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The Orenda Q3: The Mystical Indian
The Mystical Indian is a trope wherein the 'native' character is depicted as somehow being mystical or magical in their character. This is rather like the 'mystical easterner' that is wrapped up in accusations of 'orientalism'. Do you think the trope applies to this novel?
Comments
Certainly to Gosling (but that was what made her a more interesting character to me
). Not sure about the others - I think the point often was to make the spirituality of Christophe vs the Indian tribes largely incomprehensible to each other. For the most part that of the Indians is treated more sympathetically than that of the Jesuits, who often come over to me as rather stereotyped. I am particularly contrasting the Jesuit actions in The Mission, where they identify strongly (too much, according to their superiors) with the indigenous groups in that area and basically take a stand with them contra the European powers. Here, that never really seemed likely - Christophe does learn to like and admire the Indian groups, and learns easily enough of their culture to communicate better, but he remains (so far as I can see) firmly in the position of wanting to bring the Indian groups into European ways of thought and practice.
Back with the mystical trope, I don't see that as applying very much to most of the characters.
Not sure why you put native in quotes - are you talking about a person, or a group?
I'm talking about a hypothetical person, and since I was comparing it to 'easterners' and 'orientals' (which are only eastern or oriental from a 'western' perspective) I put it in quotes. The term 'native' lumps a whole lot of different people together, so it's not very nuanced - another reason for quotes.
@Apocryphal got it. In that case, yes I think the trope is in play. I would have liked e.g. Gosling to be a more nuanced character.
It's difficult to judge. On the one hand, there was plenty of "magic" in the Wendat chapters. Gosling was the most prominent example of that, but there were various other prophecies and visions that had a great effect on characters. That counts as the "mystic native" trope. On the other hand, I could well believe that was how those characters would have understood and thought about the world. In that case, we're back to westerners projecting their prejudices onto other cultures.
In summary, I don't know. And I don't know enough about the actual cultures to judge.
Although there's a fair amount of mysticism in the Wendat camp - Gosling, for sure, as a sort of medicine woman, but Snow Falls is also prone to some bouts of mysticism. But Christophe is, too, in his own way. He accurately predicts when the rain will fall, for example. And he and the other priests play up the mystery of the clock. As readers, we don't buy it, of course. And I assume that we all thought the rain prediction was either 'just luck' or 'just writer fiat' and not all that mystical. In which case I wonder - do we only see the mystical in the natives because that's what we want to see?
Yes, totally agree. You could interpret the rain thing as showing that Christophe is in fact (despite his best intentions) taking on something of the Indian tribes' closeness to nature. Bird (and, if I remember correctly, others) see him as a person of power once they got past the superficial differences like clothes and sickly appearance. I think it's all too easy to play events through a scientific-rationalist world view and write off things as coincidence or good fortune rather than appeal to things like collective unconscious or intuition.
PS I meant to add that another good example is the occurrence of severe illness mong the Indian tribes. From our modern medical perspective we readily accept explanations like "the north American tribes had no resistance to European diseases", Christophe, on the other hand, saw parallels in the biblical world in which he was steeped including the punishment of the Egyptians and the revenge on the Assyrians. We look at him and call that superstition, but if Bird had said that we would probably call it mysticism. Either way, both cultures are looking for non-material explanations for a set of facts they are experiencing, and find ones which suit their own world-view. As, no doubt, we all do.
There's also the "astrology explanation" in that the prophecies are vague enough to apply to many situations, and only the successful ones are remembered.