Nez Perce's Red Willow Themes

Oral tradition in Native American culture illustrates the physical history of each tribe, creates origin stories, and reinforces generations of societal values. In particular, the Nez Perce tale, “Red Willow,” encapsulates and preserves many elements of tradition within its narrative as the story is passed down over centuries. Spirituality, death rituals, gender roles, and analysis of their people’s surrounding environment are all essential themes compacted into the brief narrative. The story’s pacing is rapid and simple in order to capture and entrance and educate a young audience while reinforcing the tribe’s traditions and introducing creation tales. Origin stories structured like “Red Willow” have been used throughout Native American cultures

regardless of tribe in order to bring a level of understanding to the surrounding world and connect their history to the earth’s beginnings.

Through condensing both themes of cultural significance and the origin of the red willow’s color, “Red Willow” remains a successful creation tale after centuries of reiteration.
Nez Perce spiritual beliefs are centered around the idea that each living creature possesses a soul. This belief connects their people deeply to the earth in every aspect of their lives and is evident in the coming-of-age tradition of completing a vision quest. Before she is slain by her fiancé, the young woman in “Red Willow” tells her betrothed she is going in “quest of vision” and if she does not return in ten days, he will know that “something has killed [her]” (Nez Perce, 2). Once a young man or woman in the community reached adolescence, they would embark on a vision quest for

around a week’s period in order to discover their weyekin. A weyekin is a spiritual guide in Nez Perce culture; one that grants abilities to an individual and takes the form of either a bird or a mammal. On their journey, the adolescent would remain in complete solitude and wait until their guide revealed itself to them in either a physical form, a dream, or a hallucination. The guide is believed to protect its owner in times of danger and its owner would oftentimes wear a pouch containing items related to their weyekin in order to strengthen their bond. Moreover, Nez Perce women would enter arranged engagements during their adolescence, the same years when all members of the community would make their vision quest. Taking this into consideration, is almost certain that the fiancée in “Red Willow” was leaving on a quest for her weyekin. Although this is not explicitly stated, the ritual is such an integral part of Nez Perce culture that the audience for the story’s performance, even very young listeners, would understand the implications of a week’s solitary voyage.
In addition to Nez Perce spiritual traditions, death rituals command a large portion of the tale’s thematic elements. Many aspects of these rituals are performed by both the young woman’s fiancé after he has killed her and the village community once they have become aware of her death. The fiancé makes the young woman’s murder known to her mother through possession of locks of her hair “the hair he clutched as he sang, deeply grieving and longing” (2). Following the death of a member of the community, the spouse of the deceased would traditionally cut their hair short and keep it at that length for the following year in order to indicate their mourning. The inversion of this tradition, that the young man has cut his fiancée’s hair rather than his own, implies his guilt in both the betrayal of a sacred tradition and in his desire for a reminder of his murdered betrothed. When the young man returns home, he begins to weep loudly. Wailing and weeping are customary practices of Nez Perce women following a death in the community, and the young woman’s mother immediately follows suit in participating in this tradition.
The maiden’s mother’s role in the Nez Perce community detailed in “Red Willow” is implied to be that of a shaman.

In Nez Perce society, both older men and women are allowed to become shamans, a gender equality not existing in many other Native American cultures. Shamans are in most cases older members of the community who have been granted healing powers, strong abilities concerning premonition, and help to orchestrate major events in the village such as hunting parties. Their powers are rooted in nature and the earth, likewise to all Nez Perce beliefs; they are able to sing “healing songs” and prescribe herbal remedies to heal ailments (Charles River Editors, 18). When a fly enters the wailing mothers mouth, she bites down upon it to discover it is “fetid,” and concludes her daughter has already died (Nez Perce, 2). Through this cryptic event, the audience can readily infer that the mother has shamanic abilities. The strong belief of the interconnectedness of nature is apparent in the event of the fly entering the mother’s mouth. Its putrid taste and the resulting conclusion of the mother that her daughter is dead entails that the decay of the corpse is linked to the fly that she has bitten down upon. With the inclusion of this detail, Nez Perce beliefs are reinforced as an essential to “Red Willow” and therefore both the history and future of Nez Perce

culture.
Marriage in Nez Perce society was originally arranged by an adolescent’s parents to a member of the village unrelated to their family and of comparable status. In some situations, however, a man could choose a woman to marry on the condition that both families approved of this arrangement. In the case of “Red Willow,” as it is an origin story, it is safe to operate under the assumption that the engagement between the young man and the young woman had been arranged by their families. The most puzzling aspect of the legend is the fact that there seems to be no motive for the young man to kill his fiancée. The two are not shown to have any conflict prior to the murder and one may speculate upon Freudian theories such as castration anxiety, the fear that a woman will usurp a man’s power through castration, but the lack of detail and setting of pre-colonial society in the legend makes such theorization improbable. The most likely reason for the lack of motive to the murder is simply that there was no need for one; the legend is an origin story for the red willow’s color and not a tale detailing the particularities of violence.
Prior to the colonization of America by European powers, the majority of tribes had no written record of their history. Centuries of oral tradition allowed for legends to have mutability; the particulars of the narrative may have changed between each retelling, and eventually been altered to contain none of the legend’s original details. In many ways, the preservation of oral narratives such as “Red Willow” in written word is an antithesis to all that oral storytelling represents. By eliminating the oral aspect of Native American legends, the tales are no longer able to change between narrators or change with the world surrounding the Nez Perce people. Rather than a constantly changing origin story, the version of “Red Willow” that has been recorded now preserves the tale and by extension Nez Perce history at a specific instant in time. Although the recording of native oral history betrays its nature as a whole, the preservation of Nez Perce culture, even at only one certain point in time, has become a necessity following the eradication of Native American peoples at the hands of white colonists.
The portrayal of societal values within Nez Perce culture at the point at which the story was recorded is clear in the narrative of “Red Willow.” When the murdered fiancée’s mother realizes that her daughter has been killed, she immediately concludes that the young man is certainly the culprit and “said to [the young man’s] father ‘It is likely that he has killed her’” (2). Altogether, a variety of evidence including the young man clutching locks of hair and weeping and that “he would often go away for ten-day periods,” culminates in his apparent guilt in his fiancée’s disappearance (2). Yet the young man is never punished for his fiancée’s murder. The community searches for the arrow that killed the young woman, so that they will be able to distinguish which individual the weapon belonged to and deliver just punishment for the crime. In order to dye the willow trees red and give them their color for the blood of the young girl, the arrow mush stay hidden embedded in the trees’ bark. And so the young man is never convicted of the crime. The narrative not only gives reason to the red willow’s coloring, but makes transparent the Nez Perce’s view on guilt, or rather their belief in innocence until guilt is proven. Characterization of the young man’s actions after the murder show an additional deep understanding of the human reaction to guilt and show his remorse for his actions. “Red Willow” concisely delivers to its audience a reasoning for nature’s behavior (the color of the red willow tree,) demonstrates societal values surrounding guilt and innocence, and presents a deep understanding of the physical manner by which humans react to tragedy.
Through expressing essential aspects of Nez Perce tradition, societal values, and ultimately explaining the origin of the red willow’s color, “Red Willow” exists as a locus of preservation.