"Whose perspective of history should be utilized, then, when talking about Black Elk?"

Excerpted from:

"The Two Masks of Nicholas Black Elk"
an additional study for the manuscript
Dancing in the Shadowlands with Coyote:
The Prophetic Rhetoric of Native Dreamers
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Bruce Peterson

…The Indian lives by listening to "the strains of an older, more ancient muse . . . An older Voice, an older song," says Martin. Western historians are analogized as "confidence men" performing a "card trick" of shoehorning the Indian "into the dominant culture's paradigm of reason and logic." The problem of history is that we do not, and from our ivory towers cannot, fully appreciate or understand Indian culture. There are some problems with Martin's approach that are immediately apparent, but they can be dealt with and his viewpoint is provocative…

…Western concepts of progress and its linear, historical consciousness are still somewhat foreign to numerous Native American societies. Indian culture still approaches time differently than western culture, even after centuries of ideological colonization. For Martin, the primary difference between Indian views of time and western culture views is the difference between what he labels as "anthropological time" vs. "biological time." He describes anthropological time as being unable to embrace the true conceptual frame of the mythic, and mythic reality is central to the Indian's world. This is fundamental to all Indian cultures, the myth is alive, it is present with us. Martin tries to describe this presence reality as biological time, an event-oriented mind set. The telling of the mythic story involves the presence of the actors in the story; the mythic is as biological to the Indian as he is himself.

Western perception is in many ways the "antithesis of the traditional mythic reality perceived by the Amerindian." Martin is reminded of the melancholy Columbia River Indian, Chief Broom, in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a self imposed deaf-mute in an insane asylum ruled over and defined by “Big Nurse.” "Historians might entertain the proposition that the world we have generated and defined for the Indian at large is also a kind of insane asylum in which he is more or less spiritually impotent, frustrating his efforts to communicate with either the mythic world or our Western world." In this respect, Martin is much closer to the reality of Indianness than his critics. The Indian has a communication crisis, an identity crisis. The history of the American Indian translates into the people of myth trying to comprehend the people of history while the people of history shoehorn the mythic into their Aristotelian, Judeo-Christian hybrid concept of rationality.

In the concluding essay of The American Indian and the Problem of History, Martin reveals the direction his historiography will take him in his next book, In the Spirit of the Earth. This closing essay is entitled, “Epilogue: Time and the American Indian.” Calling on Mircea Eliade and Loren Eiseley, Calvin Martin asserts that if we are to "succeed as a species,. . .we, in the West, must discard our anthropologically blinded view of the world." The people of myth and the people of history have two entirely distinct orientations of time. The historical is linear and progressive, while the mythic is cyclical, possessing the ability to bring the participant back to the tremendous events that occur at the beginning of time. To experience the mythic events of creation, to participate through ritual the "all important acts of life" revealed by gods and heroes in the archetypes of myth, is to be renewed, given direction, to be, if you will, redeemed. These mythic-redemptive acts make sense out of human activity and behavior. "The aim is thus to arrange one's life so that these sacred acts, these archetypes, can be experienced (conjured up) as frequently as possible," is Martin's claim. He is calling progress back to myth.

Ethnohistory, as revealing as it has been in helping to understand the Indian, is still encased in the anthropological time of Western progressive history. History for Native people is sacred. The mythic narrative is the voice of history, the voice of recollection, the voice of identity. Eliade wrote that people recreate themselves "through the paradox of rite." As a kind of intercessor, the American Indian views himself as a cosmic connection between human, animal, earth, and heavens, a kind of "glue holding it all together," transcending time and restoring the creation order, the original relationship. This description of reality will go a long way in helping to explain Nicholas Black Elk's actions in relationship with John Neihardt. What is disconcerting about Martin is not that he helps us to understand someone like Black Elk a little better, it is that he is telling us, we scholars, that "This, is our true and best roles as historians." Martin would apparently have us assume this role of myth keeper. This is the historiography that Martin attempts to employ in his next book.

In the Spirit of the Earth begins with the assertion that the entire concept of Western history is fundamentally flawed. History is an illusionary view of reality, separating humans from nature. When separated from nature, it is impossible to embrace a native view. Not only is an understanding of nativeness impossible, so also is any understanding of "truth" itself. The linear consciousness of Western historical thinking must be abandoned, and an earth centered rhetoric, based in an environment/animal/human, mythical relationship must replace it. This we must do if we are to survive at all. Ironically, he begins his argument in complete agreement with the Biblical precedent that "Words" are the creative substance of all reality. The idea that symbols create reality is basic to both Judeo-Christian and Native American metaphysics. Martin believes that the illusion created in our human consciousness of reality is the product of our word pictures, our language. This of course is nothing new, and a multitude of philosophers, historians, and theologians would agree. The Kiowa novelist N. Scott Momaday wrote, "A word has power in and of itself..." a word "comes from nothing into sound and meaning; it gives origin to all things...And the word is sacred." Martin tentatively agrees. He writes: "Words, says Scott Momaday, are names. Yes, possibly. I like to think of them more as forces that mold the space around me, into which I then pour my sense of reality and my energies," This "idea is aboriginal," Momaday says. But this idea is not only aboriginal, it is also Judeo-Christian. Here is a place where Martin's argument and Judeo-Christianity might find common ground; "In the beginning was the Word," wrote the Apostle John. This idea is also exactly what Kenneth Burke is talking about when he says symbols are "consubstantial" with reality. Symbols are more than the representation of substance. They are "consubstantial" with the substance, or "of the same substance." In other words, Burke asserts that, words, analogies, metaphors, all symbols, are equal to the substance they portray. Momaday, Martin and Burke are all embracing this rhetorical concept. Martin points to the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer as a model for proper thought. Martin believes that hunter-gatherers possess the rhetorical direction humankind must travel, and walking this road will break "history's hammerlock on our imagination.”

The hunter-gatherer societies of the North American continent, which Europeans encountered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to a lesser extent, those that remain in the Arctic regions of Alaska and Canada today, are used as referents by Martin to gain an understanding of the Paleolithic mind set. He asserts that they represent the hunter-gatherer world view of the Paleolithic. In this frame of reference, nature and human are one; they are kin. There is no animosity between the two; nature is willing to care for human. The essence of the Paleolithic mindset is "nature conserves me, not I it--this is the underlying ethic." Humankind's problem began with the rhetorical shift from this ethic. The fear of nature crept into the Paleolithic psyche. As the idea that nature would no longer care for humans grew, they began the process of trying to control nature. This move, from faith in nature to fear of nature, is the aboriginal," Momaday says. But this idea is not only aboriginal, it is also Judeo-Christian. Here is a place where Martin's argument and Judeo-Christianity might find common ground; "In the beginning was the Word," wrote the Apostle John. This idea is also exactly what Kenneth Burke is talking about when he says symbols are "consubstantial" with reality. Symbols are more than the representation of substance. They are "consubstantial" with the substance, or "of the same substance." In other words, Burke asserts that, words, analogies, metaphors, all symbols, are equal to the substance they portray. Momaday, Martin and Burke are all embracing this rhetorical concept. Martin points to the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer as a model for proper thought. Martin believes that hunter-gatherers possess the rhetorical direction humankind must travel, and walking this road will break "history's hammerlock on our imagination."

The hunter-gatherer societies of the North American continent, which Europeans encountered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to a lesser extent, those that remain in the Arctic regions of Alaska and Canada today, are used as referents by Martin to gain an understanding of the Paleolithic mind set. He asserts that they represent the hunter-gatherer world view of the Paleolithic. In this frame of reference, nature and human are one; they are kin. There is no animosity between the two; nature is willing to care for human. The essence of the Paleolithic mindset is "nature conserves me, not I it--this is the underlying ethic." Humankind's problem began with the rhetorical shift from this ethic. The fear of nature crept into the Paleolithic psyche. As the idea that nature would no longer care for humans grew, they began the process of trying to control nature. This move, from faith in nature to fear of nature, is the aboriginal," Momaday says. But this idea is not only aboriginal, it is also Judeo-Christian. Here is a place where Martin's argument and Judeo-Christianity might find common ground; "In the beginning was the Word," wrote the Apostle John. This idea is also exactly what Kenneth Burke is talking about when he says symbols are "consubstantial" with reality. Symbols are more than the representation of substance. They are "consubstantial" with the substance, or "of the same substance." In other words, Burke asserts that, words, analogies, metaphors, all symbols, are equal to the substance they portray. Momaday, Martin and Burke are all embracing this rhetorical concept. Martin points to the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer as a model for proper thought. Martin believes that hunter-gatherers possess the rhetorical direction humankind must travel, and walking this road will break "history's hammerlock on our imagination." The hunter-gatherer societies of the North American continent, which Europeans encountered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to a lesser extent, those that remain in the Arctic regions of Alaska and Canada today, are used as referents by Martin to gain an understanding of the Paleolithic mind set. He asserts that they represent the hunter-gatherer world view of the Paleolithic. In this frame of reference, nature and human are one; they are kin. There is no animosity between the two; nature is willing to care for human. The essence of the Paleolithic mindset is "nature conserves me, not I it--this is the underlying ethic." Humankind's problem began with the rhetorical shift from this ethic. The fear of nature crept into the Paleolithic psyche. As the idea that nature would no longer care for humans grew, they began the process of trying to control nature. This move, from faith in nature to fear of nature, is the conceptual birth of the Neolithic. Modern man is the product of this change of mind, which occurred some 5,000 to 10,000 years ago, a period that covers only about one-tenth of "homo's" existence.

Neolithic human is an agrarian human. Mankind created a god to justify subduing and having dominion over the earth. Farming was at first occasional. The switch from hunter-gatherer to farmer was gradual as the fear of lack grew. Within the span of a few thousand years, across the entire planet, the fear grew and the shift to agrarian, larger populations, division of labor, and urbanization took control. Martin uses the eastern woodland bands of North America just prior to Euro-contact as an e ample of this dynamic which preceded the gathering of food into barns. The inventions of the early Neolithic are: the creation of sky gods as opposed to the human animal relationships of the hunter-gatherer, the invention of linear history rather than cyclical history, and the loss of dialog between humans and animals. This is also, according to Martin, the beginnings of monotheism. He believes that the directive in the book of Genesis, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth," to be the most destructive utterance of the Neolithic mind. The words of Jesus Christ, "I am the way, the truth, and the life,” also displaced truth from nature. It is humankind's self-deception to place truth in the sky with a messiah, awaiting his future return, when truth is here resident in the earth. Beginning with the Neolithic, history has become the story of progress and development whose mission was justified by the gods it invented. Martin writes, "Who, then, is this Jehovah? In my opinion, a frank and virulently potent icon of a newly emergent historical consciousness..."

What Martin is describing here may well be true. But if we look at this transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic, not from the perspective of a Judeo-Christian progress paradigm, but a mythic viewpoint, one finds a different story. If the story (myth?) in the book of Genesis is approached from the mythic perspective, from a symbolic and metaphorical view, we have thus: The Sky-God comes to earth. Together the "elohyim" (a Hebrew word for god, goddess, or angel, but plural--so "gods") make Adam in "their" own image. Genesis 1:27 reads, then, in this manner: "So Elohyim (Gods) created man (Adam) in his (their) own image, in the image of God(s) created he him; male and female created he them (them at this time is Adam; Eve is in him about to be taken out). Adam, the earth-god (having been given the earth by his/her creator the plural Sky-God) walks in harmony and peace (in the cool of the day) with the Sky-God who gave it to him. Adam is also at peace with the animals and can talk with them as he or they please; he searches among them for a help-mate, a friend, one to walk along side him and one is not found (as yet, her; female is still in him/her-Adam).

This is a very different story than the Protestant Sunday school version, but it is what the Hebrew text says. Adam and Eve are gatherers in a garden, mother earth cares for them (from whose bosom they came). Then a separation comes to them through an animal and their disobedience. Ashamed they cover their guilt with flimsy fig leaves. When they are confronted about their fear and nakedness they point to another as the scapegoat. "The woman you gave me. . ." blames Adam. "The serpent. . " Eve says, as she points her finger at the animal. Now they are separated from the Sky-God's peace, they must toil in the earth and become growers, until the Sky-God's promise of redemption comes (in the fullness of time or a progression begins). So, as Adam points his fingers at his wife, and Eve at the animal, and they transfer their blame, the Sky-God kills an animal and covers their nakedness with the animal's skin. Now, it is evident here that a mythic view of this story tells us much the same story Calvin Martin has told in his analysis of the transformation from Paleolithic to Neolithic time. The story changes the view of time, from an eternal (non-linear) perspective in the garden, to a progressive (linear) perspective wrestling with the earth until the fullness of time. Myth gives an interesting, if not enlightening, perspective to this ancient biblical story.

The mythic and symbolic story tells us deep truths about humanness and our relationship to sky and earth that could not be seen if we, as Darrow and Bryan did, argue about the rationality of the story. There is a strong criticism brought against Martin's views of the wrongness of the Neolithic and the rightness of the Paleolithic from Gerard Reed. But Reed did not look at this monumental transition in human history and thought from the mythic perspective as we have just done. Reed asserts that Martin is projecting his bias into the story through reminiscing about his father's attempts to "hack out a kind of heavenly geography" from a portion of woodland along the Ottawa River. The portion of In the Spirit of the Earth where Martin uses his childhood experience as an analogy of this progressive ideal caused Reed to remark, "Martin's spiritual odyssey seems anchored in a deep conflict with his father." On the surface this bias seems abundantly evident throughout the whole discourse. Martin claims his father wanted to "Make the place look Protestant." This, for Martin, is representative of Neolithic man's bent toward progress and his father was also a victim of the western paradigm. Reed sees this as a deep-seated resentment in Martin toward his father. Whether this is true or not, Martin's analogy seems a good one. An anger with Christianity and his father, if it does exist as Reed supposes, does not detract from Martin's argument about the dangers and foolishness of progress as an ideology. This same concept of the foolishness of progress has been dealt with very effectively by Jacques Ellul in The Technological Society and more recently in The Technological Bluff. Yet, Ellul is an eminent Christian theologian and he takes an ecological position very close to Martin's. If Reed's accusation of a bias against Protestant Christianity is accurate about Martin, it is an unnecessary bias, and it does not change his ecological point. Nevertheless, I do not believe that Martin's attack on Protestant Christianity is an attack against religion as much as it is an attack against the pragmatic, and legalistic nature of western European-based Christianity. If it is the tragic nature of a law-based Christianity, which sees progress as redemption that Martin is biased against, then Reed's claim that Martin is just angry with the Christian religion and his father is misdirected.

Reed calls the philosophical underpinning of the "truth" Martin espouses nothing more than "a simplistic, reductionist materialism." It is true that spirit, for Martin, exists in biology. Biological, evolutionary science becomes an ideology for Martin. In the Technological Bluff, Ellul warns against this philosophic deism of science. He writes: "Science, thanks to ideology, has now become divine as never before. This is precisely the greatest danger. Kaplan put it well when he said that the danger is not so much the biologizing of ideology as the ideologizing of biology." Martin may be standing on highly questionable philosophic ground here. There is a difference between attributing spirit to biology and making biology spiritual. Yet, it is possible that he is simply saying that the two, biology and spirit, are not separate from one another. This, I think, a philosopher like Ellul would agree with. Nevertheless, putting Martin's "faith" aside, his criticisms of the western historical perspective are enlightening. The idea that the "creation" (or biology to use Martin's term) has spirit is fundamental to the native world view.

Using Ralph Waldo Emerson's metaphor from his 1841 essay History, Martin calls western history a "shallow village tale." The chronicle which has been told is simply an exercise in "hubris," an establishing of the sacred myth of progress. He charges historians to embrace a deeper view, to expand the narrative in both space and time. Man must view himself as part of nature not as its lord and protector, and historians must e tend the time frame of history beyond what has been traditionally narrated. We must relearn what the Paleolithic hunter-gatherer knew and experienced. As to how this transformation should be accomplished and what tools might be employed to bring it about, Martin is vague. His response to the statement, "But we can't go back," is "But we never left--never left our true, real context." We are still on this planet. We have only "left" in our "fevered imagination." We left through fear. Martin would have us return to faith by the corrective process of the word--the Paleolithic Word that the "hunter-gatherers knew to the core of their being." Apparently it is up to new historians, who are willing to use artists, poets and spirit-beings as sources, to speak into existence a new ancient rhetoric. Martin is right in pointing to rhetoric as the vehicle of change. But as historians, forsaking seven thousand years of tradition completely is a radical call. Is the alternative Calvin Martin has presented history? Possibly; as historians we are always involved in the work of rhetoric, but rhetoric demands examination of the evidence. In the Spirit of the Earth crumbles under its own rhetorical weight in a neo-Aristotelian critique. But, then, this is what Martin is espousing-- a total rejection of such a world view.

Whose perspective of history should be utilized, then, when talking about Black Elk? What is the accepted paradigm to be? When we, as historians, adhere to the myth of scientific objectivity, which is the foundational principle of our discipline as a social science, is it our Achilles heel when approaching Native American study as Martin claims? I believe it is, especially when dealing with religious history. Reinhold Niebuhr, the eminent theologian, has expressed the nature of modern science in this manner:

The modern age is variously described as an age of science
or as an age of reason. Confidence in the power of reason,
and particularly in the inductive and empirical strategy of the
rational faculty, is indeed a characteristic of our age...
Modern culture is distinguished by its confidence, both in
the growing power of reason and in its capacity, when rightly
disciplined, to assure the development of every human power
and virtue.

As Niebuhr so clearly points out, this dominant idea in western culture is more than just a confidence in reason, but it transcends to a faith in history. This is again, the philosophical foundation of the Indian Agent, the priest, and the historians describing them. They all have faith in the redemptive quality of progressive history. Science and reason have become avenues to redemption. The modern age is based on the concept that humankind, through the evolution of history, is progressing toward utopia by the faculty of reason. This also is a foundation stone of the "western paradigm" that Martin is so opposed to. This idea is the product of the underlying myth of western civilization, "progress." And modern “professional” history has been largely the work of the “Progressive” school, which means that it carries a significant load of ideological baggage. Beyond progressivism is the polemic critique of “postmodern relativism” which asks, “Is there any discourse that embraces all other discourses about human identity? Or are all traditions closed to each other simply because there is no common grounding or transcendent reality available for all traditions to point toward in the midst of their collective discourse?” The problem for American Indian history is clear, if there is no common ground Martin is correct; we cannot write a history. As it has by now become self-evident, there is no problem with native history as long as it consists of primitive savagism being replaced by progressive civilization. As long as history is progressing, the scientific, rational perspective justifies itself quite nicely. But if we are going to accept the concept that native culture is not barbaric, primitive, or savage, and place it on an even plane with western "civilization," then the native world view must be equally embraced and observed. The problem, of course, as we have seen, is that the native world view (at least that of central and western North American natives) does not place its faith in the progress of history through reason; it has faith in the power of myth, metaphor, and symbolic ritual.

Howard Harrod's study of Northwestern Plains Indians demonstrates that although there were a number of differing world views among Plains cultures in 1850, they have deep similarities. Native understanding of the world is "shaped by deeply shared symbolic forms sustained by ritual processes" Harrod's method of study was to describe the shared meanings which constituted the Plains Indian's world views. He found that through the process of ritual, "deeply shared symbols gave shape to native experience." He found the Plains Indian world view to be highly metaphorical and symbolic. Symbolic ritual is central to understanding the world, and it is the vehicle by which Natives acquire knowledge. His description of native symbolism delineates the difference between native and western world views.

Symbols breach the everyday world, and they have been
seen to function in both individual experience and in the
collective experience of the group. The cultural flavor of social
worlds has been understood to arise out of the way various
possibilities for experience were ordered. That is, cultures
differ in the value they assign to dreaming, imagining, and
religious experience, as compared with thinking, practical
action, and working.

If this is the criterion by which cultures differ, Indian and western European cultures are at opposite poles just as Martin insists. How then can a cohesive paradigm for the study of the history of these polemic cultures be found? Ethnohistory has been unable to agree on one. I insist that bringing Kenneth Burke's symbolic interaction paradigms into the discussion is a logical step toward an answer.

In order to help transcend the incommensurability of traditions and attempt to reach beyond the either/or propositions of "metaphysical biology" and "postmodern relativism," I propose to use Kenneth Burke's "dramaturgical perspective" of rhetorical critique as a frame of reference to view the discourse between Nicholas Black Elk and John Neihardt. Burke asserts that a definition of man as a rational animal is inadequate. For Burke, the "common ground" of humanness does not rest in the individual but in the human's ability to use symbols. Therefore, traditional critiques of human discourse, which focus on the speaker/rhetor, limit understanding. On the other hand, the relativist's experiential focus examines the effects of the discourse on the critic/receiver. It asks the question: What is a discourse/tradition doing to the one involved in it? Rather than focusing on the individual speaker or the experience of the receiver, Kenneth Burke proposes that the locus should be on their interaction, their "symbolic interaction." Like MacIntyre, Burke asserts that it is the narrative that defines what it means to be human. If we are to critique the narrative, to judge between traditions and the differing discourses of traditions, a rhetorical critique that explores the discourse itself must be employed.

Burke proposes the "dramaturgical perspective," which simply assumes that "all the world is a stage." Dramatism could be said to be an attempt bridge the gap between science and the humanities. The human animal is more than the sum of his/her parts. Oedipus and Ahab tell us as much as the laboratory about what humanness is. How the so-called "social sciences" fit in the gap between science and the humanities is the subject of endless debate. Dramatism is offered as a paradigm that bridges the gap. Theater becomes the root metaphor for a "contemporary image of man." One description of this perspective says, "Dramaturgical thinking is not a linear sequential explanation of human behavior based on mechanistic assumptions as most positivistic social science is. Its point of departure is Kenneth Burke's profound assertion that the difference between a thing and a person is that one merely moves whereas the other acts, and therefore the language of mechanism is inapplicable to the study of human selves" The human being is an actor on the stage of history.

Behavior then, is expressed in "dramatistic terms." Man is an actor, and his conduct is the action he performs in the drama of living, in order to achieve what he deems the "good life." The most straightforward definition of dramaturgy is that it is the study of how human beings accomplish meaning in their lives through this process of symbol sharing. What makes man different from other creatures is that he engages in symbol using, "symbolic interaction." Therefore, Burke's definition of man is revealed in this poem:

Man is
the symbol-using (symbol-making, symbol-misusing) animal
inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative)
separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making
goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by a sense of order)
and rotten with perfection.

As a symbol user and misuser, identification takes place in the interaction. The identification with symbols transfers the substance of the symbols. Burke calls this the "consubstantiality" of substance. Symbols are more than the representation of substance. They are "consubstantial" with the substance, or "of the same substance." Burke describes this process of symbolic identification in this manner: A is not identical to B, but A can be identified with B. "Here are ambiguities of substance. In being identified with B, A is 'substantially one' with a person other than himself. Yet at the same time he remains unique . . . Rhetoric deals with the ways people are at odds with one another; identification implies division. . Rhetoric is concerned with the state of Babel after the Fall."

Beyond the uniqueness of symbol using and misusing, Burke asserts that within the use of symbols man has invented the negative and has then been moralized by it. Unlike other symbols that have some kind of substantial referent, the negative only exists symbolically. "It is not" has no specific referent. The negative is a specifically linguistic invention. Additionally, man is moralized by this symbol; "it is not" is translated into "thou shalt not." This implies the ideas of "obedience" or "disobedience" and translates into "order"/law which implies "disorder"/lawless. Between the slopes of order and disorder exists the "ACT of will," where "will is viewed as derivable from the idea of an act." From the ideas of will follow the ideas of sacrifice and grace, "the mortification of some desires." Sacrifice is intrinsic to order, and substitution is intrinsic to the symbol user. Hence, vicarious sacrifice as the way to the ultimate reward, "the Good Life." This vicarious sacrifice is what is known as scapegoating. The symbol using/misusing human transfers guilt symbolically to the scapegoat. The symbol carries the substance, or to use Burke's terminology, the symbol is consubstantial with the substance. The scapegoat, then, is not a survival from earlier eras, but a device natural to, and inherent to language. Burke writes: "Dramatism, as so conceived, asks not how the sacrificial motives revealed in the institutions of magic and religion might be eliminated in a scientific culture, but what new forms they take" The dramaturgical perspective then, has humankind playing symbolic roles on the stage of history with their script being the symbolic interaction of language (verbal and nonverbal), and the play is basically a tragedy, a story with a scapegoat which supplies a catharsis.

This theory of being is also addressed in Erving Goffman's conception of "Impression Management." Being is constructed by doing; for without a presentation of self, a self is not possible. Therefore, individuality is basically a social rather than a psychological phenomenon. Goffman used the word "face" to describe the socially approved identity that an actor presents. This "face" defines the actor by transferring the substance of the symbols into his or her being. Each of us becomes a kind of playwright, writing the role we play, as well as an actor in the play. Or in other words, "theater occurs when one or more human beings, isolated in time and/or space, present themselves to another or others . . .Theater is a glutton. It will swallow any kind of material and experience that can be turned into performance." Burke's claim is that this play that we are all acting in defines us while we write and act out our scripts. And the script that we are acting out, at least in the western tradition, is a tragedy. This need of a scapegoat (vicarious victimage) is a form of "antithesis." Combined with substitution, it provides identification in terms of an enemy shared in common. He describes this tragic world view, this historical play, in the following poem:

"Here are the steps
In the Iron Law of History
That welds Order and Sacrifice
Order leads to Guilt (for who can keep commandments!)

Guilt needs Redemption (for who would not be cleaned!)
Redemption needs Redeemer
(which is to say a victim!)
Order
Through Guilt
To Victimize
(hence: Cult of Kill)."

The tragic frame of reference, then, is the foundation of being in western society, and Burke believes this to be the central temptation that must be somehow corrected. He writes: "A dramatistic view of human motives thus culminates in the ironic admonition that perversions of the sacrificial principle (purgation by scapegoat, congregation by segregation) are the constant temptation of human societies, whose orders are built by a kind of animal exceptionally adept in the ways of symbolic action." Burke's answer to this ironic dilemma is to change the play of history from a tragedy to a comedy. Since humans are the writers of the script, as well as the actors, we can begin to change the script; we can begin to improvise, begin to play a comedy. Burke asserts that viewing life as a comedy rather than a tragedy should enable people "to be observers of themselves, while acting. Its ultimate would not be passiveness, but maximum consciousness. One would "transcend" himself by noting his own foibles. He would provide a rationale for locating the irrational and the non-rational"

This of course is no small request. Nevertheless, a "comic corrective" to a tragic theme is an intriguing idea. Carol Burnette once said, "Comedy is only tragedy plus time." This statement has a western linear picture of history inherent in it. Yet, if one were to subject this idea to a cyclical view of history, the result would be the antithesis. If comedy corrects tragedy, would not an overly comic theme need a tragic corrective? It is this paradoxical relationship between the comic and tragic discourse of traditions that we wish to employ as we explore the question of whether, and to what extent, it is possible for those who live within one tradition to actually be able to "hear" what another tradition has to say.

Humanness has two faces. There would appear to be a perspective here that could supply common ground to absolutists and relativists. If the essence of humanness is carried in the discourse, in the symbolic interaction, then the statement: "In the beginning was the word," has a clear appeal to rationality. Not only so, but the idea that we play a role in directing the script of the narrative is also evident, even if the absolutists insists that the director not tamper with the “words.” Burke's methods of rhetorical criticism provide a foundation by which we might examine the symbolic interaction of two very different traditions.

Where does all this musing bring us with Nicholas Black Elk then? Can Black Elk be viewed as some sort of bridge between a hunter-gather, earth-centered, mythic reality and a sower, sky-centered, progress to harvest time reality? Possibly. I propose that the historical figure of Nicholas Black Elk presents to us an e ample of the ability to straddle traditions; that he was authentically conversant with two traditions that would be identified by those invested in this contemporary philosophical issue as incommensurate.

In order to set the proper stage for this historic play, I propose that we attempt to view the whole of western history from a mythic point of view beginning from the event that Martin claims is the beginning of an incorrect way of thinking, the Neolithic revolution. This should prove to be most revealing: to look at this most ancient struggle from a mythic rather than a progressive view, to examine symbolically and metaphorically what the progressive mind would call the struggle of the savage climbing up to the state of civilization. To use Emerson's language, let us tell this "shallow village tale" from a mythic sensibility. The one thing it will do is describe the roots of the world view that I think John Neihardt brought to the meeting with Nicholas Black Elk. Neihardt had a mythic-epic-romantic view of history, which must be explored before going on to any analysis of what went on in the production of the book, Black Elk Speaks. In order, then, to find some kind of philosophical common ground, I propose that a kind of symbolic/metaphorical view of the progress of the myth of "noble savage" be explored. This underlying myth of the American frontier is central to the thought of John G. Neihardt, the Romantic-epic poet.