John M. Oskison -- Lecture Notes

1.) Mrs. Rowell’s expression of racism in her attitude toward “the old and bigamous” among the Creek Indian population.

• An untruth -- “his idle existence” (p. 966) -- he is not idle; his farm is materially solvent (p. 967).

2.) Miss Evans -- the focal character?

• The “problem of old Harjo” becomes Miss Evans’ problem – and although the story seems unresolved at the end, since the problem remains insoluble, her “solution” (if not “solvent”) is to recognize that circumstances have somehow tied her to this particular mission station, to this particular “impossible convert.”
• Tied to Harjo “until death came to one of them,” does Miss Evans become in effect yet another “wife” to the bigamist?

3.) Possible Themes?

• Even if not, Oskison is nevertheless suggesting that the real agenda of the Christian missionaries is to suppress Creek culture in the young until the old men die off.
• What is this agenda but a continuation of the Ghost Dance War in another form?

4.) The Trickster Archetype

• Readers familiar with Native American literature may recognize Harjo as the figuration of the Trickster Archetype.
• The Trickster Archetype is a Transformative Character who represents the dilemmas of change -- change for the old Creek but also change necessarily in the Christians, if anyone is to achieve genuine salvation.
• The story’s apparent lack of resolution -- “And meanwhile what?” -- conveys the disruptive effect of the trickster figure, but also the process of highlighting trouble in the prevailing moral order.
• Old Harjo brings into relief the basic contradiction inherent in the encounter between the Christian missionaries and some Native Americans, which perhaps might be summed up in Mrs. Rowell’s (long) wait for the “old bigamists” to die out.
• Yet as the story’s ending attests, Harjo’s powers include tenacity, and he engages Miss Evans in a temporal “problem” for which the only solution would be genuine change in the moral order of things.
• She becomes his “wife” to the extent that the trickster figure who appears in some Native American legends may represent sexuality and desire.
• Her wish to assure him of salvation is humorous within a Native American tradition, for the trickster is already Coyote, the divinely powerful child born when the moon became a mother.
• So Coyote is another version of the Messiah of the Ghost Dance religion in the sense that, in a “trickster” mode, Coyote -- or here, Harjo -- becomes incarnate to point up moral failings in the creation.