective Two, a main publisher of experimental fiction, defines experimental writing as using

… mass-market forms and subjects [that work] against the mass market in order to bridge the gap between the avant-garde and more popular writing. Black Ice Books are innovative versions of genre writing,’ but at the same time subversive of the particular genre involved, and in general attitude subversive of the pop culture that has spawned it . (Foley 41-42)

Yet, for this article we need an expanded definition of what constitutes an experimental piece of writing, in order to be called experimental; because the above definition is a little too narrow to include all the different types of experimental prose. So I took a poll and came up with the following random working definitions:

• t’s weirder than science fiction, or it is the desire “to write a book that has never been written before”
• Fiction that is unique and pushes the fiction envelope
• Fiction that uses unconventional means to express a theme
• Writers who use fiction to trailblaze new forms of fiction by playing with words and with form
• Uses literary terms and devices in innovative ways
• Fiction that strays from the norms of society

Overall the above opinions fit the driving forces behind an author’s need to experiment with fiction. However experimental fiction and the art of playing with words does have a dark side. One of my respondents pointed out that

“experimental fiction is the marketing (or alternately ego-supporting)
tool of really pretentious artists who think they’re experimenting or
pushing the boundaries of what society allows. In short, they’re hack
writers who have to turn out stuff that will sell based solely on shock value.
Not necessarily the healthiest thing for anyone, I sure… don’t get a kick
out of it. (Interview taken over the internet 12 November 1996)

Yet, if this darker side seems like a stigma, then why do writers feel the need to experiment? Through the experimentation, with words and what society calls “normal fiction,” writers gain new techniques of seeing the world and how English is formed and reformed. Experimental fiction attempts to push the “fiction envelope” and literary norms by creating new ways in which we write and express ourselves, without becoming rebellious.

This is where our task gets trickier. Now that we know what experimental fiction means, the next step is to start choosing the right words to fit what we want our stories to say, because like a baby we must first learn to crawl before walking. In experimental writing this means that we must first learn the basics behind what constitutes a perfect word before we can start playing around with them. For, experimental fiction, no matter how extreme it attempts to be, “still has to be understood, even when written in an experimental form” (Brucato Interview 31 Oct 1996).

The Basics — Selecting Words
I define experimental fiction as works that utilize unconventional writing methods to express conventional themes. In creative writing, one of a writer’s goals is to entertain his audience. Creative writing utilizes language that appeals to our imagination and in an experimental setting, words become much more important as tools for getting meaning across to the reader. As a reader, context and connotations become more important than factual information. Words are then pieced together to shape the story and must be carefully selected.

Language, is the means by which we writers create fiction. And in experimental fiction writing, writers use language in unconventional ways like this sample of prose by Jan Emily Ramjerdi, taken from issues 11-12 of Black Ice Review, “thin knots under robes of dark red 8 knots of drk rd slk glos glos 8&8″ (22). But before we can attempt to write something that is as extreme as this passage, we first need to have a good grasp of how words work and how we can manipulate them to fit our needs. However, we must keep in mind that experimental writing “still has to be understood, even when written in an experimental form” (Brucato Interview on 31 Oct 1996). This section along with the next will help you out in selecting the right words for your prose as well as showing you some techniques to warp words using standard literary devices. The Creative Writers’ Handbook lists five criteria on selecting words. For each of these five criteria, we’ll discuss them in detail below.

Accuracy
Accuracy means using the best fitting word. The more perfect a word is, the less chance your audience will have for misunderstanding. In English we have many words with similar meanings. For example, instead of describing the color of the sun as being a big ball of flaming yellow, a writer can change the word yellow to citron, saffron, or lemon. The best one depends not only on the context surrounding the word but in what the audience might understand best. If your audience is children, yellow might be the best description for the sun’s color. On the other hand, if you write for a college art professor saffron or citron might replace the generic word of yellow to suggest different hues of yellow that the sun appears.

Precision
Precision defines the distinction and exactness of the words you select. While accuracy describes the best overall word to use, precision describes the best word to use in meaning and context. For example, Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park sets up a scene where a velociraptor dies from eating a poisoned egg. The scene’s tone heightens by Crichton’s use of the word screams to define the sounds the animal makes when it dies. Therefore the passage reads, “screams of the dying raptor filled the room,” and the word screams gives the velociraptor’s voice an distinct, animal-like quality. But, if he were to replace screams with yells or wails the passage changes and might instead read the “wails of the dying raptor filled the room.” This new version then, brings to mind a more human, baby-like creature rather than a wild, vicious dinosaur. The precise use of the word scream sets it off from any of the other choices.

Concreteness
Concreteness refers to the types of words you use to help your audience evoke images in their senses. Concrete words “appeal to one or more of the five senses” (Lee Interview 7 Dec 1996) (ie. chair, cat). Abstract words “are undefinable by the senses” (Lee Interview 7 Dec 1996) (ie. love, reality). Writing concretely also deals with the specifity of a word. Concrete words like girl or cat may seem abstract to the audience and might need clarifying– either by name or more descriptors — to make a better mental picture. When writing, a general rule of thumb is to make your writing concrete. It is easier for your audience to see the object rather than to be told about it.

I tend to write abstractly. This sentence “Those words are forever etched in my mind” is abstract because it provides my readers with no clear mental picture. It leaves them asking, who is speaking and what words did he say or hear? Writing abstractly is great if you want to keep the reader at a distance from the action of the plot or if you want to make your writing seem mysterious. However, rewriting the sentence to include a more concrete description of who or what those words were might read like this, “When the man told me that he loved me, those words were forever etched in my mind.” Here, the rewritten sentence clarifies and shows what is being said by the speaker of this sentence.

Appropriateness
Appropriateness applies to selecting words that fit the context of what you write about and who you write for. If you are writing for an audience of auto mechanics you would use words that they can relate to. You wouldn’t write to them as if they were college professors. Likewise, if the subject you were dealing with was auto repair you would choose words that were appropriate to the subject. For example, Craig Lesley’s novel, The Sky Fisherman, uses appropriate language for his characters’ lives and hobbies. Much of the language deals with fishing resulting in the novel being filled with jargon.
A plastic folder held his fishing license and steelhead tag from
the year he drowned. Eleven punches in the tag showed he’d landed
some big fish that spring. Underneath the steelhead tag was a small
black and white photo of two men comparing catches of fish. (114)

Here Lesley uses fishing terminology like “landed” and “steelhead tag” because they are appropriate not only to the scene, but to the kinds of words the characters would use to describe a fishing trip.

Idiomatism
Idiomatism is the process of using euphemisms to convey a particular meaning. Many genre writings contain euphemisms or slang to bring the reader closer to characters, or to help define the setting or tone of the novel. They are natural words that we would use within the situations that we describe in our work (Jason and Lefcowitz 61).

For example, horror writer Poppy Z. Brite, uses an idiom to define what type of person her character Rosalie is.

By day Rosalie wore black : lace and fishnet, leather and silk, the gaudy mourning clothes of the deather-children. I had to ask her to explain them to me, these deathers. They were children seldom older than eighteen who painted their faces stark white, rimmed their eyes
with kohl, smudged their mouths black or blood-red. (62)

Although it’s hard to identify the idiom in this passage, it’s present. Deather-child is an idiom that describes an underground cult of death-loving teens. If Brite had replaced deather-children with the common word freak to describe this cult, the meaning behind the word deather would have been stripped and the connection to death taken away.

Techniques of Language Usage
All writers use several techniques to make their works sing. Creating word-images, varying the diction or word choice, and playing with words are the three main ways writers bend words to create meaningful experimental prose.

Creating Word-images
Writing prose using word-images develops from looking at or creating a mental picture of a scene that is translated into words. This technique uses imagery, because it incorporates the use of images into the writing process. Imagery refers to the pictures you use to create a mental movie in your readers’ minds. Imagery occurs in descriptions of characters or places, but they can also be found in the comparisons (metaphors and similes) that you choose to relate to your subjects. One preconceived notion about imagery in fiction is that it must be must be timeless. However, timeless images don’t reflect many cultural traits that attempt to place the novel within the society being described were created. Today most experimental imagery concerns itself with redefining the ways people see the world and the connections to other things it contains. Most imagery within the experimental genre is based around cultural traits that have their important meanings within our own cultural beliefs, idioms and identity.

There are many ways experimental writers create word-images to write their stories. Kevin Tatroe, who publishes most of his short fiction on the internet newsgroup talk.bizarre, describes one way.
Usually, I look at a picture (actual, if possible; imaginary, if not) that conveys the same sense of emotion, the same point of feeling, that I’m working at describing, and see what words come to me. I rarely write these words down. A few days later, I work with an image in my mind of the picture and then write the words that come.

Once I’ve got a series of words I want to use, I begin throwing sentences together. Somewhat haphazardly, actually. Then I rewrite. And I rewrite some more. I rewrite each sentence, in order, until it’s perfect and until there’s no unnecessary words left over. This usually takes a dozen or four iterations. Once I have each sentence where it wants to be, I start having to rewrite sentences based on the overall lay of the words.

I prefer to use simple words with stark, unbending meaning. Rather than use words that are ambiguous, I’d rather leave a word out. This use of “non-words” comes from my graphic design background, where whitespace – the bits of the design that are empty – is as critical and necessary to the meaning (often more so) as the actual content. I design works around the whitespace. The words I leave out are as important as the words that are there. (Tatroe Interview 25 Nov 1996)

Crafting experimental fiction based on this technique produces very symbolic and descriptive fiction. But remember to ground the images in concrete words. Show the image to your audience; don’t just tell them. For example in my short-short Ramblings.1, I use Kevin’s technique of picking an image to describe it while eliminating all other needless words to create a passage that reads, ” life is a mystery and I am drunk in its glory spews forth from the magic pen of motion.” The words in this passage are tightly packed, and filled with fragments. There is no room for extra words. If you look real closely there are two fragments that make sense in this passage. The first is easy to spot, “life is a mystery and I am drunk in its glory.” The second one however is a little trickier to catch. It begins using the last word of the first fragment “glory” and reads “glory spews forth from the magic pen of motion”. Sometimes even leaving out descriptions, words, dialogue and details from the central image of the story can result “in a purer, more focused, more original story” (Kress 12). Playing with image fragments, in ways like these, adds a stop and go motion to your prose that will force your readers to read your piece twice.

Diction variation
Diction is simply defined as selecting the word that best fits what you want to say. It’s your choice of words in your writing. Varying your word choices is a simple and effective way to get your story’s meaning across. Each word in your writing must connect and have some impact on the reader. For example, many beginning writers begin many sentences using “The”. One major effect of this is that it causes prose to sag and limp by removing the reader from directly experiencing the action of the sentence as if they were there. Sentences like, “The cat does this. The hat is dropped” illustrates this problem. Instead of beginning sentences with the same word or using the same word throughout your piece, why not try to vary the beginning of each sentence in your fiction or find synonyms or antonyms to expand the story’s vocabulary? The above examples might instead read, ” A cat does this. John dropped the hat.” The effect of variation adds life to your piece and allows you to utilize a stronger vocabulary in your writing than just repeating the same old words.

Another variant on varying your words is to repeat certain words to influence what themes a reader may pick up in a story. In my story A Thin Line, Between one of my characters wears a big red-velvet, crumpled tophat one size to large. This object plays an important role in one of the story’s themes about looking beneath physical appearances to get at what is real. Therefore, throughout the story I deliberately sprinkle the words “big red-velvet, crumpled tophat” (about fifteen times) to get across my point.

However, one pitfall to avoid is that overdoing the repetition will cause your readers annoyance; and, if done in bad taste, they might reject the story altogether rather than embracing it for its craftiness. The solution in avoiding this is simple carry out your repetition carefully and deliberately. In my story, my readers were annoyed by all the repetition. But placing that phrase in strategic locations, they fell into the trap that I had set up with the words. They missed the point of what was underneath the hat, and just like the other characters within the story, they thought that the hat must have meant something greater than it seemed on the surface.

Word-Play
There are many ways that playing with words or the sentence structure of your prose can be considered experimental. Playing with words is perhaps one of the strongest ways to make your work fall into the category of experimental fiction. A first method suggests creating new words or using archaic spellings of words. Doing this is a healthy part of creativity and is also one of the main ways that most writers define their work as being “experimental”. It is unfortunate that effective writing today is defined as writing that emulates “the words and rhythms of everyday speech” (Jason and Lefcowitz 66). However, using archaic or personal word creations add to the story’s meaning by suggesting new ways of seeing the world or trying to draw connections back to an older or simpler way of living.

For example, Tom Robbins, the master of experimental word-play, creates new words and redefines the standard meanings of words to describe how one of his character’s dreams.

Blacksmiths hammered the Edge Serpent on the anvils of their closed eyelids. Wheelwrights rolled it, tail in mouth, down the cart roads of their slumber.Cooks roasted it in dream pits, seamstresses sewed it to the badger hides that covered them, the court necromancer traced its
contours in the constellation of straw in which he tossed. (17)

There are two types of word-play that Robbins’ uses within this passage. Words like “anvils” and “constellation” illustrate the first method. With these words, Robbins redefines the definitions of these words to create new meanings to fit the context. Words like “Edge Serpent” and “Wheelwrights” illustrate the second way that Robbins uses word-play. For here these new words give the passage an almost mythic perspective.

Another method word-play, suggested by Richard Cohen, is to write your stories using stream-of-consciousness or cubist styles (130). The stream-of-consciousness form was developed this century by writers like Virginia Woolf, who sought to duplicate what the mind says onto the written page. The cubist perspective “is also a form of stream of consciousness : [it uses] repetitions and fragmentations [that] follow [a] pattern of backtracking, pausing, [and the] musings that occur when anyone reads a standard sentence” (Cohen 130). The creator of this form is attributed to Gertrude Stein and one example of the cubist forms might read ” A cat cannot be a bird cat cannot be a bird because a cat eats a bird can’t be what it eats it can’t it’s a cat can’t be what it’s not it can’t be’ ” (Cohen 130). My earlier example of Ramblings.1 also illustrates how the cubist perspective can function as experimental prose.

Conclusion
The writing process is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece has its own place, its own fit. Manipulating words in an experimental setting isn’t always easy but can be fun as long as you learn the tricks behind what makes a good piece of experimental prose. Many publishing houses and small presses that print experimental work. However, like any piece of literature, experimental prose’s best strength resides in the writer’s ability to write using words rather than allowing the format of the story to dictate what is experimental.

How to select words to create experimental fiction incorporates eight aspects. When thinking of what words you will use to write, remember to keep the words accurate, precise, concrete, and appropriate. Whether or not you want to use idioms or current trends is up to you. Then during the writing process vary what techniques of literature you use to convey particular meanings in your prose. Creating word-images, varying your selection of words, and inventing new types of words (word-play) all affect how the reader will interpret your work once it’s finished.

Recommended Readings
Books
Bernays , Anne and Pamela Painter. What If? New York : HarperCollins College Publishers, 1995.
This book is filled with writing exercises to help you with your use of language within your stories but with almost every aspect of the story writing process.

Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer. Boston : Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1995.
This textbook is chock-full of stories written by the best contemporary writers and contains some excellent commentaries on the way writers’ write and use language to create their stories.

Goldberg, Natalie. Wild Mind : Living the Writer’s Life. New York : Bantam, 1990.
An inspirational book that shows you what the writer’s mind is filled with. It also includes exercises for you to try out.

Magazines
Poets and Writers Magazine. Edited by Darlyn Brewer and published bimonthly by Poets & Writers Magazine. This magazine is published not-for-profit but subscription information can be obtained by writing to Poets & Writers, Inc., 72 Spring St., New York, NY. 10012. This magazine publishes articles that discuss writers and writing houses and events. It lists many good publishing houses for readers to submit their manuscripts as well as keeping an up-to-date calendar of upcoming workshops and classes, across the nation, designed to improve writing skills.

Writer’s Digest. edited by Thomas Clark and published monthly by Jeffery M. Lapin. subscriptions are available by writing Writer’s Digest, Box 2123, Harlan, IA, 51593. Most of these article’s energies center around the writing process itself and tips to make your writing better. The magazine offers tips over a wide variety of writing styles from fiction to script-writing and it lists many places where you can get your writings published once completed.

Works Cited
Brite, Poppy. “The Sixth Sentinel.” Borderlands 3. edited by Thomas F. Monteleone. Atlanta : White Wolf Publishing, 1992. 62.

Brucato, Phil. Phone and e-mail interview. 31 Oct. 1996.

Chrichton, Michael. Jurassic Park. New York : Ballatine Books, 1990. 356-357.

Cohen, Richard. Writer’s Mind, Crafting Fiction. Illinois : NTC Publishing, 1995. 130.

Jason, Philip K. and Allan B. Lefcowitz. Creative Writers’ Handbook. 2nd edition. New Jersey Englewood Cliffs, 1994.

Foley, J.R. “Fiction Collective Two.” Poet’s and Writers Magazine. September/October issue, np : 1996. 35-43.

Kress, Nancy. “Less Is More : Sometimes it’s What You Leave Out.” Writers’ Digest. January issue, Harlem : 1997. 12-14.

Lee, David. Personal Interview. 7 Dec 1996.

Lesly, Craig. The Sky Fisherman. New York : Houghton Mifflin Company, 1995. 114.

Ramjerdi, Jan Emily. “SIM2\RE.LA.VIR: She Watches, Channel �.” Black Ice Review.
nos. 11-12. (1995) : 22.

Robbins, Tom. Jitterbug Perfume. Bantam Books : New York, 1984. 17.

Tatroe, Kevin. E-mail interview on 25 Nov. 1996.

]]> http://www.shadesofmaybe.com/getting-the-pieces-of-the-puzzle-to-fit-create-experimental-prose-using-words/feed/ 0 http://www.shadesofmaybe.com/sight-within-the-lighthouse-walls/ http://www.shadesofmaybe.com/sight-within-the-lighthouse-walls/#comments Wed, 16 Jun 2004 23:31:25 +0000 innowen http://www.shadesofmaybe.com/wordpress/?p=145 November 19, 1995
E 389

In this world there are many different ways of interacting with others, Nature, and life. In To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf examines two very different ways of viewing life. The first reflects an interaction with life through direct communication with others. The other reflects the experience of living through sense and artistic style. Set in turn of the century Britain, the novel attempts to find the best way to interact in a quickly changing world. The novel is a journey which takes the reader through each type of personal development to come to the conclusion that survival within a quickly changing world the latter must be developed. Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe, two characters within the novel, reflect each one of these types of interaction. Whereas Mrs Ramsay is a model spokesperson for the first type of development, Lily represents the artistic, introverted path to discovery.

The novel opens with an in-depth look at the first type of interaction, that of direct communication and openness between everyone. Although a relatively short span of time is described in this section (which is 125 pages long- longer than the last two sections put together), Woolf’s stream of consciousness narration shows how much thought goes on in one’s head during this short time. Entitled “The Window,” this first section shows that the window is a constant reminder of how relationships are viewed during the Victorian era. Open communication was an important factor for keeping the family together and happy. During this era, it was seen as the women’s duty to keep the window of communication open between family members. Therefore throughout this section, the reader sees Mrs. Ramsay trying to keep the lines of direct, personal communication open between the family and friends.

Mrs. Ramsay is a very traditional Victorian woman. She adheres to the separate spheres ideal that divide men and women according to their work habits and social roles. As the stream of consciousness narration enters Mrs. Ramsay’s thoughts, all they pick up is her worries and concerns for her family. Her first duty is to attend to the household. Most of her day is filled with tasks of cooking and cleaning, traditional womens’ work. “When she looked in the glass and saw her hair grey, her cheeks sunk, at fifty, she thought, possibly she might have managed things better- her husband; money; his books. But for her own part she would never for a single second regret her decision, evade difficulties, or slur over duties” (Woolf 6). This quote is typical of the thoughts Mrs. Ramsay has towards her life. Where a woman today would look in the mirror and be more concerned with the regrets of dreams not fulfilled, Mrs. Ramsay is more preoccupied with thoughts on how she can manage the family and its affairs better, more efficiently. She has no regrets on how she has lived her long and fruitful life.

Her second and happiest duty is the continued happiness of her family, and more importantly her children. Much of her time is devoted to their care and enjoyment of life. She delights in telling her youngest children stories and is always quick in praising them. The reader glimpses Mrs. Ramsay watching her children share a secret joke between them which Mrs. Ramsay thinks is odd (109). To her it is odd that the children would be keeping secrets between one another and from her, disturbing the harmony of open communication. But, she keeps quiet about it because they are happy and she doesn’t want to ruin their happiness.

Mrs. Ramsay’s route to life, then, is intertwined with the practicality of her duties. Her world is filled with hard, tangible facts and concepts which provide her life with a controllable order. She has no needs for the abstract world of art and knowledge, because she hasn’t the means to understand those concepts. During a discussion with Andrew and Lily Briscoe, she is asked to try and grasp ” Subject and object and the nature of reality’ ” and cannot (23). They try to relate the concept in terms of a kitchen table, something ordinary from her sphere, and how it would be if she wasn’t there to see it (23). She cannot think about it in this sense and decides that “if one’s days were passed in this setting of angular essences… naturally one could not be judged like an ordinary person” (23). Poor Mrs. Ramsay cannot grasp the meanings behind the objects or words themselves. Everything is to be taken at face value. It is interesting to note that during this discussion the only other person who is able to understand some of the discussion of Nature and reality is Lily, who has grown up in world of books and art and abstract thought.

Enter Lily Briscoe, a friend and general outsider of the family who seems to take no particular joy in traditional womens’ interests. Although she is seen in lesser detail than Mrs. Ramsay, Lily is an integral part of the book. She is unmarried and spends the majority of her day reading or learning new techniques of painting, in which she explores the development of looking at the world. It seems that throughout most of the book Lily is seen either in the act of painting portraits, cleaning brushes, or discussing techniques of artistic qualities with one or more of the Ramsay family. Lily, in turn, uses these new discoveries, to create what she feels is her view and expression of the world. She cannot accept that Mrs. Ramsay’s way of life is the best and desires to search for other ways of being and seeing the world.

She has a very questioning personality and is constantly questioning the very nature of things. “Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it, once more, the deceptiveness of beauty, so that all one’s perceptions, half-way to truth, were tangled in a golden mesh?” describes the very troubling core of Lily’s soul (50). Lily desires to know these answers to these questions that no one, at the time, seems to care about. Unlike Mrs. Ramsay, Lily hasn’t found her true voice and place. She is not content with the daily hustle and bustle that Mrs. Ramsay aspires to; yet, she is jealous of Mrs. Ramsay for finding the order of life amongst the chaos of Nature.

Both Lily Briscoe and Mrs. Ramsay look at nature through these filters of their life. Where Mrs. Ramsay sees Nature as tangible objects, Lily chooses to see Nature as a means to provide her with creativity and feeling. Mrs. Ramsay sees life in terms of objects and hard tangible facts. To her there is no other greater joy than her children and caring for them. In every thing she does, the reader can feel the passion of her life being fulfilled.
… they would come to her of an evening, quietly, and talk alone over her fire. She bore about with her, she could not help knowing it, the torch of her beauty; she carried erect into any room she entered; and after all, veil it as she might, and shrink from the monotony of bearing that it imposed on her, her beauty was apparent. She had been admired. She had been loved (41).

In this passage the reader sees the commanding force of love and respect that Mrs. Ramsay holds over her family and guests. She is loved, just as the passage suggests, and doesn’t feel the need to question the nature of things or reality. She has her family to contend with in order to maintain the family free from chaos.

Lily Briscoe, on the other hand attempts to find the deep hidden meanings of life in everything she does. She draws from the chaos, her own sense of order that can only be explained through her artistic nature. Her attempts in capturing all these elements of life lead her to painting in Monetesque, and sometimes bizarre fashions. The reader’s final description of Lily is of her painting and her ability to finally capture the essence of life.

There it was- her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempts at something. It would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision (208-209).

Only in her painting and the addition of a line splitting the middle, does Lily find what she has been searching for throughout the novel. She has found her unique vision of the world, and only through art could she discover its true meaning. Where Mrs. Ramsay’ legacy lives on through the remaining living children, Lily’s sight and perspectives of the world are now captivated within an object that will, in her eyes, last forever. Lily sees the love which flows in the family and thinks, “they became part of that unreal but penetrating and exciting universe which is the world seen through the eyes of love” (46-47). To her, the ordinary way of life is unreal to her and later on in the novel she believes that she’ll never be a part of the bond that ties a family members together.

As time passes, the world changes and with it, people must adapt to the changes it brings about, in order to survive. Times are changing as the Victorian era draws to a close, and the twentieth century unfolds its chaos on everyone. The era filled with happiness has just ended and the world is swept over with confusion. The confusion comes from the development of an mechanistic industry where individual people become the central focus rather than life as focused around the family. No longer can the policies of the Mrs. Ramsays of the world provide adequately for these new days.

Woolf’s second section, entitled “Time Passes” is filled with this chaos and what changes have occurred during this passing age. Rather than directly stating the changes occurring within the Ramsay family, she describes the changing world itself, only adding occasional landmark snippets from the family’s history. World War I breaks out creating doubt and an unsettling feeling of unhappiness. It is during this time when the reader hears of Mrs. Ramsay’s death, as well as that of her firstborn children. It is also during this time when chaos seems to replace the order and stability that Mrs. Ramsay held. The changing world is in demand for a new perspective on life.

Lily Briscoe is just the person to forge this new sight. Since Mrs. Ramsay has died, along with the rest of the Victorian ideals, Lily’s discovery for this era is found in the abstract world of art, and how it draws feelings from a person. It is because of this ability to see life in a different perspective which will provide future generations with a successful life in the modern world.

During her own lifetime, Virginia Woolf had to come to terms with her own sight. Although she never went blind, her struggles to find her own identity and voice lead her to write To the Lighthouse and several other books dealing with women and their place and identity in the early twentieth century world. In many ways the characters of Mrs. Ramsay and Lily Briscoe represent Virginia and her own mother, and Lily’s search to find her own identity, Virginia’s own search for the very same.

Nature brings all sorts of changes as the world turns. How humans deal with the change reflects on the uniqueness of the individual. Mrs. Ramsay’s vision of life is the interaction with the practicality of her duties and is filled with hard, tangible facts and concepts which provide her life with a controllable order. Mrs. Ramsay’s insight into life is astute and refined so that anything outside of her world, composed of her family and household, or daily tasks is eliminated. On the other hand, Lily who cannot see in this light forges a new perspective on life through the abstract world of art. It is she who searches for a greater purpose and ultimately gains more out of life, in creating her own insight into the way to see life. People can learn a lot about themselves by looking through different perspectives. But, ultimately it is the integration of these ideals which may yield the greatest insight in attaining the answers to the mysteries of life.

]]> http://www.shadesofmaybe.com/sight-within-the-lighthouse-walls/feed/ 0