Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Lakota Woman, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Activism and Resistance
Assimilation, Tradition, and Identity
Unity, Inclusion, and Equality
Racism and Sexism
Summary
Analysis
Although Mary wasn’t romantically interested in Leonard Crow Dog around the time of the siege, she married him shortly afterward. It wasn’t the fact that he was a medicine man that deterred her—there are no Lakota society rules against medicine men marrying—but rather the fact that she regarded him as an esteemed leader.
Mary implies that she couldn’t imagine Leonard as a romantic partner because of his high position as the spiritual leader of AIM—she respected him so much that she couldn’t imagine him as a romantic partner. Her esteem for him speaks to his importance in her life—and the lives of the AIM activists—as the person who helped Native Americans connect with indigenous American culture.
Themes
Mary suspects that Leonard had been interested in her for quite some time. Leonard made his first sexual advance at the Rosebud Fair that took place after the Wounded Knee siege. He drove her to a party, kissing her on the way. But Mary wasn’t interested in him—she wanted to leave. While at the party, Leonard grabbed her arm and took her from the house to a deserted pasture. She went home with him. Afterward, she still didn’t consider him a potential partner, even though Leonard’s mother informed Mary that he had told her his plan to marry Mary.
In Mary’s account, Leonard comes off as very presumptuous and even abusive. Mary makes it clear that she wasn’t interested in him, yet he forced her to go with him to a pasture where it is suggested that they had sex. Given Mary’s resistance to going with him, it’s not clear whether she consented to having sex with him. Without taking Mary’s opinions or feelings into consideration, Leonard simply assumes that Mary will marry him. His entitlement speaks to the sexism that Native American women encountered—many men simply treated women as sexual objects they could possess.
Themes
For a while afterward, Leonard continued to try to persuade Mary to marry him. She gave in after a ceremony that Leonard performed, when he cornered her and demanded that she marry him. She refused for a while but, when her ride home left without her, she ended up staying with Leonard that night—and, it turned out, for life.
Again, Leonard’s actions reveal his entitled attitude toward women. Mary is very clear that she did not want to marry him, but Leonard coerced her into agreeing. His presumptuous and—it is suggested—abusive behavior reflects the sexism that Native American women faced, including in their own communities.
Themes
Mary interrupts her narrative to describe the Crow Dogs’ family home, which was on a beautiful stretch of land. The home wasn’t just for the nuclear family, but for the whole tiyospaye. In addition to relatives, they often hosted friends and strangers who needed a place to stay.
Mary has already described the Crow Dogs as a Lakota tribe that resisted assimilation and continued to live a more traditional Lakota lifestyle. In this passage, she shows that the Crow Dogs still lived with the whole tiyospaye; evidently, their generational refusal to assimilate to white society paid off, in that they were able to keep alive Lakota cultural traditions.
Themes
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Jumping back to the narrative, Mary discusses how she was not at all ready to become a wife. In her role, not only was she expected to be a mother to Leonard’s three children from a previous marriage, but she was also expected to do all the housework at the Crow Dogs’ home. Leonard constantly had guests over—relatives, other activists, community members, and sometimes even strangers in need of help—and Mary was always expected to cook and clean for these groups of people, most of whom were men who refused to help with the chores.
Upon marrying Leonard, Mary struggled under the weight of all the work that he expected her to do. Because of her gender, Leonard expected her to carry out all domestic duties without his assistance, including caring for the children of his previous marriage. Her frustration speaks to the unfairness of his demands and the gender roles by which he operated.
Themes
Another stressor in this already difficult situation was that Leonard’s family was not welcoming to Mary. They criticized her because she was a “half-blood” Lakota woman who had not been raised in a traditional Lakota manner. One particular sore point for Leonard’s family was that Mary couldn’t speak the Lakota language.
The Crow Dogs’ cold reception of Mary shows another problem that assimilated Native Americans face: more traditional Native Americans sometimes reject them. Because Mary’s mother and grandmother raised Mary without many Lakota cultural traditions—such as the language and religion—Leonard’s family wasn’t welcoming to her. They didn’t consider her Lakota enough.
Themes
In turn, Mary’s family didn’t accept Leonard, whom they thought was undoing Mary’s Christian and “white” upbringing. But the more that Mary’s and Leonard’s families criticized their marriage, the stronger their bond became.
The tension between Mary’s and Leonard’s families illustrates how assimilation to white society divides Native Americans. Mary’s family and Leonard’s family both represent a group: those who assimilated and those who retained a traditional lifestyle. In this passage, Mary shows that each group was prejudiced against the other. For children like Mary who were forced to assimilate to white society yet wanted to live a more traditional Lakota lifestyle, this situation could be alienating, as neither her family nor her husband’s family was accepting of her.
Themes
Mary interrupts the narrative to give the Crow Dog family history. The founder of the clan (the first Crow Dog) was a man named Kangi-Shunka. A warrior, a medicine man, and a chief, Kangi-Shunka is an important figure in Lakota history. Even though Kangi-Shunka lived about a hundred years before Mary married Leonard, his actions still affect the culture and lifestyle of his people. As Mary puts it, “Sioux and elephants never forget.”
Mary has previously touched on how the first Crow Dog, Kangi-Shunka, was a man of resistance, as he refused to culturally assimilate to white society or cooperate with the U.S. government. Here, Mary makes it clear that the first Crow Dog set a behavioral and ideological precedent for his people and their descendants, which speaks to how a person’s acts of resistance can inspire future generations.
Themes
Mary then tells the story of how Kangi-Shunka got his name, which means Crow Dog. It comes from an attack that he and his people endured one morning while they were on a hunt. At dawn, white settlers and some Crow warriors attacked Kangi-Shunka and his people. After giving his horse to one of his wounded warriors, Kangi-Shunka was badly wounded by two arrows. He told his men to save themselves. They did so, leaving him behind in the snow.
This passage depicts two different tribes fighting against each other, with the Crow warriors aiding white soldiers in their attack against Kangi-Shunka and his people. Presumably, the Crow had something to gain by fighting with the U.S. government, but history shows that, in the end, their cooperation didn’t stop the U.S. government from stripping all indigenous tribes of their rights. The implication is that division between indigenous tribes—particularly when tribes would help the U.S. government in fighting other indigenous nations—only ended up hurting the Native American community as a whole, as the U.S. government sought to assume power over all tribes.
Themes
Kangi-Shunka was dying in the snow when two coyotes approached him. They kept him warm and gave him medicine to heal his wounds. When he was well enough to walk, the coyotes were joined by a crow, and the three animals led Kangi-Shunka to his people’s camp. He was named after these animals, Crow Coyote. The person who translated the name mistranslated it to English, calling him Crow Dog instead of Crow Coyote.
This anecdote encourages unity between different beings: without the help of the coyotes and the crow, Kangi-Shunka likely would have died.
Themes
The most famous story about the first Crow Dog is his murder of Spotted Tail, a chief of the Brule tribe. Although the first Crow Dog and Spotted Tail had been friends in their youth, they parted ways when Spotted Tail started cooperating with the white settlers and government—he believed it was useless to resist them. The first Crow Dog disagreed vehemently, and the two men and their clans became rivals.
Spotted Tail and the first Crow Dog represent the two options that marginalized people are often limited to: one can either assimilate to the oppressor’s system and accept that fate, or one can fight back. Spotted Tail chose the former while the first Crow Dog espoused the latter. Mary’s admiration for Crow Dog’s legacy and how his descendants have retained their Lakota culture suggests that, while Spotted Tail’s assimilation is understandable (she makes it clear that he didn’t feel like he had much choice), Crow Dog’s resistance is preferable.
Themes
On August 4, 1881, the first Crow Dog and Spotted Tail got into a gun fight. Spotted Tail had initiated the fight, but Crow Dog won it, killing Spotted Tail. After the fight, Crow Dog participated in a sweat to purify himself.
The rivalry and Spotted Tail’s murder show how internal division harms indigenous communities. In this instance, the first Crow Dog’s and Spotted Tail’s differing political stances on how to deal with the threat of colonization resulted in the death of a tribal leader and Crow Dog’s guilt and potential legal punishment.
Themes
A judge in nearby Deadwood sentenced the first Crow Dog to death for the murder and gave him one month to prepare for his hanging. During that month, Crow Dog prepared a death song, gave away all his belongings, and had an outfit made for him. As Mary explains, he was willing and ready to die for killing Spotted Tail. But when Crow Dog arrived in Deadwood for his execution, his lawyer cheerfully informed him that the Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. government has no jurisdiction on reservations. Legend has it that Crow Dog was vaguely annoyed that he had prepared for nothing.
The legal victory speaks to the importance of taking action to change a situation. Although the book suggests that it was Crow Dog’s lawyer—and not Crow Dog himself, as he was prepared to die—who argued against Crow Dog’s execution, the legal battle resulted in a victory for indigenous people, whose tribes retained legal sovereignty on reservations.
Themes
But the first Crow Dog did suffer a punishment among his people: he was sentenced to living apart from his tribe, meaning he had to eat, drink, and smoke alone. Crow Dog gave the Spotted Tail family money and resources, but while this payment helped establish peace between the tribes, the Crow Dog people suffered a “blood guilt” and ostracization that was declared to endure four generations.
Crow Dog’s punishment among the Lakota show how the Lakota already had their own systems of justice within their communities prior to white settlers’ arrival. In other words, white society’s legal system was just another form of forced assimilation for indigenous people.
Themes
Mary returns to her narrative, in which she describes her attempts to adjust to life with the Crow Dogs. She emphasizes how difficult it was to break through the cultural divide between her and the traditional and isolated Crow Dogs. Over-stressed from all the work she was doing for Leonard’s family, she had a mental break-down and got very physically sick.
Mary makes it clear that she greatly struggled at the beginning of her marriage. Not only was she rejected by the more traditional Crow Dog family, but she also suffered from all the work that was expected of her, as Leonard’s family believed in strict gender roles in which women had to complete all the domestic and child-rearing duties.
Themes
With the help of another man, Estes Stuart, Leonard held a peyote meeting for Mary. During the meeting, Estes declared that Mary was suffering from a “love sickness.” At the time, this diagnosis upset Mary—she thought Estes was making fun of her. But later Estes explained that he meant that she was feeling broken down because she didn’t feel loved or appreciated for all she was doing for Leonard and his family. Leonard’s family began to comfort her, Henry Crow Dog even calling her daughter. After taking peyote and having a vision that depicted her former self passing away, Mary felt reassured.
The diagnosis of Mary’s love sickness suggests that Mary felt underappreciated because Leonard and his family expected her to perform an enormous amount of work simply because she was a woman. Not only does it appear that she didn’t like the work asked of her, but she also struggled with the thanklessness of her chores—Leonard’s family acted as though men were entitled to avoid domestic work because they expected women to do it. While it doesn’t appear that Mary’s chores were lessened, Leonard’s family did start making an effort to welcome her and show their appreciation. After the ceremony, Mary felt comforted, which shows how participating in indigenous religious ceremonies helps her feel more in tune with her identity. In this case, the ceremony also prompted the Lakota who were excluding her to become more welcoming, which is another way in which the ceremony helped Mary’s sense of identity—her husband’s family stopped ostracizing her for her non-traditional upbringing.
Themes
