Conquering Horse

by Frederick Manfred

  Also present during some of the most dramatic sequences in the novel is description that provides believable emotional contrast and a reminder of the humor that is inherent in the most serious of human circumstances. For example, as No Name prepares to invade the tipi of Sounds the Ground, he speculates that “the tall Pawnee chief would probably be as sound asleep as a beetle in milkweed down.” When Shifting Wind berates her husband, we are given this reaction: “Sounds the Ground jerked back volcanically. His eyes popped open, so wide for a moment he resembled a great gray owl of the north.” And later, counseling his angry young warriors against killing No Name, he says this to them: “My tongue has been worn thin and my teeth have been loosened in giving you advice.”

  Related to the element of humor is the philosophy that I find most clearly expressed in this narrative and in the best of the other narratives in the Manfred canon: the belief that life is mainly about finding ways to turn negative experience into positive energy. Fred Manfred understood that as well as anyone I have known. He understood, via difficult personal experience and via the additional vigorous lives that he lived through his writings, that negative experience which is simply retained becomes negative energy and results in negative ways of thinking and being. One of my favorite poems is Stanley Kunitz’s “Layers,” which Kunitz wrote late in life. Having referred to the “struggle” life ran be, Kunitz asks this most fundamental of questions: “How shall the heart be reconciled / to its feast of losses?” His answer, expressed via “a nimbus-clouded voice,” is this: “Live in the layers, / not on the litter,” and he concludes by declaring, “I am not done with my changes.”

  As Freva Manfred points out in her introduction to Lord Grizzly, her father was committed to the act of forgiveness as a primary means of transforming negative experience into positive energy, but that epic narrative is also driven by the remarkable resilience and powerful resistance to being defined by loss that is interwoven throughout Conquering Horse. No Name would not have been able to fully realize and become himself had that not been the case. When his formidable warrior friend Circling Hawk breaks down and asks with “a raw sob” what has become of Leaf, whom he also loved, No Name responds: “We must try to be brave men and take things as they come.” Subsequently, as No Name may also be on the verge of breaking down, he reminds himself of the truth of his statement to Circling Hawk in almost the same words: “I must try to be a brave man and take things as they come. I cannot weep.” Later, in the immediate aftermath of No Name’s greatest loss, his helper voice says: “Live inward. Grow inward. Pass into that place where there is nothing but joy which makes life good.” As the white mare says to him in summary at the end of his great vision, “Life is a simple thing when once it is accepted wholly.”

  This is bedrock Manfred philosophy, hard-earned through a lifetime of extraordinary curiosity about life and many years of the exploration of life that is literature. In Conversations with Frederick Manfred, in response to John Milton’s asking him to name his best book, my old friend Fred says this: “Conquering Horse does a lot of things that the others never got into. The feathers in that book are all in place. It flies.” I agree. This book is the work of a literary artist at the height of his creative powers and fully invested in the telling of an exceptionally powerful story.

  Foreword

  Delbert E. Wylder

  Frederick Manfred stands six feet nine inches tall; his curiosity is even bigger than that. Having read the Bible, and having had a good reading education in the classics and traditional literature at Calvin College, Manfred grew up in a literary and intellectual world. Like many of the heroes of his more autobiographical novels, Manfred was truly awakened. He has continued to be a voracious and eclectic reader, and thus his novels are particularly rewarding, not just to the literary mind but to the mind that questions and that wants to tangle with ideas in all their complexities. Perhaps this is one reason that Wallace Stegner included Manfred among other writers of the American West in a category called mavericks. Manfred’s mind and art reject being confined. There is always an expansiveness about a Manfred novel, even though it may seem quite simple on the surface. The interested and perceptive reader may find this novel, Conquering Horse—the first chronologically of the Buckskin Man Tales—deceptively simple in plot. It is told so well that we are trapped by the characters and the story. However, as the novel unfolds, that perceptive reader finds it deepening and expanding.

  In Conversations with Frederick Manfred there is an interesting exchange between John R. Milton, the moderator, and Manfred on Conquering Horse. Milton asks Manfred: “What would you say if an English professor took No Name out of Conquering Horse and said, ‘Here is an example of the American who has no name, no tradition, he is innocent, and he has to find a place for himself.’ Would this suit you?”

  Manfred’s answer is typically both evasive and direct: “Well, if he had a good time with it, let him do it. I don’t care. I was interested in the ‘no name’ business because people do try to find their identity. Who they are. In all times, in all languages, in all countries, and on all planets. Who they are. In the beginning they are born with no name. And with Indians you earn your name.”1

  The answer seems simple enough; it is the question that proves interesting. The statement in the question is one that John R. Milton, or any other excellent professor, might make to a class during the study of Conquering Horse—hoping that the students would make some important distinctions, qualifications, and even contradictions. As you read this book, for example, you will find that No Name is not just an American. He is not a white American, but one of the Americans descended from those human beings who peopled this continent before America was “discovered” and named by Western Europeans in the late fifteen century and who then spread across the continent. No Name, himself, has never seen an “American.” In another sense, as we shall see, No Name is a universal hero figure.

  It is, of course, untrue that No Name has no name. His name is No Name, indicating that he has not yet satisfied the requirements demanded of him in the society in which he lives. He is brave enough, he has tried hard enough, and he seems sincere enough that he should have received a name—but he has not. He has not yet received a vision from the spiritual world that is the informing source of all the activity in the lives of these people.

  Perhaps the greatest error in the imaginary professor’s statement is that No Name has “no tradition.” The vision as a requirement for the naming of a male child is, of course, a tradition that serves as the very basis for the novel, and the perceptive reader will find continuing references to tribal traditions thoughout the novel. Furthermore, there are countless traditionalized rituals, and they have been in practice so long that they are accepted by all members of the tribe as part of their life patterns.

  It is hardly true that No Name is innocent, although it is true, quite frequently, that No Name appears innocent in his usual unquestioning response to tribal customs and traditions. He does, however, have human desires that he is unable to control. Sex is the most obvious of them. He is so driven by sexual desire that he foolishly sneaks into the tepee where Leaf is being protected by her parents. Only his quick-wittedness and a good deal of luck save him from a deeply humiliating experience with the whole tribe as witness. And, of course, his seduction of Leaf results in the loss of a physical innocence that had been preserved only by lack of opportunity. Nor is No Name innocent in other senses of the word. He is jealous, he is proud, he is covetous, and he challenges and complains to his gods.

  The final part of the statement, that No Name “has to find a place for himself,” is imprecise enough that it is open to qualification. It would be more accurate to say that No Name must find something within himself that will allow him to take the place that is already there and that is his place to fill. He must demonstrate to himself, to the tribe, and to the gods that he is capable of succeeding Redbird, his father, as chief. He must earn not only his name but his posit
ion.

  At the beginning of the novel, No Name is undergoing torment. His failure to receive a vision in three previous attempts has left him in doubt about his worth to his family, his tribe, and himself. We see him as an intelligent, knowledgeable, respectful, and brave young man seemingly the victim of fate, for he is unable to be the leader of men that he feels is his destiny. He demonstrates his knowledge and intelligence by using his own method to catch the horse, Lizard, whose nose he slits to allow the horse to breathe more easily. He is well-mannered and respectful to his parents. He is the typical courageous hero as he pursues the raiding Pawnees and kills two of them. His friend, White Fingernail, has had a vision, and thus receives the honor of counting coup on the dead Pawnees. Even his greatest rival and enemy, Circling Hawk, has had a vision, and No Name fears that Circling Hawk will win the maiden, Leaf, with whom he is in love. No Name does not blame the rules of the society, as most of us would; he blames himself, and the failure of the gods to speak to him. The only relief from the torment he feels throughout the first section of the novel is when Leaf refuses an offer of marriage from Circling Hawk, and in his exuberance and pride and desire, he takes Leaf, as he explains to Redbird, “as a man takes his wife.”

  Paradoxically, it is the breaking of the sexual taboo that results in the first dream-visit of the white mares that leads to the beginning of the heroic quests of the young hero. First, he must purify himself through steam baths, then journey with Circling Hawk to the hill of Thunders, where he will receive his vision. Then he must remain atop the hill for four days and nights before he receives his dream. Then he must undergo the ordeal of the sun dance before he begins his quest to capture the wild stallion. The rest of the novel reads as rapidly as any heroic adventure, from one escapade to another as No Name moves through a world he has never known, where he escapes some Omaha warriors, finds Leaf, and brazenly confronts a Pawnee chief after slipping through the smoke hole into the chief’s lodge. No Name seems the typical hero as he manages to escape with his life and to continue in search of the white stallion.

  In some ways, No Name is the typical hero of mythology. Like the mythical heroes described by Lord Raglan (The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth, and Drama) or Joseph B. Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces), No Name has an ambiguous parentage and birth. Moon Dreamer, rather than Redbird, is, apparently, his biological father. No Name is thus the result of an incestuous union between Moon Dreamer and Star. Like many mythic heroes, No Name is raised by a foster father. He undergoes a series of tribulations until finally he is helped to cross into another world, where he performs heroic acts of bravery. The reader notes that his “soul” leaves him when he tries to cross the river and is rescued by Circling Hawk. He is, in a sense, reborn before he can receive his vision. After another symbolic rebirth on the hill of Thunders, he returns to the village and goes through still another symbolic rebirth through the sun dance before he sets out on his quest of the white stallion. He journeys to a land that is totally new to him and escapes from many dangerous situations involving fire, storms, or traditional tribal enemies. Like the true hero, he survives all of these tests and, by the end of the novel, is able to bring back from his quest a boon to his people—the white colt that will bring strength again to the horse herd on which the Sioux, as a nomadic horse-culture people, so much depend.

  Yet the story is not so simple. If No Name is a hero, then Leaf is certainly a heroine. She too undergoes rebirth, when No Name extricates her from the ground. It is Leaf, as much as the “helper” given him by the white mare, who functions as No Name’s helper. She provides him with information about Sounds the Ground, the Pawnee who has seen the white stallion. She also provides encouragement and advice, and she is responsible for saving the life of the young colt—keeping it alive so that No Name can return in triumph. It is not insignificant that the novel opens with No Name unsuccessfully wooing Leaf and returns to the lovers in the penultimate chapter with Conquering Horse once more being repulsed by Leaf because of the laws of the tribe. By the end of the chapter, however, the proper time has passed and Conquering Horse this time takes Leaf as his wife. The act of potential procreation, or the beginning of new life, sets the stage for the final chapter, in which we see the ending of the old generation. The flow of life goes on, and one generation is replaced by the next, which will be replaced by the next.

  It is especially interesting that the female principle is so prevalent in this book. Superficially, the Sioux society described in this novel seems to be male dominated. But one reflects that Leaf is indeed a heroine, and that it is a white mare (not a stallion) that appears first in No Name’s dreams and then acts as his spiritual helper along the way. The Two Maidens, goddesses, destroy Pretty Rock, No Name’s older brother, when he sacrilegiously leaps among the boulders. Pretty Rock’s foot slips into the Boulder With Wide Lips. Although Star is able to release him physically from the grasp of the sexually symbolic rock, the power of the Two Maidens destroys him. Thus the novel also explores the relationship of the male to the female in the Sioux society and, beyond that, of the male and female principles in concert and contradiction, in isolation and in interdependence.

  The novel itself is an interesting combination of realism and romanticism. The spiritual world created for the reader is full of nightmares, dreams, visions, helpers. The gods and spirits speak directly to No Name. They make up an integral part of the world in which he lives, and the reader accepts that world as just as real as the extremely realistic material world that also makes up the complex world the author creates. The chapter in which No Name’s grandfather dies, which ends the first section of the novel, is strikingly real. No Name talks with the old man, and must hold his grandfather’s eyes open with his thumbs. Then we read, “A harsh sign escaped Wondering Man. Gray lice began to move out of his white hair onto No Name’s bronze thumbs.”

  And Manfred provides suspense by the use of realistic detail, as when No Name fastens his eyes on a deer fly and then on a black spider weaving a web as four Omaha warriors search for him in the swamp. Realistic detail also enlarges the sense of reality as well as the tension as No Name and Sounds the Ground stare into each other’s eyes after No Name has dropped through the smoke hole into his lodge.

  Finally, there is accurate detail not only on the way of life of the Sioux Indians, but on all animal life in the novel. The battle between the two stallions is a good example. Even more important, Manfred’s description of the white stallion’s herd of mares, and the relationship of the mares to the stallion, is accurate, as is, on a larger scale, the whole treatment of the concept of territoriality as it is felt by, and provides motivation for, both the horses and the human animals. One can hardly help noticing that No Name and Leaf form a bond that is successful in capturing the white stallion. Their love is their strength. Ironically, it is the white stallion’s love and concern for his favorite mare that allows him to be caught.

  The novel concludes with the death of Redbird. The hero of one generation must die, legends tell us, to make room for the hero of the next generation. If the hero remains too long, he becomes a tyrant and must be destroyed. Redbird is clearly no tyrant, and the gods destroy him in a flash of lightning so that the guilt of fratricide and regicide do not fall upon the Sioux nation.

  Joseph M. Flora points out in his Western Writer’s Series pamphlet, Frederick Manfred, that there are many biblical references and parallels in Conquering Horse, and that Manfred’s reading in the history of Sioux culture is also obvious. There are, of course, parallels to Greek mythology and Greek drama—from Ulysses to Oedipus. The novel also reflects Manfred’s reading of the new biologists and the sociologists, as well as, of course, the psychologists. Manfred’s intellectual curiosity leads him into many fields. In a collection of the lectures given in the Presidential Lecture Series of the University of South Dakota, where Manfred has taught creative writing, Manfred did not talk directly about writing—he talked about time and space, and matter and anti-ma
tter, electrons and magnetic fields. He must have surprised everyone with one lecture, when he wondered and wandered into the area of ESP and premonition, and then dredged up from Latin and Greek roots a word, “deon.” Toward the end, he suggested that “there is only one reality; a universal yeast of telepathic deons. It is one whole. All is related in an intimate way. There are no separate parts not knowing other separate parts. There is an all pervading unity.”2

  That quotation is also a good definition of the world we see in Conquering Horse—the spiritual and the material world intimately joined. It is also a good description of the novel Conquering Horse. All the ideas emanating from that curiosity about the world that has always been Frederick Manfred’s greatest asset as a writer are intimately related into a meaningful unity—a unity told in a straightforward narrative that has all the simplicity and the power of electricity. One not only reads this novel; one feels its power.

  Notes

  1. Conversations with Frederick Manfred, moderated by John R. Milton, with a foreword by Wallace Stegner (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1974), 130–31.

  2. Frederick Manfred, America in the 1980’s: Presidential Lecture Series (Vermillion: Educational Media Center, University of South Dakota, 1982).