The Bloody KnifeEssay Preview: The Bloody KnifeReport this essayThe Indian (Micmac) myth of The Bloody Knife retells of a brutal battle between two Micmac warriors from rival villages. A terrible argument escalates quickly into a knife fight on the banks of a small creek. Fighting with the ferocity of grizzlies, the warriors quarrel ensues. Unexpectedly, one of the warriors slips on the muddy bank only to receive a watery fate. His knife is dropped into the creek and he unrelentingly struggles to take grasp of the weapon. Further and further with every stretch of his fingers the knife descends deeper and deeper. It is impossible for the warrior to reach it; the knifes descent is persistent even as the creek itself is shallow. The creek swallows the mans life force and his body soundly travels to the bank of his village. The knife lay at the bottom of the blood ravished creek still falling deeper into the abyss no matter how hard anyone tries to take hold of it. Even the rushing waters of spring leave the blade unmoved and untainted, still bloodstained.
The Micmac myth of the dueling warriors of rival villages portrays the generalizations of Native American oral traditions. Four generalizations could be made when analyzing oral traditions of Indians, including practical information and morality, the idea of mans equality or sometimes inferiority to nature, the use of metaphor, and preserving historical continuity. Throughout The Bloody Knife, a profound sense of evil and the link between immorality and death are persistent. With action comes consequence and wrongful action leads to cutting consequence. The warriors resort to violence rather than reason leaving raison dĂÂștre at the bankside with the only success being bloodshed. Nothing was gained by the dead or wounded, teaching the idea of solving quarrels with words rather than brutality. This decisive act of animal instinct narrows the spread between man and nature. It shows mans raw being as nothing more than a vicious beast with
Lorenzo Bachelet’s The Bloody Knife, p. 19. (A:2) This is an interesting study concerning the history of violence in Native American poetry, a field that has been plagued by the influence of the Western Civilization. In The Bloody Knife, a deeply personal study of the Indian warrior, one must recall that the traditional text and practice of Indian warfare has often been misunderstood. There remains a lingering resentment of the Old West as it is seen as an over-emphasized mode of expression, and even though the Indians of America’s Great Plains country had built new traditions, and many indigenous peoples of the nation, were never told about the use of their art as a means of fighting, this lack of a cultural understanding of these ancient societies may have been partly due to the fact that it is difficult to know when or how to express war, if not how to fight. There is a strong emphasis on war in Native American poetry, and a high level of violence is shown, with violent scenes and actions, during the battle of the river Bighorn, but there is nothing romantic, sexual, religious or legal about war in Native American warfare, not even the occasional death in military service, and no great ceremony being performed, just the killing of captives, the use of bows or spears, and often an actual physical injury to the horse. What is remarkable is the absence of ceremony. Only a few Native Americans, who came before the modern civilization of Western civilization, took part in ceremonies. This silence, this isolation, this rejection â or lack of participation â at least helped create an uneasy historical relationship between tribal members and the people who lived in those tribes. The idea of “slavery” is not an accident. But by placing it by an anthropological lens, we are able to give the indigenous people an idea of what may have been in the past and of what might have actually been.
Joseph Leland, The Battle of the Bighorn, p. 3. (A:3) One is only free to pursue a narrow narrative of the Indian battle â the battle at Bighorn, or “the last battle of the Bighorn River” â by exploring and following the life of a female explorer in the area during the first and second world wars. She would appear during the fight to attack Native Americans with the aid of the British. Instead of the men’s side being portrayed as fighting for freedom with one’s hands raised in the air, some young Native women would march through the forest and use bows drawn by women of different races â including the Lakota, the First Nations, the New World and the Iroquois. The war at Bighorn made a powerful point; both the Indian men, the white men and the Native Americans were warriors who were using their strength to carry out the Indians’ will for revenge. The women would then be assigned the task of defending the villages and their homes against the Indian men’s threats. The American Indians, like all great peoples of the world from ancient times, fought for the greater good when the land was cleared out of the hands of the Indian in response to their demands, and the Indians became a fierce and ruthless force in war over land and resources, for their better world peace. The Indians were extremely strong warrior women, and very good at war. There is no sense in killing or injuring the women. In actuality war in this area was never done; and the only one of the Indians in the field who killed or injured their wives or children is a young adult named John. The battle at Bighorn was also the end of the war, of the destruction of the tribal society by the British, and of the Native American resistance to that end. An Indian warrior that can defeat a British warrior on foot is not likely to