Yellow Woman

Introducsion

The Yellow Woman was published in Kenneth Rosen's anthology “The Manto Send Rain Clouds: Contemporary Stories by American Indians”, in 1974. It is written by Leslie Mamon Silki, and follows the story of a young Laguna Pueblo woman who goes on a journey with a stranger she happens to come across on a walk among the river bed. The story is rich in myth, as the stranger regales the young woman with traditional Keresan myths of Kochininako, or “The Yellow Woman”, and how she went on a personal journey herself where she wandered for years with a powerful spirit called Kat'sina, which can be described as 'The Whirlwind Man”. The story is an intricate weave of Native American myths combined with stories of everyday life, but the author has taken special care to blend the two in such a manner that it becomes hard to separate the two and figure out what is myth and what is real. There are several complementary poems and sub-stories involved in Yellow Woman that further enhance the mystery of the story of said woman, and has been praised far and wide for its handling of ancient mythology as well as Native American traditions.

Discussion

The initial poem that starts off the ''Yellow Woman''story hints that the story that follows is mythic. It reiterates the The Whilrwind Man is related to the wind and that he and Kochininako travel through the whole world in a swift manner because they travel through winds. The narrator of the story wakes up at dawn next to a man on a riverbank, watches the sun rise and walks away through the same route she came through, She comes across horse hooves but is unable to find her own horse so returns to the sleeping man to tell him that she is on her way to leave. The man then gives her a mysterious smile and tells her that she must go with him as she is the Yellow Woman. However, he does not answer further questions in response to the narrators enquiries. While she insists that she is not the Yellow Woman, saying''I have my own name and I come from the pueblo on the other side of the mesa. Your name is Silva and you next to a man on the riverbed, in the start of the story a stranger I met by the river yesterday afternoon'', the man only laughs and tells her both events of today and yesterday are unrelated. The narrator is in disbelief and reiterates that''the old stories about the ka'tsina spirit and Yellow Woman can't mean us.”

Since the story is centered around the narrator, and of Silva, there are several issues related to identity and personal and cultural characteristics in the entirety of the story. The mythical side of the story, in my opinion, is mostly related to the fact that the narrator is unsure of the clear identity of the man from the riverside, and at first is suspicious of him but ...