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August Brave Heart Sanchez

azs5622@psu.edu
English 404 Sect. 002
Fall 2014
Dr. Carla Mulford

Pumpkin Spiced Grass: a study of Gender

in Susan Powers The Grass Dancer
Susan Powers The Grass Dancer, is remarkable in many, many ways. Hers is a book
which plunges the reader into Sioux culture, manifested in the traditional-ness of the book.
Dakota cultural norms shine through the pages: non-linear time, warrior culture, pow-wows and
dancers, medicine people, and even a brief look into the interaction between nineteenth century
Sioux and white soldiers at Fort Laramie. Powers mastery of language is extraordinary, and the
novel flows and drifts superbly. The Grass Dancer is set apart from other works of fiction, both
American and Indigenous, not only in language but in how Power views modern Indians, and
gender. In The Grass Dancer, Power writes to redefine perceptions of Indian culture as modern,
generally, and specifically to show how gender has changed in Dakota culture.
To begin with, it is important to delve briefly into Sioux culture and oral tradition. Men
were, largely, the warriors; while there are instances of women joining war parties, and in doing
so accruing great honors for their deeds on the battle field women were, generally, left home to
mind more domestic, but no less important, matters. Thus men tended to be the more active

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agents, which are shown again in their stories. The hero, although hero isnt a particularly fitting
word, was almost universally male; women in Sioux oral tradition were either subordinated to
the male actor, or were absent, generally left home to tend to the children and elders. While I
cannot point to the specific stories that break these conventions, I not being Dakota or in Dakota
culture, and am, instead, Nde, and having only a basic knowledge of Dakota oral tradition, this is
how it was taught to me, as it was taught to my father. Power remarks on the machoism of the
Dakotas, through the words of Charlene Thunder: The men launched enthusiastically into the
chorus Theyre sending Sioux boys to Germany-- / Hitler better look out. / She [Charlene]
chuckled. Those macho Sioux guys, she thought (31). Power creates an image of the masculine
Sioux society in which the narrative takes place; she shows history and its nuances, subtly
weaving them into the narrative to allow the reader an understanding of the Dakota world in
which the narrative is set.
Despite the creation of the closer to the patriarchal Indian society than is taught in
schools today, Power fronts women. Three of the novels most important characters are Red
Dress, a powerful woman in 1864; Pumpkin, a young grass dancer; and Anna (Mercury)
Thunder, a witch. Pumpkin, the grass dancer, dies in the early pages, but it is because of her
interaction with Harley Wind Soldier, and subsequent death, that the continuous narrative of Red
Dress and Anna Thunder are told and explored.
Red Dress is perhaps the most important actor in the novel. Her presence is felt
throughout both the narrative and time: her story ends in 1864, yet in 1982, she is still an active
part of Harleys life, as well as being the place from which Anna draws her power and in some
ways evokes it herself, but she began by evoking Red Dress (234). Red Dress stands in the face
of Dakota tradition. She receives a vision, a dream, that she is to take a journey to Fort Laramie,

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but there the vision ends. Visions were usually given to men by the Spirits, and not given to
women. Red Dress does this, taking her brother with her; she travels to Fort Laramie, where she
then lives. There she helps a priest, befriends an outcast woman, kills three people with magic,
gets shot and dies. Her story doesnt end there however. Through Powers masterful storytelling,
Red Dress returns: she haunts the earth as a spirit, watching over her relations and giving advice
whenever she can. Red Dress is a female hero; her journey and return to her people on a travois
are the stuff of legend, and legend she becomes. Her story is told down the generations, and
Anna Thunder attempts to act in her legend by making the descendent of Ghost Horse (Red
Dresss lover) and herself (a decedent of Red Dress), fall in love. Because Red Dress acts in the
way of men, that is, that she has a journey to make, and makes it, she leaves tradition behind, and
forages ahead independent of all others.
Anna Thunder, who, at some point in her later life began to refer to herself as Mercury
Thunder, is, arguably, the single most active actor in the novel. She can control the spirits, and
possesses strong magic that influences others to her suggestion, which she uses for her own
selfish gains. Anna is a bad person, arguably evil: she kills her niece by demanding she dance
until her death (using her magic), she manipulated Calvin Wind Soldier into having an affair with
his wifes sister, and casts spells on young men to bed with her, among other actions. But while
she may be villainous, Anna Thunder does have an almost redeeming trait: Anna is her own
active agent. While The Grass Dancer doesnt offer many passive actors, namely Harely and
Calvin, Anna Thunder sets herself apart from the other, active, actors of the novel by her force of
will. She is described: Mercury believed she held her life firmly in place beneath, her tongue,
and she didnt spit it out here and here, in bits and pieces, diffusing its power. She had even taken
a new name, changing it from Anna to Mercury after her granddaughter brought home a copy of

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the periodic table in the eighth grade ad explained to her: An element is a substance that cant
be slip into simpler substances. / Thats my story, Mercury had told Charlene, running a thick
forefinger across the chart. Im all of a piece (13). In this moment, which is also where she
takes the name Mercurybefore being Anna ThunderAnna openly declares herself as
independent, elemental, and strongly basic. Anna is strong, vindictive, and full of magic: she
condemns her niece, Bernadine Blue Kettle, to death using her magic (235).
Anna Thunder takes the greatest agency of all the characters. Through iron will, she has
gained very strong magic. But instead of fitting into the mold of heroic stories, Anna steps away
from them declaring quite definitively to Janette McVay her refusal of Dakota women roles, and
power: I am not a bedtime story, (184), and again on page 187 And I am not a fairy tale.
Anna is far from good, and in this, and in her magical power, she walks her own path, far from
the Good Red Road.
Pumpkin, the Menomonie grass dancer is perhaps the most important actor, as, even
though she is an outsider, that is, not Sioux, she acts as a catalyst for the ensuing narrative to
unfold. Pumpkins death is not, however, her most redeeming quality. Instead, it is her novelty:
Pumpkin dances grass dancea dance that is generally for men only. On the Pow-wow trail, Ive
never seen a lady grass dancer, and neither has Herod Small War, the Dakota elder: Have you
ever seen a girl grass dancer? Frank asked Herod. No, I never did. But I guess its about time.
They have every right (24). In this way Power shows the reader what an incredible person
Pumpkin is.
Pumpkin may be a two-spirit, or a man and a woman residing within the same body. This
could account for her not only being a Grass Dancer, but accepted by Herod Small War, a noted

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conservative who may have been able to see that she was a two-spirit and thus a powerful and
respected person (25). But Power gives little into the mind and soul of Pumpkin saying only that
she has plenty of soul to spare (42).
With each of the three characters, Red Dress, Anna Thunder, and Pumpkin, Power sets up
strong women, women unlike those found in the stories told about the Sioux and Indians. Each of
them breaks traditional form with the form being passive women at home while the men warred
and hunted. Each woman breaks this stereotype: Red Dress goes on a journey, and ends up
killing several military men, earning her much honor, Anna works powerful magic, the type that
is usually reserved for the powerful medicine man in stories, but really, she exists without the
need of a man to define and confine her, and Pumpkin exists in male space as a grass dancer, and
outside Sioux and Indian space with her desire and intention of attending University (17). By
challenging the archetypes Power offers change for the Sioux people, for Indians everywhere.
The audience is who ultimately conveys success to Power and her endeavor for change.
The assumption of a non-native reader allows for the narrative to combat the stereotypes of
Sioux and by means of synecdoche Indians in general, by non-natives. Assuming an Indigenous
audience, the intent of the text shifts, and addresses gender roles in a modern and changing time.
With each of the characters existing outside of the traditional gender roles of women, Powers
suggests that women should have a growing role in the male dominated spheres. This is
especially shown through Pumpkin who dances a mans dance, Red Dress who completes a
journey, and Anna Thunder becoming a perverted medicine man, but also with the other actors
such as Charlene who leaves the reservation, Crystal who finds a loving husband, and Lydia
whose strength and silence is regal. These actors move not only the narrative forward, but
possibly even us, as readers, forward.