And so [trickster] became and remained everything to every
man -- god, animal, human being, hero, buffoon, he who was before good and evil,
denier, affirmer, destroyer and creator. If we laugh at him, he grins at us. What happens to him happens to us. Paul Radin, The Trickster
Of all the characters in myths and legends told around the
world through the centuries -- courageous heroes, scary monsters, rapturous
virgins -- it’s the Trickster who provides the real spark in the action
-- always hungry for another meal swiped from someone else's kitchen, always
ready to lure someone else's wife into bed, always trying to get something for
nothing, shifting shapes (and even sex), getting caught in the act, ever scheming,
never remorseful.
Richard Erdoes, American Indian Trickster Tales
His presence demands, cries out for, compassion and generosity
toward existence itself. Trickster is a celebrator of life, a celebration of
life, because by rallying against him a community discovers its own resilience
and protective skills.
Howard Norman, quoted in American Indian Trickster Tales.
I would like simply to point out that trickster is only one
figure in Native cosmogony and that he is balanced out by many others. Trickster is not the cultural norm, which
is the reason many people laugh at him. He is goofy, sometimes even dangerous; at other times, his
jokes work toward cultural transformation, and often he is a little of all these
things.
Craig Womack, Red on Red
Trickster
figures are as old as human story telling and can be found among the tales and
in the literature of indigenous peoples around the world: in China--Monkey;
in France--Reynard the Fox; in Norway--Loki; and in Turkey--Nasr-eddin, the
clown priest, to name just a few. But
in no part of the world are trickster figures more abundant or more important
than in Native America: animal
figures, sometimes human-like, sometimes god-like:
Raven, Jay, Rabbit, Spider, and above all Old Man Coyote. The adventures of Coyote, told across
the continent in many tribes, make us laugh at ourselves but above all give
us insight into human strength and frailty, human courage and cowardice, joy
and misery, love and hate, good and evil.
Understanding
the Trickster figure is an essential entré to Native American art and
literature and even spirituality. The
myths in which the tricksters appear may have many meanings, but above all they
are spiritual accounts of creation, beauty, trial and tribulation, life and
death. Tricksters may also take the form of the sacred clowns which play a role
in the religious observances of many tribes. The Koshare of Pueblo tradition, for instance,
are central players in many sacred and semi-sacred ceremonies. They speak funny, they dance badly (or
well), they tease, they mimic tourists, they act out the weather, they sing,
they make people laugh, but above all their presence is considered to have spiritual
significance.
Figure 16
J.D. Roybal (San Ildefonso Pueblo), Koshare
Museum of the Institute of American Indian Arts
The clown's purpose is not merely
to provide comic relief, as is often assumed by Western observers, but also
to break down conventional barriers and to open people up for essentially sacred
ends. As Black Elk said of the
heyoka's (sacred clown's) function
among the Sioux: "It is planned that people shall be made to feel happy
and jolly at first so that it may be easier for the power to come to them."
Trickster stories, with their outlandish and obsessive preoccupation with scatology
and sex, serve a similar opening-up function, as Carl Jung suggested.
Rothenberg is the first anthologist to include translations of a broad
range of poems that are blunt and often extreme in their bodily and sexual references,
as suggested by titles like "Coyote borrows Farting Boy's asshole, tosses
up his eyes, rapes old women, and tricks a young girl seeking power." Many reflect an explicitly comic yet spiritual
attitude.
Michael Castro (1983), pp. 120-1
Figure 17
Fred Kabotie (Hopi), ca. 1940
Tonaynili with Tsutskut (Tonaynili with Clowns)
Casein on Bristol Board, 13 x 10 1/4
Heard Museum, Denman Collection
Many
complex issues arise in relation to the full understanding of the great body
of 'mythic' stories in which Trickster lives and has his being. Often, these stories are published in
collections taken from many tribes, a process which de-contextualizes and de-politicizes
their interpretation. Even when presented in correct tribal context, the stories
are often seen as having exclusively religious significance or perhaps of interest
mainly for children's bedtime reading. Thus, Howard Adams argues that having
indigenous people study their own "legends and myths" is a "false
form of nationalism [which] the state uses to direct Natives' attention away
from revolutionary nationalism."
Craig
Womack (Creek/Cherokee), on the other hand, suggests that, seen in their proper
context, the narratives may be deeply political, "a body of symbols that
deal with Indian pride, Indian activism, Indian resistance. .
. . I am concerned about what happens
to the political intent of the stories when they are separated from their tribal
contexts. . .
. For example, in the case
of Creek stories, a pan-tribal context -- simply throwing a story about Rabbit
into a chapter on tricksters -- might obscure knowledge of what it means to
be from a clan, a town, a nation where these narratives
are contextualized with other stories, songs, and ceremonies from within the
Creek Nation." He further believes that placed in local
context, this "literature is moved closer to activism and politics rather
than farther away." In other
words, trickster is not just a clown, but may be a revolutionary.
Fig.
18
Further Reading:
See
Reference
Finder. Keyword=humor-bib5. This keyword will produce a bibliography
for Tricksters, Myths, Stories and Sacred Clowns.