Orange immediately begins the novel with a motif, the reader just does not know it is a
motif yet. The first words Orange writes in the prologue of There There are “There was an Indian head, the head of an Indian, the drawing of the head of a headdressed, long-haired Indian depicted, drawn by an unknown artist in 1939, broadcast until the late 1970s to American TV’s everywhere after all the shows ran out It’s called the Indian Head test pattern. ... you’d see the Indian , surrounded by circles that looked like sites through riflescopes.” (Orange 8). The Indian Head is a recurrently mentioned idea throughout the entirety of the novel. The Indian Head is not always used in the same context everytime, but it is still prevalent there the whole time and being used to support a major theme of the book. Orange first uses the Indian Head motif by tracing it as a motif throughout American history in the prologue. By using the motif this way, he gives the reader several examples of brutality performed on Native Americans in American history while still connecting them all back to the Indian Head motif. This tactic not only connects everything, but it also helps the reader better connect this brutal American history (which they more than likely had no prior knowledge of) to the lives and experiences of the Native American characters throughout There There.
The prologue is filled with examples of Orange’s use of the Indian Head motif on every page. For example, Orange begins the history lesson in 1621 and King Philip's War. The reader sees the Indian Head motif in this section when Orange says, “Metacomet was beheaded and
dismembered. ... Metacomet’s head was sold to Plymuth Colony for thirty shillings - the going rate for an Indian head at the time. The head was put on a spike, carried through the streets of Plymouth, then displayed at Plymouth Fort for the next twenty-five years.” (Orange 9). He then goes on to discuss 1637 and the Pequot people. The motif shines through here when he says, “At one such celebration in Manhattan, people were said to have celebrated by kicking the heads of Pequot people through the streets like soccer balls.” (Orange 9). Orange’s use of the Indian Head motif is to further emphasize the theme (and the history) that Native Americans have been defined by everyone else and are constantly slandered in the media. Orange is using this motif, as well as his own story, to show what it is really like being a Native American in America. One of the best quotes to support this is when Orange says,
“We have the sad, defeated Indian silhouette, and the heads rolling down temple stairs, we have it in our head, Kevin Costner saving us, John Wayne’s six-shooter slaying us, an Italian guy named Iron Eyes Cody playing our parts in movies. We have the litter-mourning, tear-ridden Indian in the commercial (also Iron Eyes Cody), adn the sink-tossing, crazy Indian who was the narrator in the novel, the voice of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. We have all the logos and mascots. The copy of a copy of the image of an Indian in a textbook, All the way from the top of Canada, the top of Alaska, down to the bottom of South America, Indians were removed, then reduced to a feathered image. Our heads are on flags, jerseys, and coins. Our heads were on the penny first, of course, the Indian cent, and then on the buffalo nickel, both before we could even vote as a people - which, like the truth of what happened in history all over the world, and like all that spilled blood from slaughter are now out of circulation.” (Orange 10 -11).
Orange is using this Indian Head motif throughout the book to show the social injustices that his people have faced. Throughout American history, his people have been slaughtered, forced out of their homes and their land, forced onto reservations, misrepresented, mocked, and blatantly persecuted for being Native American. Americans use the Indian head as a way to make money (whether that be as “flags, jerseys, or coins”) and to further cover up their hundreds of unjust acts performed against the Native Americans. Orange’s use of the Indian Head motif is bring these injustices to light and show the readers the truth of his people.
Orange continues with his use of the Indian Head motif, but in a different way. For the next few chapters, ORange uses the Indian Head motif as the actual faces of Native Americans versus the Indian Head symbol. With this type of the Indian Head motif, Orange analyzes how the characters feel when looking at the reflection of their “Indian Head.” For example, Orange says “I [Tony Loneman] pulled my regalia out and put it on. ... I looked at my face. The Drome. I didn’t see it there. I saw an Indian. I saw a dancer” (Orange 23). Another example is when Orange says, “And so what Orvil is, according to himself, standing in front of the mirror with his too-small-for-him stolen regalia, is dressed up like an Indian. In hides and ties, ribbons and feathers, boned breastplate, and hunched shoulders, he stands, weak in the knees, a fake, a copy, a boy playing dress-up. ... He’s waiting for something true to appear before him—about him. It’s important that he dresses like an Indian, dances like an Indian, even if it is an act, even if he feels like a fraud the whole time, because the only way to be Indian in this world is to look and act like an Indian. To be or not to be Indian depends on it.” (Orange 90). With this different way of using the India Head motif throughout every character’s section in the novel, Orange is pulling the reader’s attention to the identity struggle the characters are facing. As Native Americans who have been pushed from their lands and forced to urbanize, many of the characters struggle with their identity. They do not know whether they are classified as white, Mexican, Native American, or etc because they do not look like what a “typical” Native American would look like. It is like they have to fight through their appearance to be considered Native.
Overall, Orange successfully used the Indian Head motif to bring the social injustices faced by Native Americans to light. He uses the motif as a way to both put American history on trial and as a way to show the disconnect the characters feel with themselves and their Native American heritage. Orange successfully shows the injustices that have been enacted upon his people. As Orange says in There There, “Speak softly and carry a big stick, that’s what he said about foreign policy. That’s what they used on us, bears and Indians both. Foreigners on our own land. And with their big sticks they marched us so far west we almost disappeared. (Orange 41).
Sources
Orange, Tommy. There There. Vintage Books, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC, 2019.
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