47 pages • 1 hour read
Joseph M. Marshall IIIThe Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons in Living
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Truth/Wowicake”
Story Summary: “The Story of the Trickster’s Song”
Iktomi wakes up very hungry. He is not a good hunter, so he gets all his food through trickery. Hungry, he comes upon a pond with ducks. He brings a load of wood with him to carry out his trick. He pretends to be concentrating on his bundle of wood so the ducks, unused to this behavior from him, call to him.
He tells the ducks that he isn’t carrying wood but is instead carrying songs to a celebration across the river. He says he cannot stay, but the ducks clamor to hear a song. He takes out his sticks and pretends to be choosing a song. He tells them that while he is singing, they must keep their eyes closed. If they open them while he is singing, their eyes will turn red.
While he is singing and the ducks are dancing, engrossed in his song with their eyes shut, he clubs several to death. One opens his eyes, and the remaining ducks fly away. Their eyes turn red, and they still fly today, looking out for Iktomi.
Story Summary: “Seeing the Way Things Are”
An easterner moved to the west and lived in a house at the base of a mountain. A neighbor tells him to climb a mountain and ask an old Indian how much wood he needs for the winter. The Indian looks up into the sky and keeps telling the easterner to cut more wood. After the third time, the easterner asks the Indian why he keeps telling him to keep cutting more wood, and the Indian tells him he is looking down on a white man who keeps laying in more wood for the winter.
When the author asked his grandfather what truth was, his grandmother says he doesn’t know, but that without it, Iktomi would be the most powerful being in the world. The truth is hard to find, and at times, we can fall for illusions. The author writes of two chieftains who meet before a battle. The first says he has 10,000 warriors, while the second says he has 1,000 children. The first chief decides not to fight the other army, and he is made a king.
It is hard to tell what the truth is; as the author writes, “sometimes truth is like the wind” (120). Sometimes, we have to discover truth through trial and error. We often believe things simply because we want clear answers when there are none. For example, the ducks accepted Iktomi’s story because they wanted to dance, and he wanted them to believe this story because he was hungry.
The author writes that “we Lakota have heard Iktomi sing several times,” such as at the Fort Laramie Treaty Council of 1851, when the government told the Lakota that the whites were “only passing through” (121). There is an illusion that the Lakota were defeated by a stronger, better people, but the reality is that there were simply more whites than Lakota. There is an illusion that the Lakota are conquered, but the reality is that they are still standing.
People tend to avoid the truth, such as the truth that we will all die. We construct stone mausoleums to deny the reality of death, but death is part of the reality of life and it is the great equalizer. Many people fall for untruths. A woman who was dying dressed herself up and had her hair fixed to spend a final afternoon with her four children. She died that night, and one child mourned that their mother could not be truthful with them. The oldest daughter replied that their mother had been truthful, as she didn’t want them to think of the pain as the truth they would recall later. When the author’s maternal grandfather was dying in March of 1975, he told his grandson, “life goes on” (124)—which was the greatest gift he gave his grandson.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Compassion/Waunsilapi”
Story Summary: “The Story of the Eagle”
Long ago, people live in the land of many lakes. Rains keep falling in the summer, and the land is flooded. Great winds come and kill everyone except one young woman. When the rains stop, she is alone on a great hill when an eagle perches nearby. The eagle speaks to her and says he will befriend her and bring her food. He also brings her wood to make a fire, and she is able to bring herself back to life.
The eagle continues to bring her food and wood, and he senses her sadness at being the last of her kind alive. He tells her to grab his legs, and they fly off together. The eagle calls out to a spirit he calls “Grandfather” and asks why the woman has to be alone. The voice who answers gives the eagle the choice to remain as he is or to turn into a two-legged being. After thinking it over, the eagle decides to become one of the woman’s kind because her kind will otherwise die out. The voice tells him that people will hold eagles in high regard as a result. The eagle appears as a young man to the woman, and she recognizes who he is. They have children together. This is why eagle feathers are so sacred to the Lakota.
Story Summary: “Take their Hand”
The author recalls that in the 1950s, a baby died on the Rosebud Sioux Indian Reservation. He and his grandmother went to the funeral, where the baby lay in a cardboard box because the family could not afford a casket. His grandmother asked him to take the hands of people around him—his first lesson in compassion. His grandmother was mourning and helping share the pain of the people around her.
Marshall writes about a young marine who lost his arm in battle in Vietnam. After he was hit, two other marines helped him to the litter while another carried his arm within the hurt marine’s sight—an act that comforted him. It helps when people share our pain and loss. This is the essence of compassion, the author writes. Compassion says to someone else: “I’ve been there” (135).
The author’s grandmother lost her sister to the Spanish influenza when they were 18 and 19, and the grandmother knew what pain was. She was already ready to speak about compassion at wakes and funerals.
The author writes about a mail carrier who used a cut-across that crossed a pasture field in the 1930s on the Rosebud Reservation. His Model T slipped down an incline in the snow, and he cannot get it out. He remembers that he has tire chains in his rumble seat, but he hurts his ankle and breaks his collarbone. He could not attach the chains to his tires. He began to walk in search of help, and he suddenly saw his wife and his neighborhood coming to find him in their car. He knew he could rely on the kindness of his neighbors, and that’s why he did not remain in his car, where he could have stayed stranded for several days.
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
In writing about the virtues of truth and compassion, the author also seeks to correct the historical record. He writes about the differentiation between truth and illusion, and he says that it is an illusion that the Lakota were defeated by whites who were braver or who had the favor of God. Instead, he says, the truth is that whites simply outnumbered the Lakota. He also writes that it’s an illusion to think that the Lakota are a conquered people. The truth is that they are still a thriving culture with their own traditions that have survived.
The story of Iktomi, the trickster, has a wider symbolic meaning for the Lakota. The Lakota are like the ducks in the story in Chapter 7, who listen to Iktomi’s false stories that he will sing them a song while he instead plans on their wholesale slaughter because he is hungry. Marshall likens the Lakota to the ducks, as the Lakota were told at the Fort Laramie Treaty Council in 1851 that whites were just passing through their lands on the Oregon Trail and would not stay. Therefore, the story of Iktomi has a wider resonance for Marshall and the Lakota.
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By Joseph M. Marshall III
