Shell Shaker

“The Inkilish okla were evil. They had traded me disease for our corn. It was in their blankets, the ones I brought back to Yanàbi Town. The disease destroyed many of our people and knapped my body like a piece of flint. Since then, I’d often dreamed of hanging Inkilish okla intestines in the trees so everyone could see their shit.” 

Shakbatina expresses her anger over what the English have done to her people. The colonizers who explored the Americas brought with them many diseases to which the Indigenous people had little, if any, immunity. Here, Shakbatina is most likely referring to smallpox.

“I watch the light cap them in blazing reds and yellows. The forest breathes heavily around me. At sunset the bluebirds chitter in the tops of the trees. People and things I’ve forgotten come rushing back to me. Grandmothers planting corn, making pots, cutting cane for baskets, scraping hides, reciting morning prayers, singing sleep to tired children.” 

In the time leading up to her death, Shakbatina remarks on the beauty of ordinary life and remembers different parts of her life. Shakbatina is saddened by what she must give up but does so anyway, demonstrating true courage and compassion.

“Dazed, she eats the room with her stare until the furniture, her clothes, even the cool silver and turquoise dots of her bedroom wallpaper are consumed. She’s been waiting for something to happen. At last it does. Out of the nothingness a spirit emerges. A Shell Shaker appears for Auda.” 

The morning after Redford rapes her, Auda wakes up hungry for both peace and justice, thus consuming everything around her until nothing is left. Only once she has been emptied out, in a sense, can she perceive what she needs to do. The message comes for her in the form of a Shell Shaker, and the reader knows it is Shakbatina’s way of continuing to protect her people, some 200 years after her death.

“Blood drips off them and glitters in the sun like red rain. It’s so beautiful you’ll want to catch it with your hands, but don’t. That’s when they can slip inside you. Better watch out, or you’ll lose yourself to them.” 

After hearing the news that Auda shot Redford McAlester, Adair thinks of a story her father told her. The story describes how evil can be attractive, that bad spirits look so beautiful to try to trick the observer into voluntarily taking hold of them. This describes how Redford/Red Shoes not only seduced Auda/Anoleta, but the Choctaw people as a whole.

“When he was a boy the government boarding schools were notorious for hiring sadists. Whites called them “strict disciplinarians.” Or “preachers.” From time to time he sees their faces in the dark. A ghost banquet of mottle-eyed strangers trying to nibble their way inside him.” 

Isaac remembers the horrors of the boarding schools that Indigenous children were often forced to attend in the early part of the 20th century. Here, Isaac indicates that the true horror wasn’t just the beatings and abuse, but the ways that these abusers tried to get inside their victims’ heads; they tried to make the children believe they were as valueless as these “strict disciplinarians” claimed.

“You see, it’s like this: when you have nan i hullo, which means ‘true love,’ then traces of that one woman linger on you the rest of your life. Every other relationship is doomed.” 

Isaac explains to his great-nephew, Hoppy, what it means for Choctaw to fall in love. He cautions Hoppy that each person has one true love, and they will never be satisfied without that person. Isaac speaks of his love for Delores, which has never wavered in over 50 years.

“After he returned home from boarding school, he’d sit with her for houses in front of their fireplace. Night after night she would draw stories in his mind. He saw a hurricane so powerful that it made the Mississippi run backwards. At the river Ahepatanichi, he saw kittling birds of an unknown species dropping excrement on the heads of Spanish invaders.” 

Isaac reflects on the time he spent with his grandmother, Nowatima, after escaping the boarding school. She told him the stories of his people, and the reader recognizes the story Shakbatina told at the very beginning of the novel. This reinforces the connections between the two timelines. 

“Pitiful as they are, they will one day crowd us out of our homelands. Also, everyone in the world will eat our foods—Ahe, tanchi, tobi, isito, bapho, but they will be called potatoes, corn, beans, squash, and peanut butter. Everything we have they will claim as theirs.”

In this section, Auda is both herself and Anoleta spending time with Red Shoes, who is simultaneously Redford. Anoleta asks him about the future, and he predicts the many ways the white colonizers will appropriate Indigenous culture. This vision is one of many supernatural experiences that Auda and her family have after she kills Redford, and it foreshadows how the story will be resolved.

“Look at what is left of our people—a chin, a foot, a jawbone, and ten thousand feet of intestines hanging from the trees in Yanàbi Town. I demanded his head and got it.” 

Auda dreams she says this to the police officer who enters the room immediately after she kills Redford. She doesn’t even “know what she means” (loc 1601). However, her words described what happened to the Choctaw because of Red Shoes’ treachery and what could have happened had Auda not stopped Redford.

“No, in the beginning Red was not Osano; he was a hummingbird, a necessity of nature, impeccably beautiful, devouring all that is sweet in life to stay alive.” 

Auda remembers what Redford was like before he was corrupted. However, she still doesn’t see the greediness inherent in his spirit, even as she notes that he devoured “all that is sweet in life,” which is not the behavior of a true leader who saves some of that sweetness for his people.

“Once hypnotized, an alligator will listen for hours to the crackling flames. What seductive stories fire must tell: the taste of burning wood, of palmetto leaves, the terror of rain. Fireflies carry those same stories, forming tiny constellations of stars in the arms of forests. Occasionally, a firefly overcome with emotion by the heat of its story will ignite and fall burning to the ground.” 

Koi Chitto thinks about the sublime, almost hypnotic beauty of the natural world. However, it is also a metaphor for the seductive power of evil: Both the alligator and the firefly are consumed by their desire for the fire, and it often leads to their deaths.

“He listens to the drums; his clansmen have been beating them all day. Their purpose is to wake the dead. Under the influence of black drink he can hear the internal drumming of the plants and trees. He can hear the collective prayers of the people and, if he concentrates, he hears the thoughts of a single person. The combined noise is maddening, yet all-consuming. His people learned to hear the internal drumming of the plant world eons ago.” 

Koi Chitto prepares to perform the bone-picking ceremony for Shakbatina. His days of fasting and consumption of potentially psychotropic plants have deepened his connection to the natural world so much that he feels connected to all living creatures. Howe seems to be arguing that one of the things the Choctaw lost from its internal and external conflicts was this connection.

“She realizes now that no matter how many dirt roads she and McAlester paved, no matter how many gas stations and subdivisions they built for the elderly with the casino money, it could never compete with the simple act of giving away a pair of jeans.”

Auda sees people ready to help her family because of the individual connections her mother has made with the community. She realizes that both she and Redford forgot that the real treasure of the Choctaw is not the money brought in by the casino, but the people themselves. Their ignorance has led to internal conflict, but their connections can be restored if Auda remembers this fact. 

“‘Did you not see my mother, the one called Shakbatina, raised up from the scaffold this very night? Did you know my mother’s flesh was food? Her blood was drink? Alive, we use the animals. The animal is consumed. In death, the people are consumed by the animals.’ Pointing to herself she says, ‘We are life everlasting. Filanchi okla, we will pick your bones after you are gone.’ Then she repeats the expression Father Baudouin used. ‘Life everlasting, we are it!’” 

Anoleta confronts the priests who attempt to convert her to Christianity. She is angry that they do not recognize that the beliefs of the Choctaw are as valuable to them as the beliefs of Christianity are to the priests. She calls on the priests to recognize the value of the complicated and complex spiritual beliefs of her people.

“While I waited, bustle-skirted ladies blossomed into flappers. Flappers grew into hippies, with the symbols of American Indians sewn on their jeans. I have witnessed the panic of 1907, the second confiscation of Choctaw lands. Statehood for Oklahoma. The giddy 20s. The desperate dustbowl years. The crash of ‘29, and two World Wars. But I am skipping parts and jumping ahead. I do not want to do this, because gradually we become indivisible from our memories. I want to remember it all.” 

Shakbatina explains the many changes she witnessed as she continued to try to protect her people, much of them negative for the Choctaw. She also notes that one’s identity is tied up in memory. In other words, without our memories, we would not be the same people. Shakbatina’s statement serves as a metaphor for the Choctaw people: They cannot lose their memories of the past, otherwise they will no longer be the Choctaw.

“She’d run to European colognes and beaver coats, to cafes where cinematic men with thin mustaches repeatedly said, ‘Delightful,’ and ‘Darling.’ In Hollywood, she’d grown into the double-faced woman in the black and white films. Spoke slivers of dialogue in gushes of euphoria, or tenderness. The other her.” 

Delores thinks about her life as an actress when she was a young woman. For Delores, it served as an escape from the memories of the boarding school. Delores tried to deny what she endured by denying her heritage; she became a different person. It was not until the death of her mother that she decided she could no longer be this “double-faced woman.” She became instead a keeper of tradition, helping to revive and revitalize many of the ancient Choctaw traditions and songs.

“Like the parent of a spoiled child, they were there to give things to the bad ones. Make them comfortable so that they would not want to leave their resting place and harass the living. But when the mounds were opened by grave diggers, these flawed spirits escaped like flesh-eating flies. They passed through many changes. Always becoming predatory. Put your dead chief in a mound so he will be protected from escaping again. Give him everything in death he wanted in life. That way he will never leave it again.” 

While she is kneading dough in the Billy kitchen, Delores’ vision includes the sound of many voices, which all have the same message about how to heal the wounds caused by Redford, and even older wounds, such as the division of the Choctaws into Mississippi Choctaw and Oklahoma Choctaw. This also represents Howe’s argument that the archeologists disrespectfully interfered with the Indigenous burial sites and also misunderstood the function of grave goods in Indigenous burials: They weren’t there to honor the dead but to trap them and keep them from hurting others. 

“Memories dressed in thick bear skins with ice in their hair. Thoughts with gorgets made of mastodon toes around their necks. Voices with long black braids and flint hoes give rise to ancient arguments on how best to move the Earth.” 

The image of people wearing bear skins and mastodon toes indicates the deep roots of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Delores’ vision indicates she is seeing her earliest ancestors who walked the earth at the same time as mastodons, ancient elephant-like creatures, who roamed the Americas hundreds of thousands of years ago.

“The dining table represents consumerism. The things the English and the French taught the Indians: to love foreign things above all else. Auntie, you’re describing internalized colonialism. If you think foreigners’ things, ideas, and religions are better than what your own culture has, then you’re internally colonized. Then you don’t care about your own things, culture, or land. In Delores’ vision, one Indian can’t do anything alone, but needs the help of ancestors and young people to build the future.” 

Delores’ vision, which helps her understand what they must do to quiet Redford/Red Shoes’ spirit and how to reconcile the divided Choctaw people, begins with her in her parents’ home trying to clean the one good thing her mother owned: a dining room table. However, she can’t clear the dust off the table. Adair helps Delores understand this part of the vision, arguing that it represents internalized racism. Indeed, both Delores and Isaac fight to keep out the words of their abusers at the boarding school, and Delores even gives into it for a time, running far from her heritage. Furthermore, Delores’ inability to clean the table serves as a metaphor for the importance of community.

“Just then the wind, an agent of the emissary’s voice, sends out her words. They buzz around the trees, dress in the forest, and come out a spirit, Shakbatina. Her spirit dances across the sky. She wears a list of wounds. Her deerskin dress is bloodied at the neck and hem. Smoke rises from her turtle shells and forms a black cloud that she holds in her palms before flicking it upward to Hashtali.”

When Red Shoes approaches a village for help, on the run from his own people, he is rebuffed, and asked to leave. Red Shoes is offended, but one of the women begins chanting, telling him that he is “a dead man” (loc 3325). Red Shoes then sees a vision of Shakbatina, given shape by the chanting. She is powerful and calls on Red Shoes to sacrifice himself as she did. His refusal indicates his greed and selfishness. 

“Everything around me is moving away, unsteady. I am raining down on the ground, dissolving in a blood clot of sadness. In my last solemn moments I pray for a reflection, a shape that will defy the astounded dead. I will not be a stone without eyes. I will not live where no one sees me or knows my name. I will return, I sing. I will return, I sing. I will return.” 

These words are Red Shoes’ vow that he will return, even if he is killed by his own people, which he recognizes as his fate. Here, Red Shoes demonstrates his craving for power and glory and vows he “will not live where no one sees [him] or knows [his] name.” He does indeed return, as Redford McAlester, and with him that greed and arrogance.

“I am convinced now that Chahtas pay more respect to their dead than any other race. To them the bones of their relatives are holy. Proof that they existed in the past as they will exist forever.” 

Father Renoir writes these words to his superiors back in France. His words reveal one of the central themes of the story—the relationship between life and death—and the Choctaw belief that the two are intertwined rather than binary opposites.

“How shrill, how harsh—the barbs wound the likes of us all. Tragedy about Chief, isn’t it? Poor bastard, getting it that way in the head. I’ve seen worse—he’d seen worse, to hear ’em tell it. Immortal role, chief. It can’t be easy. Dissenting voices to contend with, hurling curses at one another, profiles-in-courage types dealing you a Mickey Finn. Who knows who’s doin’ what, to whom? Palms raised toward the Sun in prayer, or pressed together in front of the Virgin Mary—it doesn’t mean a thing, I grant you. Oh, don’t look at me so skeptically. One religious gesture you’re in, another you’re out.” 

James Joyce’s words to Adair are coded, indicating his knowledge of Red Shoes’ return as Redford, as well as his understanding of the commonality of religious worship, equating worship of the sun with worship of the Virgin Mary in Catholicism. Howe imitates author James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness writing style, characterized by jumbled imagery, nonlinear pacing, and long, convoluted sentences.