Analysis of the Passage

     The trickster tale Ikto Conquers Iya, the Eater ,is a Native American story. At first read the tale gives a silly impression with supernatural beings and light comedy, but upon further analysis there are deeper messages within the text. The tale can be interpreted as having multiple messages of overpopulation, excessive human expansion and war. We find this message expressed in the following passage from Ikto Conquers Iya, the Eater:

Now, if Iya had not been destroyed in just that, he would undoubtedly still be eating people up, White people and all. Iya was killed and that is why the entire country is now so full of people that it is impossible to find any open space anymore (Norton 86).

            First, there’s a message of overpopulation as the tale discusses why there are so many people in the country. It’s hard to understand why Native American’s would be concerned about overpopulation, but because Europeans were expanding into their land this may have given them some concern. Native Americans underestimated the population size of Europe, and when Native Americans came back from Europe to report to their tribes, they must have thought how crowded the world was. When Pocahontas, an Indian chieftain’s daughter, went to England one of her chaperones, Tomocom, was given the task to count the English population by cutting notches on a stick.

To count the population of England on a stick shows the misconception Native Americans had of the size European populous.

                        Also, the tale tells of War. The world eater, Iya, is conquered by a tribe of Indians sneaking up on him and charging him. Iya represents the outside forces that are the European settlers. In the tale Ikto asks the tribes to come together to expel Iya. This plea for unification relates to the idea Indians had, that if all the Indian tribes came together they could overrun the intrusive European colonies with force. This representations of Europeans as world eaters, relates to the colonist use of warfare and their taking of Indian land.  In the passage Iya is defeated, and then a massive amount of Indians come running from Iya’s mouth, this event represents that if the Indians defeated the Europeans that they would flourish in number. There’s also a reference to the world eater would eventually eat up the white people as well. This prediction foretells that if the Indians were conquered by the world eater (white people) that  the whiter race would turn on themselves. That part of the passage gives the tale a prophetic tone. The Revolutionary War and the American Civil War are two examples of the Indians being defeated and White people turning on themselves through warfare.

At first glance this trickster tale seems very cartoonish and no driven plot by Western standards. The trickster tale, Ikto Conquers Iya, the Eater, is full of allusions about Indian and European relations, and deserves close analysis in order to see through its light humor. The tale itself is actually prophetic in that it warns of overpopulation, rapid human expansion, and wars as a result of human expansion. The tale can actually be considered a prophecy.

    Works Cited

Baym, Nina. "Sioux." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 86. Print.

"Tomocomo, Visited London 1616." Official Jamestown Settlement & Yorktown Victory Center Visitor's Site. Web. 28 Sept. 2011. <http://www.historyisfun.org/chronicles/tomocomo_more.html>.