Poisoning And Rescue:Colonization And Indian Medicine In Fools Crow

James Welch(1940-2003),an Indian writer,is regarded as one of the four outstanding writers of contemporary American Indian literature.His novel Fools Crow takes the American “Westward Movement” in the 19 th century as the background,combines fictional narration with historical facts,and tells the story of the struggle between Indian tribes and white colonists in Montana.At the same time,it also builds a magical Indian world.The novel reveals the colonization of Indians during the American“Westward Movement” in the 19 th century from three aspects: ecology,trade and plague.Combined with the history of colonization and the storyline of the novel,this study realizes that ecological expansion leads to trade,which in turn leads to the epidemic of diseases.David Arnold pointed out that colonialism produced a colonial economy and caused changes in the ecological environment,which had a sustained and far-reaching impact on local public health.Based on the study of post-colonialism,this study holds that the colonists reduce the living materials of the Indian tribes by destroying the ecology and that civilize them with natural disenchantment,which causes the Indians to suffer from mental illness caused by “evil spirits”.On the other hand,the destruction of ecology promoted the exchange of trade,which not only strengthened the destruction of ecology,but also poisoned the souls of Indians and made them suffer from social diseases.Through trade,smallpox virus from the old world was also spread to Indian tribes.It not only led to the rapid death of the Indians,but also made the colonists master the right of colonial medical discourse.Ecology,trade and plague together laid the foundation for the colonists to establish the discourse of western ideology in the Indian land.Thoreau believes that society is always sick,the best society is always the most sick,and nature is the cure for these diseases.The struggle between Indians and whites on Indian land is actually a struggle between nature and western society and between Indian medicine and disease.From the perspective of transcendentalism,traditional Indian medicine is the best way to cure a series of problems and diseases brought to Indian society by the colonists.Traditional Indian medicine includes Sun Dance,Beaver Medicine and Vision Quest.Sun Dance treats the natural environment destroyed by ecological expansion,reaffirms the Indian spirit of rational consumption of nature,and cures mental illness through dramatic treatment;Beaver Medicine uses its profound natural concepts and animal-dominated moral myths to find the lost soul and cure the social diseases caused by trade;Vision Quest is a way of religious medicine,which “cures” the national demise caused by smallpox and reverses the end of exile.These three traditional Indian medical discourses jointly cured the influence of the colonists on the Indian tribes,rewrote the marginalized weak pattern of the Indian discourse,and exposed the hegemonic nature of the West during the“Westward Movement”.