"Ikto Conquers Iya, The Eater"

This blog entry is comprised of my notes and reactions to the Sioux trickster tale, "Ikto Conquers Iya, The Eater" as it is printed in the seventh edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature Volume A.

Text Notes:

• This story begins with Iktomi wandering the world.  He reaches the top of a hill at the same time as Iya, and expects that he will die; despite the thought of his impending death, Iktomi wonders which of the two is the eldest.
• Iktomi asks Iya when Iya was created before recalling that he himself created Iya just after he created the sky and the earth.
• The two are heading for the same village, so they decide to go together.  They stop for the night, and while Iya sleeps, Iktomi looks inside him (through his mouth) and sees all the villages he has already eaten all living happily within him as they did before they were consumed.
• Iktomi is frightened by Iya nd wants to capture him, so he devises a plan.
• When Iya wakes up, Iktomis asks him what he fears.  Iya confides that he fears "the sound of rattles, and drums, the hooting of owls, and the shouts of men" (85).  Iktomi claims to fear those exact same things.
• Next, Iktomi makes a deal with Iyo to each eat half of the village beginning at either end.  The winner (i.e. he who gets to the middle of the village first) will be rewarded by being able to eat his brother.  Iyo agrees to the contest.
• When Iktomi heads to the village in order to mark the center tipi, he warns all the people that Iya is close at hand and tells them what Iya is afraid of.  He then instructs them to go to where Iya is and frighten him.
• The people, accompanied by Iktomi go to Iya and scare him.  Iktomi tears Iya open from the inside out, thus releasing all the people trapped inside.  For masterminding this, Iktomi is praised, but also blamed for the world being full of people and for causing land to become more scarce.

My Thoughts:

It is clear just from reading this one story that the Sioux do, in fact, give a lot more credit to Iktomi for his role in the beginning of the world than the Winnebago give to their trickster, Wakjankaga. 

I think that it is fun that the role of the trickster as a wanderer is present in both Winnebago and Sioux cultures.  The similarities do not seem to extend much farther than that, though.  Where Wakjankaga was a foolish sort of being who did more harm to himself than to injure others (and, from the reading at least, caused more shame to people than permanent physical harm). 

The idea of self-gain that Wakjankaga seems to have in the excerpts of Winnebago stories does not seem to carry over to the Sioux Iktomi either.  In contrast to Wakjankaga's desire to get ahead by marrying a chief's son so he may eat through though the winter, Iktomi has a much less frivolous desire to ensure that people remain on the earth rather than being eaten up by Iya.  Nevertheless, both tricksters create a bad situation for those he leaves behind after his trick is over.  In Wakjankaga's case, he brings shame upon the family of the chief's son.  Iktomi, on the otherhand, creates a much more wide-spread effect.  By destroying Iya, he keeps people from continuing to be consumed; however, he also releases the people who have already been eaten thus populating the world far more than it was.  In short, Wakjankaga brings shame on one family; Iktomi brings hardship on all people by limiting the land available.