Tewa

The protagonist of the story begins rebelliously. Laughing Warrior Girl rejects the authority of male elders to force her into a conventional female role. Yet when the community is attacked, and her uncle wants her to prove the validity of her claim to transcend gender limitations, he must seek for her among the other women doing women's work. She has rebelled without abandoning her social responsibilities. So she responds to her uncle's challenge gaily, laughing and singing a war song, carrying her musical instrument along with mens' weapons to battle, and taunting the enemy by flaunting her sex. As she fight victoriously her face transforms in to a warrior mask, a public manifestation of her personal fulfillment. But when chosen war chief, she acts as a "good girl." As with the mask, the story dramatizes her behavior as an adapting of social tradition to distinctive subjectivity. This is why Laughing Warrior Girl can sustain her community both as warrior and as healer. The bequeathing of her mask to her descendants confirm that to be a genuinely "good" Tewa one must keep alive a dynamic interplay between features of individuality such as temperament and gender and the demands of social institutions. A majority of Native American stories address this paradox - that only in the affirmation of personal independence lies the possibility of an enduringly strong community. It is notable that nearly half the narratives in this collection begin with some equivalent of the Tewa "Where they lived, lived Laughing Warrior Girl." This grounds the story as one of a community of others by the same people ("they") with an established, ongoing life, into which breaks the unusual individual.

From Kroeber

Title: Tewa tales /
Author: Parsons, Elsie Worthington Clews, 1874-1941.