“The Tree-Bound” legend is an avenger story that follows the conventions of the trickster narrative in the Native American oral tradition. Belonging to Iktomi, the spider trickster cycle of tales was published for the first time in Old Indian Legends (1901). The book contains a collection of childhood Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota folk tales collected and retold by Native American author Zitkala-Ša.
The book is one of the first published collections of Native American folklore translated from the oral mode to written English by a Native American author. Modern readers are encouraged to imagine these stories as they were originally meant to be experienced: as oral stories told over and over again by elders to the youth sitting around the fire. Stories in the oral tradition, as Zitkala-Ša notes in her preface to the collection, often vary from one teller to another, but they are all linked and help to continue the lessons of the original.
“The Tree-Bound” is the seventh of fourteen short narratives that focus on the legendary Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota figures of Iktomi, Iya the Eater, and Old Double-Face. While the fourteen stories are related, they also stand alone as independent tales that address a particular cultural problem. “The Tree-Bound” focuses on the deception and greed of those who take advantage of vulnerable people. Iktomi is determined to thwart the avenger, a gifted young warrior, from saving a people in peril. Iktomi pretends to be a helpless old man, one weaker than the young warrior he dupes, so that the younger man will not feel threatened, making him an easy target of the snare weaver. Iktomi is motivated to gain control of the warrior’s weapons, which he believes are magic, to claim a chief’s daughter for himself.
The tale opens on an Indian village tormented by the daily attack of a large red eagle described as man-hungry. The giant bird left the villagers “terror-stricken” and “breathless,” and many resorted to hiding in their lodges, fearing for their lives in the open. Recognizing that his people were in desperate need of protection, the village chief makes a promise to any warrior who slays the winged beast: the choice of one of his daughters. The offer of such a prestigious reward entices all the men of the village out of hiding. The old and young, strong and weak, are eager to participate in hunting the great bird, but when their arrows fail to do so much as injure the bird, the villagers place their faith in “a strange young man” with a “magic arrow.” However, before the “handsome” stranger can save the village from the terrifying predator, the shape-shifting Iktomi intervenes.
Iktomi, like the village men, is eager to take one of the chieftain’s daughters as his bride. He hatches a plan to take possession of the warrior’s magic arrow and claim it as his own. Drawing on the stranger’s kindness, Iktomi pretends to be hungry and to need the young man’s assistance in securing a meal. The “young avenger” obliges, shooting a smaller bird outside Iktomi’s wigwam. But when his prey becomes stuck in the tree, the warrior is obliged to climb after it, leaving his quiver in Iktomi’s care. Once the warrior reaches his prey, Iktomi implores the young man to send the dead bird and arrow down to him with the promise of cleaning the arrow in preparation for the next hunt. Instead, Iktomi seizes the arrow and begins to whisper “charm words” that turn the brave into the bark of the tree.
Iktomi, satisfied that he has trapped the warrior, adorns himself with the young man’s weapons and heads for the village to slay the red eagle and claim his reward by way of deception. Iktomi, like many trickster figures in Native American lore, often serves as a “wild and comic figure” rather than a “tragic and representational” one (Vizenor 1990, 279). But Iktomi’s deception and his greed are central to the plot of “The Tree-Bound,” and he manifests more sinister and violent qualities sometimes associated with the trickster. Even so, trickster figures are not necessarily meant to be interpreted as good or evil, but rather they represent manifestations of proper and improper social behavior according to mandates of the tribe. The trickster character often provides a safe outlet for examining problematic behaviors and for discussing how such behaviors impact the health of the tribe. Theft and deception are clearly marked as socially unacceptable.
Even as Iktomi prepares to capitalize on his misdeeds, a young woman passes the warrior-tree and hears the cries of the trapped man. Using an axe, she cuts the warrior down, freeing him from the tree. She heads back to her home before setting out on a journey to warn the leader of the plagued village of what she has seen. “The Tree-Bound” ends without resolution, but it serves as a warning to protect the things that are most important and to be vigilant and guard against manipulators and diversions. The warrior’s plight and Iktomi’s scheme are taken up again in the next chapter of Old Indian Legends, “The Shooting of the Red Eagle.”
Tracey-Lynn Clough
Zitkala-Ša (1876–1938)
Zitkala-Ša was born Gertrude Simmons on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota, but was educated in Indiana at an American school for Native children. In addition to being a writer, she was a violinist, a teacher, and an Indian rights activist, who was one of the most prominent Native American figures in American literature and politics at the turn of the century. She received praise for her work from scholars and ethnographers, but was criticized by some Native Americans for making public what had been perceived to be sacred oral stories.
C. Fee
See also Arrow Boy; Coyote Tales; Deer Woman; Great Hare; Iktomi; Shooting of the Red Eagle; Toad and the Boy; Tricksters, Native American; Warlike Seven
Further Reading
Bloom, Harold. 1998. Native American Women Writers. Philadelphia: Chelsea House.
DeRosa, Robin. 2014. “Critical Tricksters.” In American Indian Rhetorics of Survivance: Word Medicine, Word Magic, edited by Ernest Stromberg. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Heflin, Ruth J. 2000. I Remain Alive: The Sioux Literary Renaissance. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Spack, Ruth. 2006. “Translation Moves: Zitkala-Ša’s Bilingual Indian Legends.” Studies in American Indian Literatures Series 18 (4): 43–62.
Thompson, Stith. 1972. Tales of the North American Indians. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Vizenor, Gerald. 1990. “Trickster Discourse.” American Indian Quarterly 14 (3): 277–287.
Zitkala-Ša. 1985. American Indian Stories. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Zitkala Ša. 1901. Old Indian Legends. Boston: Ginn.