exploring the meaning of discovery in - the crown of columbus - 1991

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Volume 59, Number 4 Fall 1991

Turtle Island 1492-1992

e..Robert W. Lewis 5 Introduction

14 Declaration of Quito

Virgil Elizondo 17 A New Humanity

Susan Clements 21 Discovering Columbus (poem)

Sherman Alexie 22 Two Poems

Jeff Gardiner 24 Orpheus West

Robert F. Gish 34 Turtle Island Rediscovered: In

the American Grain and the New

Literary History

Pablo Neruda 51 Three Poems

Duane Niatum 55 Traveling the Road That Once

Was You

Kathleen Norris 62 Linda Hogan and How We

Came to Be

Kathleen M. Puhr 67 Native Americans and the

Vietnam War

Quechua People's Poetry 78 Two Poems

Ernesto Cardena1 80 The Parrots (poem)

Martin Espada 81 Rebellion Is the Circle of a

Lover's Hands (poem)

Rilla Askew 83 The Killing Blanket (story)

Lise McCloud 89 Heart of the Turtle



James McKenzie 98 "Sharing What 1Know": An

.Interview with Francis Cree

Nicholas Curchin 113 Buffalo Voices (interviews)

Peterson Vrooman

Diane Glancy 122 The Great Divide (poem)

Richard Garcia 123 Pancho Villa in the Land of Forever

(poem)

Mark Sanders 124 Flatlander (poem)

Justin Askins 126 The Ecology of Language

D. E. Steward 135 Abril

Fred Johnston 142 The New Land

Robert Root 145 Anasazi

Frances Mayes IS S Two Poems

Fred Whitehead 157 Documents of Resistance: A Review

Peter Wild 168 Lost on the Ranch:

Reassembling the W110le

Claude Clayton Smith 174 Red Men in Red Square

Lawrence Loendorf 192 The Chilling Effects of the Little

Ice Age on North Dakota

C. W. Truesdale 200 Tradition and Ceremony: Leslie

Marmon Silko As an American

Novelist

James Ruppert 229 Mediation and Multiple Narrative in

Love Medicine

Thomas Matchie 243 Exploring the Meaning of Discovery

in The Crown of Columbus

Charles G. Ballard 251 The Question of Survival in

Fools Crow

Mark Phillips 260 A City without a Country:

Salamanca and the Seneca

Sanford Berman 265 Things Are Seldom W11atThey Seem:Finding Multicultural Materials in

Library Catalogs



Reviews

Kassie Fleisher 2 7 3 Mary Crow Dog with Richard Erdoes,

Lakota Woman;

2 7 7 Jose Barreiro, ed., View from the

Shore: American Indian Perspectives

on the Quincentenary

Allen Josephs 2 8 1 Homer Aridjis, 1492: The Life and

Times of Juan Cabezon of Castile

Gretchen Chesley Lang 2 8 4 S. Lyman Tyler, Two Worlds: The

Indian Encounter with the European,

1492-1509;

Bob Connolly and Robin

Anderson, First Contact

Thomas Palakeel 2 8 9 Charles Fergus, Shadow Catcher

Mary Jane Schneider 2 9 2 Stanley A. Abler, Thomas D.

Theissen, Michael D. Trimble,

People of the Willows: The

Prehistory and Early History of the

Hidatsa Indians

Alexandr Vaschenko 2 9 4 Mary Jane Schneider, North Dakota's

Indian Heritage;

2 9 8 Wallace Black Elk and William S.

Lyon, Black Elk: The Sacred Ways ofa Lakota;

Ed McGaa, Eagle Man: Mother Earth

Spirituality-Native American Paths

to Healing Ourselves and Our World

Jerry Wilson 3 0 3 Carlos Fuentes, Christopher Unborn

Robert W. Lewis 3 0 6 Peter Nabokov, ed., Native American

Testimony: A Chronicle of Indian-

'White Relations from Prophecy to

the Present, 1492-1992;

3 0 7 Deborah Small with Maggie Jaffe,

1492: What Is It Like to Be

Discovered?



308 New Internationalist: Columbus

and the Colonial Legacy;

Rethinking Columbus: Teaching

about the 500th Anniversary of

Columbus's Arrival in America;

309 Tamaqua: Native American Issue;

310 The Diario of Christopher

Columbus's First Voyage to

America 1492-1493

Editor's Notes 315

Contributors 318



THOlVKASMATCHIE

Exploring the Meaning of Discovery

in The Crown of Columbus

Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris wrote The Crown of Columbus (1991)as a way to celebrate the S O O t h anniversary of the "discovery" of Ameri-

ca. The novel is more about a couple, Vivian Twostar and her professor

lover Roger Williams, doing research on Columbus than it is about

Columbus himself; in the process of their search, however, they not only

find each other, but in different ways expose and enlarge upon the

meaning of that so-called original discovery of America. Some critics say

the book is a successful love story that, written jointly, closely reflects

the academic and personal lives of Dorris and Erdrich themselves (Wood

3E). Others, like Joanne Kaufman, reviewing the book for People

Weekly, a magazine which is part of the novel's plot, say it is at once so

many things-romance, detective story, thriller, and revisionist history-

that it succeeds fully at nothing. Perhaps a better key to the book lies in

the word "mystery." There is a detective story, the solving of a quandary,

at the center of the novel, but that is only a microcosm of the greater

mystery, which includes, but is more than, the love of the two protagon-

ists. It is one that demands the perspective of many characters, and

indeed the reader, to see the "whole picture" of what it means to discover

America, not just in 1492, but today, 50 0 years later.

The theme of the book, one which hovers in the background of the

main plot, is the search for Columbus. Who was he? What were his

major concerns or obstacles? How did he relate to the natives when he

arrived? Was the trip significant, or merely a big mistake? Did Columbus

leave any final message-one that might change our perceptions of his

journey? Roger Williams, whose name suggests another American, the

Puritan rebel, is a professor at Dartmouth; he sets out to research the1492 voyage and write a dramatic monologue on the subject. People

Weekly has called attention to his scholarship and looks forward to the

result-something of which Roger (no matter the academic stature of

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People) is quite proud. He even imagines himself as a person to be

remembered in connection with other great literary figures:

They, and their retinue of biographers, shine like lighthouses, likestreetlamps seen in a rearview mirror. Carl Sandburg's Lincoln.

Virgil's Aeneas. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Christopher

Columbus, currently on loan to Samuel Eliot Morison, was still up

for grabs, and he would be mine. (52-53)

In trying to "capture" Columbus, however, Roger is in for a huge dis-

covery of his own.

Roger's occasional lover, Vivian Twostar, who occupies the adjoining

carrel in the library, is also doing a paper on Columbus, but only to get

tenure. Vivian looks up to Roger as a famous professor; though mys-

teriously attracted to Vivian, he belittles her as one who has little sense of

history, uses questionable methods, and is too impulsive for such a

rational undertaking. Others think: that Vivian may blame all the Indians'

problems on Columbus, but Roger will not go that far-yet. The fact is

that Vivian, part Indian, is disturbed at all the interpretations of

Columbus' voyage that ignore or make light of the Indians' point of view.

The authors of The Crown of Columbus, no doubt, are well-versed in

Native American history (Moyers 2-3), and Vivian, though unorthodox in

her thinking and style, is quite perceptive in this matter; in teaching a

class in pre-1492 tribes, she exposes Columbus' ignorance of the Indians

while explaining many of their contributions to American life-including

"fried potatoes and tomato ketchup," as well as "representative govern-

ment:' and "Equal Rights" (83).

One reviewer notes that the novel turns the topic of search, or

research, into a dramatic tale reminiscent of Tom Sawyer (Walton 6F).

Part of that drama comes from the novel's structure, which resembles apoint/counter-point debate; first we get Vivian's perspective, then

Roger's, and as readers we have to put the two together, sometimes with

considerable winnowing. Roger, for instance, is no rebel; he is a creative

scholar, but removed, arrogant, and as he later admits, simply "Dull"

(345). By contrast, Vivian is outspoken and aggressive, involved in a

multitude of community causes, and vitally connected to her extended

family, including her Ic-year-old son Nash (with whom she takes karate

lessons) and her traditionally religious but worldly-wise Sioux grand-

mother. Vivian's name, Twostar, rightly suggests that she has more than

one light; she is not single-minded or pat. What motivates her is her view

of Columbus as a mixture of cultures and races and attitudes. She

identifies with him as

An Italian in Iberia. A Jew in Christendom. A Converso among the

baptized-at-birth. A layman among Franciscans .... He was

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propelled by alienation, by trying to forge links, to be the link, from

one human cluster to the next. (124)

With her "Coeur d' Alene-Navajo-Irish-Hispanic, Sioux-by-marriage"ancestry (11), not to mention that she is a token minority on the English

Department staff, she thinks it would be exciting to explore how some-

body as multifaceted as her new "Saint Christopher" (21) fits into the

drama we now call America.

In a broad sense the characterizations of Roger and Vivian may come

out of the immediate lives of Dorris and Erdrich, who fell in love at

Dartmouth; the couple have even talked about how one of their infants

influenced the text of The Crown of Columbus (Wood 3E). It is also true

that, based on the success of their other works, they were endowed

financially to write this novel (Meier IE). In spite of connections to the

authors' lives and works, however, the characters here are new and exist

in their own right, far from the Albertine of Love Medicine, or the humble

scholar behind The Broken Cord, or the male author so sensitive to threedifferent women in A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. In fact, not only the

major characters and some of the minor ones, but also surprisingly the

dialogue and general tone, are very different from the usual Erdrich and

Donis. Vivian's telling Roger to "SHUT UP!" (43) in the next stall, or

saying she is "pissed off' (11) at her academic committee, or commenting

on Samuel Eliot Morison's description of Columbus' landing with "Give

me a break" (24), are telling examples of the authors' new direction. More

than this, Vivian's characterization and language undercut the serious

tone of Morison's Admiral of the Ocean Sea. So The Crown of Columbus

challenges our notions of the authors' previous fiction, as it does our

perceptions of Columbus himself-indeed the very meaning of discovery,

of newness, of change. It is crucial, therefore, that the novel be a unique

venture all the way around.

A significant minor character in the book who unwittingly gets

involved in the overall search for Columbus is Nash; Vivian's son by a

previous marriage, he is an unsettled and unsettling teenager. Not terribly

unlike his mother, he tells her, "Columbus was a slave trader, Mom. ... 'I'm

an Indian. Columbus would have wanted to make a slave out of me' " (111),

which may be true. Then he steals Roger's academic manuscript "Diary of a

Lost Man" (a telling title for Columbus and Roger and Nash); it is a gesture

which challenges their father-son relationship as it calls attention to the boy's

disparaging attitude toward Roger's work and style in general. Having been

on drugs, Nash is a difficult boy to manage, and seeing his mother relate to

him as a single parent, and at different times Roger's clumsy maneuvering as

a potential stepfather, is to discover America in a postmodem way. Nash isimportant to the novel, for he helps center the book on the American family,

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one which includes his 79-year-old great-grandmother, who has raised him

and who he later admits "stretched" his mind (364). That family also in-

cludes his new sister Violet; like so many things in the novel, she is a

surprise, arriving midway in the story. When Vivian becomes pregnant, she

leaves Roger, and her giving birth is not unrelated to her curious search for

"new life" for Columbus. Like Nash, Violet becomes a power, if only from

the crib, who touches several characters' lives (Roger's, Nash's, and that of a

young girl named Valerie), generating like Columbus basic dimensions of

discovery and change.

Closely related to the theme of pursuit and discovery in the novel is the

notion of being lost and found. Columbus, of course, was lost and he found

America. Violet gets lost; so does Roger later in the novel. But initially

Vivian gets locked in the library overnight trying to find material on

Columbus, and is thus lost to her grandmother, as well as her friends Hilda

and Recine. Because Roger has most of the significant material signed out tohim, Vivian, scrounging for material, discovers the Cobb family, who as

alumni of Dartmouth have "lost" their materials at the library and cannot

recover them. In short, Vivian and the Cobbs find each other as they search

for what turns out to be the "crown" of Columbus. Their combined quest

gives birth to the detective aspect of the story. On the basis of fragments of a

letter mentioning a crown, which Vivian has discovered along with some

oyster shells, Henry Cobb finances her trip to Eleuthera in the Bahama

Islands. Roger, of course, denounces all this as poppycock, thinking Cobb is

taking advantage of her "lack of expertise" and the fact that she has "no

depth" (160). Little does he know that it is only from his own "deep hole"

that he will discover the full potential of Vivian.

Part of that potential is that she soon comes to see through Cobb,

discovering that he wants the crown for the money-as Roger later observes,

"a scion of capitalism gone rotten" (334). For Vivian this man's greed is

more direct, for she finds it written into his "uncivil" gestures and language:

Cobb spread pate on a cracker, put the whole thing in his mouth. Even

his manners suddenly became sloppy, contemptuous in their careless

greed . ... His words had changed from scalpels to hatchets, but he used

them for the same purpose. (191-92)

Amid all this, Vivian, Roger notwithstanding, develops a passion for original

discovery (which is what research is all about): "My obsession to know

matched his [Cobb's] obsession to possess," she says (200). So she shares

the letter mentioning the crown with Cobb, though (remembering her grand-

mother's advice) not the oyster shells-something Cobb ignores, but which

holds the real clues to the crown. Though some find the detective part of thestory captivating (Walton 6F), it is convoluted and strained, the weakest part

of the book, but it helps focus the characters and plot on the site of

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Columbus' landing. And if Vivian represents the entrepreneurial spirit as old

as the Puritans, Cobb reveals that avaricious part of America of which none

of us is proud.

As to the love story, it is inseparable from the main characters' separate

intellectual quests. Roger, in spite of his demeaning comments on Vivian's

approach to academic life, is strangely attracted to this woman who, almost

like a tiger, "could be all impulse, all exterior signal, hands and eyes and

hunched shoulders broadcasting her thought before it translated into word or

deed" (176). And quite to his surprise, he (who had never held a baby) has

gotten her pregnant, though Vivian promptly terminates their affair to save

him any responsibility for the infant or Nash. When she is lost in the library,

however, he is concerned, and though he thinks she is crazy for going along

with Cobb's plan, he agrees to accompany her to the Caribbean. "She was

Sacajawea and I was Lewis, or Clark," he imagines, "guided through

unknown territory by a stranger in quest of God knows what" (66).

He also agrees to accompany Nash, who begs to come on the journey,while Vivian goes on ahead with Violet. Roger, however, as with many

stepparents in American families, simply cannot relate to this boy. For him

Nash is "a hopeless misfit full of harebrained theories, a mumbling oaf who

watched television for hours a day and ate his meals with ambidextrous

indifference" (49), and to further upset Roger the boy steals his diary. Nash,

of course, thinks his mother's paramour is stuffy and unreal, which in this

setting he is. Ironically, on the way to Eleuthera Roger and Nash are

grounded because of weather. Eventually the two take a boat to the gulf, but

not before young Nash has educated his fellow traveler, the professor, on the

meaning of the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle-a lesson which highlights

Roger's naivete as it foreshadows his mysterious and shocking future.

Once in the Bahamas, Roger again warns Vivian about Cobb, and when

he tries tojoin these two off shore on Cobb's yacht with a yellow rubber raft,

Cobb pushes him off, leaving Roger and little Violet adrift on the sea

without an oar. Trying to shoot a shark with a spear gun attached to the raft,

Roger punctures the raft, leaving a "ragged hole that hissed as the air

exploded through it" (287). Here the air seems to be going out of his life, as

he instinctively throws himself overboard, trying to save the "weightless"

baby (later discovered in the raft by Valerie). At this point Roger-and

Donis and Erdrich are best when a character reflects on some dramatic

episode-is "yanked into the earth," and "swallowed into the undertow"

(291), then "wedged ... into the funnel" (292) before he can finally open his

mouth and breathe. In an underground cave Roger is lost to the world and

supposedly to his plan to publish his famous poem. All this smacks of the

thriller novel, not unlike science fiction, but trips to other worlds and unusual

catastrophes are part of what makes America America, and all this seems to

fit with Vivian's bizarre personality and life style. In pursuit of his beloved

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he is simply dumped into a world he neither appreciates nor understands,

however real it is. In his words, "I had lived too long at a distance from

life . ... I dealt in retrospect, reexamination, research, reason, recollec-tion, not in events unfolding" (67).

Ironically, however, his going down lifts him up mentally. "That I

may rise and stand, o'erthrow me," says John Donne, Roger's favorite

poet, and that is what happens here. If Vivian discovers the key to her

mystery when lost in the library, Roger finds his most creati.ve moment

lost underground: "Truth communicated itself instantly" (307), he

exclaims almost mystically upon waking from a brief nap. His

underground references to bats and snakes and mice suggest on a

Freudian level a dark night prior to the light of discovery, as he begins to

develop in some detail his long-awaited poem. In the monologue he

describes Columbus as an Italian Jewish layman working within the

Spanish Christi.an royalty to launch his voyage to the West-s-paradoxes

which originally excited Vivian. Roger, using classic authors from Esdras

to Pliny to Shakespeare and John Donne, captures Columbus' existential

mind, including his passion for Beatrice, to make the journey. Strangely

enough, that journey becomes a virtual paradigm for Roger's own trip to

Eleuthera underneath which is his passion for Vivian. Says Roger,

I had composed my poem according to the shifting context of my

recent life, but its purpose bad remained clear .... It was all there,

waiting, and if I could discover Columbus just once more, trace his

path to nowhere that now seemed so parallel to Vivian's and to mine

I could save a part of myself by making sense in this place of empti-

ness. (309)

Vivian, of course, has never lost her feeling for Roger, and ironically

it is she who finds him by using the kind of research he would be proudof-she gets Hilda and Recine to verify the Hebrew message on the inside

of the shells and then, looking for the crown, follows the clues to the

underground cave where Roger is trapped. This cove, of course, also turns

out to be the secret hiding place of the crown. Earlier, more in the

semblance of a western movie, she had eluded Cobb, who had tied her up

on the boat, by kicking him overboard-thanks to her skill at karate which

she learned with Nash. This part of the book makes the plot a combination

of rather subtle prose-Roger moving from the cave into the light in an

internal, transfiguring way-to the style of a John Wayne plot as Vivian

plays out her violent engagement and captivity with Henry Cobb. So the

book is a mixture of genres, but for better or worse it is what America is

all about. And it works because Roger follows his instincts rather than his

head in trailing Vivian, and Vivian uses some sophisticated means to find

the crown and in the process her future husband.

24 8



In the end Roger acknowledges the expertise of his loved one and

with her discovery of the crown willingly moves out of the limelight.

What is most interesting is that it is not golden, as Cobb had thought, buta crown of thorns. This type of crown is a fitting metaphor for the novel,

for Cobb's greedy venture for gold is frustrated--the nearly-drowned

body found at the onset of the novel is his, and he is now arrested for his

assault on Vivian. At the same time the trials and suffering of Vivian and

Roger are crowned by a deeper togetherness-their separate skills com-

plementing each other. But the "four returns" at the end of the novel

enlarge significantly the connection between all the elements in the book.

Valerie, for instance, walks on the coast, deprived of the baby (Violet) she

found, but still has her adolescent longing that is not unrelated to the

dreams of the likes of Columbus.

Then Roger reflects on the notoriety that Vivian rather than he is

getting with her discovery, but he is basically happy because, having lost

his sense of certainty, he has found her on a level that has changed his

life. And "Violet glows at the center" (376), he says, as the safe return of

their baby adds new meaning to both of their lives. Nash's reflection here

is the longest. Having argued to go on the trip, he had little idea of the

kind of treasure he would uncover. In the end he reflects in a rather

mature way on the importance to him of both Roger, whom he comes to

accept, and of his now-famous mother, for whom he has often been an

incorrigible child. Says Nash:

And Roger was Violet's father. I was an expert on what it was like to

grow up without one around. And Roger was ... somebody I

couldn't hate .... As we stood there, Mom watching him, his gaze

fixed on my sister, I feIt-I don't know=-wholc, (361)

In short, Nash grows up, discovering the meaning of family. But most of

all there is Columbus himself, alias "Colon," called so because in Roger's

words he "recreated himself" to make his journey (221). Now, unlike the

Admiral of the Sea, he acknowledges his error-e-his miscalculation about

discovering the east by going west.

Actually, that is the way things work-ironically; and that is the way

America is continually rediscovered in every age. It is a find that involves

the perspectives of many characters together, for this country is mul-

tifaceted-from the young and the old, the Violets and the grandmothers,

the adolescent Valeries and Nashes, the serious-minded Hildas and

Recines, to the violent, materialistic Cobbs. It is a country that could not

exist without the deep thinkers like Roger, but most of all Vivian Twostar,

who combines in her blood the many races that make up America. It is

Vivian the pragmatist, the risk taker, the adventurer who makes real

discovery possible and does it, as did Columbus, ina context of love. The

249



crown, then, is not ultimately one related to material wealth; rather it is

something born of suffering and love. In their new novel Michael Dorris

and Louise Erdrich, in a way that (given their other novels) many may see

as an unexpected turn for the worst, have really turned our attention back

to that simple, basic, but illusive fact. Could Columbus himself have done

more?

"Works Cited

Dorris, Michael. The Broken Cord. New York: Harper, 1989.

__ . A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. New York: Warner, 1987.

Dorris, Michael and Louise Erdrich. The Crown of Columbus. New York: Harper,

1991.

Erdrich, Louise. Love Medicine. New York: Holt, 1984.

Kaufman, Joanne. "The Crown of Columbus by Michael Dorris and Louise

Erdrich." People Weekly 10 June 1991: 26, 28.Meier, Peg. "Authors' New Wealth to Make Life Easier, Aid Medical Cause."

Minneapolis Star Tribune 20 Sept. 1988: 1E,4E.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. Admiral of the Ocean Sea. Boston: Lit tle Brown, 1942.

Moyers, Bill. "Bill Moyers' World of Ideas," Public Affairs Television, Journal

Graphics, Inc., 267 Broadway, New York, NY, Show #145, Nov. 14, 1988.

pp. 1-7.

Walton, David. "Novel Turns Columbus Research into Dramatic Tale." Minne-

apolis Star Tribune 28 Apr. 1991: 8F.

Wood, David. "Authors' Love Story Reflected in Columbus." Minneapolis Star

Tribune 2 May 1991: IE, 2E-3E.

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