Bearheart by Gerald R. Vizenor

First published:Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart, 1978; 2d edition titled Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles, 1990

Type of plot: Apocalyptic satire

Time of work: The end of the world

Locale: The central United States

Principal Characters:

• Proude Cedarfair, the last leader of the cedar nation, he is forced into exile with his wife, Rosina
• Bigfoot, also known as
• Benoit Saint Plumero, and also known as
• Double Saint, a trickster with great sexual appetites
• Belladonna, a mixed-blood obsessed with her Indianness
• Bishop Omax Parasimo, a cleric who has been providing shelter for tribal mixed-bloods
• Sir Cecil Staples, (the Evil Gambler), the “monarch of unleaded gasoline”

The Novel

Bearheart: The Heirship Chronicles is an unorthodox narrative. A work of mixed genres, the book incorporates materials from the indigenous and mainstream literary traditions. The novel follows the traditional framework of the emergence myth, which involves the cyclical destruction and creation of the world; an integral part of the myth is the survival and renewal of the tribe through migration. Because of its experimental techniques and language, however, Bearheart has also been associated with postmodernism.

The novel opens with a preface, entitled “Letter to the Reader,” by Saint Louis Bearheart, a bear-spirit who hovers above the cabinets of files of tribal histories in a government building. Invaded by a sense of darkness (hence the title of the first edition), he turns into the fictional author of “The Heirship Chronicles: Proude Cedarfair and the Cultural Word Wars,” a futuristic narrative about the flight of Proude and his wife from the cedar nation, his adventures with a group of followers, and the achievement of his vision quest. The “pilgrimage” represents a migration from “the third world” to the fourth, and hence alludes to American Indian myths of emergence and the end of the world. The narrative is replete with hyperbolic and incredible events and details (including cannibalism and graphic acts of sex and violence) that are simultaneously shocking and amusing.

“The Heirship Chronicles” begins with the encroachment of whites upon the “cedar circus” around Migis Sandridge, a sacred site. Proude Cedarfair, the last in a line of tribal leaders, resists white exploitation of the remaining trees during an energy crisis. His cabin is burned down; he and his wife Rosina, together with seven clown crows, go into exile.

At the Scapehouse on Callus Road, they visit a commune of thirteen women poets. Bigfoot (Benoit Saint Plumero), a trickster who resides there, is the object of these women’s desire. With Bigfoot, Proude and Rosina continue with their journey in a rare silver cabriolet that the women have given them. Along the way, they pick up Belladonna, but soon their car is ripped apart by racist killers of drunk Indians. Walking along the abandoned interstate, the pilgrims chance upon various characters who join them or harass them. Among the new recruits are Bishop Omax Parasimo and the people he has been sheltering; these include Inawa Biwide, an orphan, and Lilith Mae Farrier, a former teacher who is in love with two boxers.

A major challege confronts the pilgrims at What Cheer in the middle of Iowa, where Sir Cecil Staples, the “monarch of unleaded gasoline,” reigns. Victimized as an abducted child before becoming the Evil Gambler, he relishes killing his adversaries. He challenges the circus pilgrims to play word games; he defeats Lilith Mae, but he loses to Proude and is tortured to death.

The pilgrims come to Dumfries, which is populated by disfigured victims who are crippled or suffering from skin cancer. Out of goodwill, one pilgrim does a striptease for them. They masturbate as they watch and, lusting after her body, eventually dismember her. In another episode, at the Witch Hunt Restaurant, where meals made from body parts of ordinary humans and “witches” are served, one pilgrim attempts to rescue a woman who is a victim of the witch hunt. While the pilgrim (dressed as a woman) starts copulating with her, he is killed by the “food fascist.” His head is chopped off and propped up on a stick, which the pilgrims retrieve and bury.

Belladonna also runs into trouble. As a mixed-blood conceived during the standoff at Wounded Knee, she takes pride in being a Native American. Yet she is also undone by her narcissism when she gives a clichéd speech at a community the residents of which are opposed to fixed ideas. After she has rejected their challenges of her Native American identity, they stop asking questions, applaud her speech, and reward her with a poisoned cookie for her “terminal creed.” As she dies, Proude cuts open her womb (her pregnancy is a result of her rape by whites), takes out the fetuses of twins, and buries the three ceremonially.

As the pilgrims enter Oklahoma, they obtain the help of the Luminous Augur to cross the Canadian River. To climb over the hills without being hit by thunder, they also seek the help of the Master Stranger, who charges food for his service. Bishop Parasimo, who has replaced the tribute of food with bark, is struck dead by lightning. The other pilgrims then arrive at New Liberty, where they catch a freedom train headed for Santa Fe. The train, operated by a regime of five veterans known as the “pentarchical pensioners,” turns out to be a prison. The pilgrims are branded and given an inquisition; during the ordeal, the pensioners put out Inawa Biwide’s eyes.

It is not clear whether what happens next is a vision or a continuation of the journey, but the pilgrims reach a pueblo near the Jemez River, where they meet two sacred clowns waving wooden penises. Aroused by their ritual, Bigfoot grabs Rosina and makes her perform oral sex on him. Out of nowhere, one of the women poets appears and strangles him. Leaving Rosina behind, Proude and Inawa Biwide move on into the barren mountains toward Wanaki Pueblo Bonito, the ancient place of vision bears. Around the time of the winter solstice, the two have a vision of a giant bear, which tells them to enter the fourth world as bears.

The Characters

As a mixed-genre narrative, Bearheart contains an assortment of characters who are given different levels of aesthetic treatment. While some characters are portrayed more elaborately than others, none is truly rounded in the realistic sense. Many embody certain traits exemplifying ideas with mythical, allegorical, allusive, or satirical significance.

The most prominent character, Proude Cedarfair, is portrayed not only as a medicine man and a shaman, but also as a repository and transmitter of tribal wisdom and values. Ultimately, he attains the stature of a culture hero in his quest to become a bear, a motif common in Native American mythology and literature. His gamble with Sir Cecil Staples is reminiscent of cosmic struggles in Anishinabe myths. Apart from cultural and mythical heroism, Proude is also endowed with a strong sense of humanism—which can be seen, for example, when he tries to save Lilith Mae, or when he cuts open Belladonna’s womb in order to give her and her twins a proper burial.

At the other end of the spectrum, Sir Cecil Staples stands out as an archetype of evil. Even so, such a character exhibits certain complexities. For all of his Satanism, he also serves as an agent of social satire; his tremendous power to annihilate is derived from his ability to hoard unleaded gasoline, which he then uses as a lure to his victims, who in fact gamble with him with the full knowledge of the consequences. Furthermore, a psychological basis for his deeds is also provided in the novel. As one of thirteen abducted children raised in a big-rig trailer constantly on the road, and having developed deformities after being subjected to repeated dousings of pesticides, he is a victim turned victimizer, a person poisoned by a pathological and dysfunctional society.

Artistically and thematically, Bigfoot is the most interesting character. An embodiment of the sacred and the profane, he is both a buffoon and a hero whose carnivalistic and disruptive playfulness nevertheless contributes to the general cause of his band. Amusing and scandalous, he is particularly significant as a character because of the comic vision he brings to bear on the pilgrims’ quest for tribal survival and renewal. His sexual dalliance (or assault, depending on the perspective) with Cedarfair’s wife, though perplexing, suggests that one of his major functions is to interact with the reader—as, for example, by challenging any sense of complacency that might have developed in the reading process.

A mixture of the tribal hero, the antisocial, and the trickster is manifest in many of the other characters or character groups; such a mixture often turns out to be a formula for a certain kind of wisdom essential to the survival and renewal of the pilgrims. Belladonna, who takes tremendous pride in her Indian heritage because she is the offspring of a militant Indian and a sympathetic white woman, serves as an illustration of Vizenor’s argument against the invention of the “Indian.” Hence, according to the overall schema of the quest, the Breeders and Hunters at the Great Wall of Orion, who applaud Belladonna’s hackneyed speech but poison her for her “terminal creed,” are also purveyors of truths rather than merely the adversaries of the pilgrims. In fact, the rivalry between the pilgrims and their persecutors can be seen in terms of such a play, or dialogue, involving a spectrum of characters and character traits.

Critical Context

As a mixed-blood Anishinabe who grew up in Minnesota off the reservation, Vizenor had a traumatic childhood (the murder of his father is unsolved) and acquired a varied education before beginning his writing career. Biographical information about the author shows that Bearheart is more than a fantasy; rather, it is a piece of fiction that reverberates with the totality of the author’s personal, professional, academic, tribal, and American experiences. Vizenor’s use of the trickster as a privileged figure within a narrative text employing techniques and devices suggestive of “trickstery” is closely tied to beliefs derived from those experiences.

Bearheart, like many of Vizenor’s other works, challenges assumptions about Native Americans and their literature. At the most radical level, it refutes the notion of “Indians” and seeks to undermine the structure of thinking that sets up the “Indianness” of tribal people as the containable Other of Western civilization. Because such a challenge also applies to Indians who pride themselves on their Indianness, the book stands out as an unorthodox text with a special message for Native American readers and authors. Nevertheless, Bearheart is paradigmatically Native American in its efforts to confront the internal colonialism of America and to affirm the vital spirit of tribal traditions at a higher level of consciousness. On this higher level, the Indian ends where the tribal mixed-blood begins.

Because Bearheart draws its inspiration from tribal myths, it can be associated with the body of work created by authors such as James Welch, N. Scott Momaday, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Louise Erdrich. In addition, however, the novel is also full of allusions to such canonical works of the Western tradition as the poems of Geoffrey Chaucer. Furthermore, Vizenor’s academic and scholarly expertise has contributed to the book’s distinctly philosophical, postmodern, and poststructuralist outlook. Thanks to his balancing—though not necessarily reconciling—of insights from Native American, European, and possibly Asian sources, Vizenor has created a fluid text with abundant possibilities for interpretation.

Bibliography

Armstrong, Meg. “ Buried in Fine White Ash’: Violence and the Reimagination of Ceremonial Bodies in Winter in the Blood and Bearheart.” The American Indian Quarterly 21 (Spring, 1997): 265-298. Armstrong explores the themes of power, transformation, and identity. She argues that the texts must be read with the understanding of ceremony and the body.

Blair, Elizabeth. “Text as Trickster: Postmodern Language Games in Gerald Vizenor’s Bearheart.” MELUS 20 (Winter, 1995): 75-90. Blair focuses on Vizenor’s use of the trickster text in Bearheart to link the written word with the mythic aspects of the story. She demonstrates that the trickster is part of the satirical language in storytelling that tribal people use to understand themselves, as well as the truth.

Bruchac, Joseph. Survival This Way: Interviews with American Indian Poets. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987. Contains “Follow the Trickroutes: An Interview with Gerald Vizenor,” in which the author discusses his career and his use of history in his writing.

Hochbruck, Wolfgang. “Breaking Away: The Novels of Gerald Vizenor.” World Literature Today 66, no. 2 (Spring, 1992): 274-278. An overview of Vizenor’s fiction, focusing on its unorthodox and disruptive elements.

Martin, Calvin, ed. The American Indian and the Problem of History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Discusses historical revisionism and its central place in Native American literature. Views Vizenor as a skilled practitioner of revisionism.

Pasquaretta, Paul. “Sacred Chance: Gambling and the Contemporary Native American Indian Novel.” MELUS 21 (Summer, 1996): 21-33. Pasquaretta discusses the gambling motif in works by Louise Erdrich, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Vizenor. He views the scenario of good gamblers pitted against evil ones as a metaphor representing the relationship between European Americans and Native Americans.

Ruoff, A. LaVonne Brown. “Woodland Word Warrior: An Introduction to the Works of Gerald Vizenor.” MELUS 13, no. 1-2 (Spring/Summer, 1986): 13-43. Comprehensive review of major works by Vizenor, with a useful bibliography.

Velie, Alan R. “Gerald Vizenor’s Indian Gothic.” MELUS 17 (Spring, 1991): 75-85. Explores Vizenor’s futuristic novel Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart as a tale that reverses the traditional Western genre format, showing Indians terrorized as they venture into the savage wilderness of white civilization in decline. Discusses the mythic roles of Proude in the role of Trickster and Sir Cecil Staples as the Evil Gambler.

Vizenor, Gerald, ed. Narrative Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literature. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. Contains several relevant essays, including “ Ecstatic Strategies’: Gerald Vizenor’s Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart,” by Louis Owen, “The Trickster Novel,” by Alan Velie, and “Trickster Discourse: Comic Holotropes and Language Games,” by Vizenor.