61 pages • 2 hours read
James WelchFools Crow
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Dreams
Dreams are treated as important sources of authority and meaning in Pikuni culture, and many central characters–including Fools Crow, Fast Horse, Heavy Shield Woman, and Red Paint–experience dreams that become important to the narrative. Often, these dreams foreshadow future events. For instance, Fools Crow’s dream about the “white-faced girl” is later revealed to be warning about what will happen to Yellow Kidney when he rapes the girl dying of smallpox.
Other dreams, like Fast Horse’s dream about Cold Maker’s order to find the ice spring, and Heavy Shield Woman’s dream that she must become the Medicine Woman for Yellow Kidney to return, give the dreamers directions to carry out. Dreams also serve as means of communication between the human and natural worlds. In many important dreams in the novel, the forces of the natural world, including Cold Maker, Raven, and Wolverine, are personified and speak directly to the dreamers. Near the end of the novel, Fools Crow is sent on a vision quest in which he encounters Feather Woman, an important figure in Pikuni mythology. This final vision in novel, which involves many layers of dreams and visions and stretches over several chapters, is perhaps the most important, as it provides an overview of the overwhelming devastation that will affect the Pikunis in the years to come.
Because the boundaries between reality and dreaming are often blurry, the novel can be considered an example of magic realism, in which realistic narrative is combined with surrealist elements. At the Sun Ceremony, for instance, when White Man’s Dog and Kills-close-to-the-lake both have similar dreams about each other, the finger that Wolverine bites off in Kills-close-to-the-lake’s dream is missing from her hand in real life; according to Kills-close-to-the-lake, this finger turns into the stone that Fools Crow believes to be the token Wolverine gives him for protection in battle, and which he finds the next time to him when he wakes up. This slippage between the real world and the dream world is just one example of magic realism in the novel.
Names and Naming
Names and naming recur throughout Fools Crow as an important source of meaning to the Pikuni people. In the Pikuni language, nouns tend to describe qualities of the people, places, or objects they signify. (Buffalo are called blackhorn while the cattle raised by the Napikwans are called whitehorn; whiskey is termed white man’s water, and smallpox the white-scabs disease.) The names of people are likewise meant to describe the individuals in question or hold special significance. Red Paint decides on the name for her future son, “Sleep Bringer,” because after realizing she is pregnant, a butterfly landed on her stomach, and she falls asleep and dreams of a son who is just like her husband. Individuals receive their names through a naming ceremony and may be given a new name in time if they do something to earn it. Most notably, White Man’s Dog’s name is changed to Fools Crow by Three Bears after Fools Crow kills the infamous Crow chief, Bull Shield. This change in name marks Fools Crow’s transformation into a powerful warrior and acquires added significance as it is also the title of the book.
White Man’s Dog is a particularly interesting name because it plays on the reader’s preconceived notions about the history of the American West and its native populations. While we might initially assume that “White Man’s Dog” refers to the white men invading Pikuni lands, it is eventually revealed that White Man’s Dog earned the name because as a child because he got into the habit of following around a storyteller named “Victory Robe White Man” (220). In other words, his name has nothing to do with the Napikwans. In this way, Welch subtly calls our attention to the way in which we have been conditioned to understand Native American history in terms of the “white man.”
Blackhorn (buffalo)
Blackhorns are significant in the novel because they are vital to Pikuni life. The nomadic lifestyle of the Pikunis revolves around hunting the blackhorns. Blackhorn meat represents their main source of food, while blackhorn furs provide them with blankets and robes for clothing. While the women tend to the meat and hides, the men hunt and kill the animals. Because the Pikunis are so dependent on blackhorns for nourishment, the fact that the buffalo may soon go extinct represents a serious threat to the people’s survival. In driving out the buffalo through increasing farming, the white settlers are also wiping out the native populations who need the animals to survive. Losing their lands to the Napikwans also affects the Pikunis’ ability to hunt blackhorns because they are driven away from areas where they once hunted.
Feather Woman and Poia
The legend of Feather Woman (So-at-sa-ki) and Poia (Scarface) is very important to Pikuni culture and reappears at different points throughout Fools Crow. Feather Woman, a Pikuni woman who marries Morning Star, is banished from the sky and separated from her husband after digging up the sacred turnip against the wishes of Sun and Moon. She is sent back to earth with her son, Star Boy. When Fools Crow encounters Feather Woman in his vision, she tells him that she has been sent to a dream world where she continues to mourn her husband. She claims that her transgression caused the suffering of the Pikunis at the hands of the Napikwans but that when she is someday reunited with her husband, it will end. By explaining the coming of the Napikwans in terms of Pikuni folklore, the novel once again avoids defining the history of the Blackfeet entirely in terms of the white man.
By having Fools Crow meet Feather Woman, the novel also underlines a resemblance between Fools Crow and Star Boy, Feather Woman’s son, who became known as Poia, or Scarface. Like Fools Crow, Poia grew up being mocked by his friends and ignored by girls. When he wished to marry the most beautiful girl in his village, he went on a quest to see the Sun Chief, in the hope of having the scar on his face removed. While living with Sun, Moon, and Morning Star in the sky, Poia began to distinguish himself and was eventually sent back down to earth to teach his people to honor Sun Chief through the summer ceremony, so that the Sun will look favorably upon them. Like Poia, Fools Crow transforms into a powerful warrior over time and marries the beautiful Red Paint, even though he was once considered unlucky and unpopular. His meeting with Feather Woman also aligns him with Poia, as he is tasked with delivering knowledge from the spirit world to his people. Fools Crow’s greatness as a Pikuni hero is therefore underlined by the ways in which his story arc resembles that of one of the most important figures from Blackfeet mythology
