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Chris Lindgren

Dr. Linda Helstern

English 674

03 May 2011

“More than metes and bounds”: Intellectual Sovereignty in The Heirs of Columbus

Gerald Vizenor’s The Heirs of Columbus begins by propelling a tribe of Natives, who

believe they are the heirs of Christopher Columbus, into an American courtroom over a dispute

of land, treaties, and issues with the construction and profits from Santa Maria Casino bingo

barge that are all connected with sovereignty. In this courtroom, the trickster healer heirs play

their language games with the federal judge Beatrice Lord, who becomes infatuated and

impressed by the intellect of the Native heirs in her courtroom, reversing the usual dominance of

the American court’s bias against Native Americans. Interestingly, Lord is the one who defined

sovereignty in the story during the christening ceremony of the Santa Maria Casino bingo barge,

reversing the usual dominance of the American court’s bias against Native Americans. She

announces proudly across the loud speakerphones that: “‘The notion of tribal sovereignty is not

confiscable or earth bound; sovereignty is neither fence nor feathers. The essence of sovereignty

is imaginative, an original tribal trope, communal and spiritual, an idea that is more than metes

and bounds in treaties.’” (7)

In Fugitive Poses, Vizenor defined Native sovereignty, as connected to Native

transmotion. He argues that “Native transmotion is an instance of natural reason, … [and] is

native memories, and not mere comparatives or performative acts. The sovereignty of motion is

mythic, material, and visionary, not mere territoriality, in the sense of colonialism and

nationalism” (182-83). Native sovereignty is complementary to transmotion – a "sui generis

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sovereignty" (15) – and Vizenor’s Fugitive Poses evoked native sovereignty not only within the

in the Constitution, and records of "treaties and other documents [as] the assurance of a native

historical presence in a constitutional democracy," but also how the actuation of transmotion via

native trickster stories, totemic creations, and presence to the histories of this continent is an

articulation of inherent sovereignty (188).

Another Native theorist, Robert Warrior (Osage) explores similar ideas by reviewing the

works of Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux). Warrior argues that Deloria’s texts implicitly

recognize group sovereignty, which is constructed through Native traditions and ceremonies.

Deloria contends that the return to tradition is not stagnant, but a way to exercise sovereignty by

providing “the critical constructive material upon which a community rebuilds itself” (95).

Throughout The Heirs of Columbus, never is sovereignty enacted through fixed places, but

instead through the interplay of the trickster discourse between Native traditions and ceremonies

with the western interpretations of the history of Christopher Columbus.


 As Vizenor wrote in Narrative Chance, “trickster is a comic liberator in a narrative and

the sign with the most resistance to social science monologues” (196). He described the trickster

as “a communal sign, a comic holotrope in a narrative discourse, oral or written in translation.”

This movement made possible by the trickster language games is central to Vizenor’s upheavel

of the Postivist, social scientist interpretations of the history of Christopher Columbus. For

myself, it also served as a personal upheavel of my own western scientific, linguistic

constructions. He began to dismantle these constructions from the beginning with the media

coverage of the very popular and financially successful Santa Maria Casino.

Vizenor first weaves stories from the media – an outside perspective of the casino –

which defined the Native tribe and situation as the “‘tribe that was lost no more,’” “‘the new
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casino tribe’” that established the new “sovereign casino” (8). The media are captivated by the

claimed lineage between the heirs and Christopher Columbus, and Stone’s appearances on the

Carp Radio program “had attracted new listeners and many eager advertisers”. Even after

Stone’s presence on these programs and telling his totemic stories from the stone, the listeners

and programmers still are not able to understand him, his lineage, and his stories. They can only

see this as another consumer-capitalist opportunity. This is how the Western structures begin to

define their relationship to the heirs, but what kind of relationship is being constructed? And who

is constructing it within this section of the story?

This “moored reservation” was “earning more than a million dollars a season” (11), so

from a Western perspective, this bingo barge provided this “new casino tribe” sovereignty and

agency in America through their capital revenues. It also afforded business opportunities for

advertisers and other media, such as Carp Radio, which is said to have “discovered a new world

on the Santa Maria Casino” (8). Yet, after four summers of prosperity, the casino is met by a

powerful thunderstorm and is “bashed on a granite reef,” and the Santa Maria “sank near the

island, [marking] the sudden end of a new reservation” (11). Stone is then described as being

broken as well, but is then healed by Samana the shaman, who “would heal the heir with stories

in the blood” (12). Even the ship that cheated the “metes and bounds” of the western laws of

sovereignty, it couldn’t escape the nature of the material world, falling prey to trickster games.

This moment in the story, where Stone is broke upon the shore, can be traced back to two

different Native tropes. The first trope being the first native anishinaabe trickster storier

naanabozho, who as Vizenor recounts in Literary Chance:

told his brother the stone about his experiences. [Naanabozho] and his stories grew

larger, and the distances he traveled grew longer by the day. The trickster resented that
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he had to return at the end of the day, so his brother the stone said, Heat me in the fire,

and then pour cold water on me. The trickster did just that and his brother burst into

millions of pieces and covered the earth. The trickster in this way always has a piece of

his brother nearby to listen to his stories, and now these stories have readers. (43)

Vizenor produces a totemic creation through Stone’s brokenness and subsequent healing from

Samana, the tenth generation descendent from the Samana shaman hand talker who conceived a

child with Christopher Columbus, who released the stories in his blood. From this point, the

story takes a turn toward the “Stone Tavern,” where the heirs of Columbus warm the stones,

enacting upon the ceremony of the original trickster story to instigate a sovereignty of motion

and tell the stories within their “genetic signature that would heal the obvious blunders in the

natural world” (4). Part one of the novel, “Blue Moccasins” becomes the presence of “the earliest

oral stories and presentations, in creation stories, totemic and trickster visions,” that are sent into

motion throughout the remainder of the story (Fugitive Poses 182).

In the chapter “Stone Tavern,” the heirs initiate their annual autumn ceremony, telling

these stories of the bear codex that was lost when the Santa Mara vessel sank (25). The Heirs of

Columbus are constructing a critical, moving and renewed sense of presence and sovereignty

through the same means as Deloria suggested with the use of native traditions for a motion

toward group sovereignty. The bear codex is noted as picturing “the sun as the center of the

universe, as the spirit is the center of imagination and tribal civilization” (26). This cultural

center upon the importance of imagination is contrasted with the “culture of death that held the

earth as the center”. The differences between these two cultural centers are played with

throughout the text through a series of native traditions, which includes the start of a blue

moccasin game between the heirs present at the stone tavern.

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This game also leads into the telling of how “[t]he ice woman holds the [demon]

wiindingo, the four blue moccasins, and the copper coins” (22). By holding the wiindingo and

keeping the moccasin game in motion, she creates “a tribute to the four seasons and the

memories of tribal chance” (22). This calling upon this story of the ice woman and the wiindigo

maintains the element of chance in the trickster language game, and builds upon the totemic

creations moving into the next chapter.

In “Storm Puppets”, the history of Christopher Columbus is told through a Native

trickster perspective, which Vizenor weaved within the construction of various Western histories

and letters written by Christopher Columbus. Here, interestingly, Columbus’ greatest gamble by

crossing the ocean sea provides him with the chance to encounter the island of Samana, where he

met the shaman healer Samana, who released the stories from his own Native blood. Their

chance meeting creates an interesting spin on the New World, since through the Western

perspective, Columbus still goes onto colonize the territories, but through this native trickster

story, this group of tribal heirs set into motion the rebuilding of their community and tribal

sovereignty through their critical constructive materials created by their imaginations, through

the hearing of the chatter of “the blue storm puppets” (44).

Native transmotion is created through Columbus’ remembrance in his blood and through

his death at sea, returning for the last time from the New World. Columbus hears the chatter

from the blue storm puppets, and he “remembered them near his home, at the convent, on the

islands in the New World, and now he watched their graven images rise and beat with each

wave, and he reasoned that their dance would balance the ships in the storm” (44). Vizenor

discusses how death is a form of Native transmotion, and that “The native distinctions of public

and private, in the course of names, nature, and possessions, are ceremonial, situational, and
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visionary. … Death is transmotion, a common ‘road of souls’ to the west” (186). Upon

Columbus’ death on the blue sea, his recovered letter serves as a cue for Binn Columbus to hear

“the stories in his letter,” which prompted more stories to be told within the stone tavern (44).

Vizenor goes onto discuss the translation of the anishinaabe word daniwin, “an inanimate

noun… [which] means property, riches, treasure, and wealth”. Vizenor stresses how the use of

this word was never used as a marker to indicate private wealth or interest, but instead “cued

common interests” for the tribe. At the headwaters, Binn tells the heirs that she “heard the stories

from his bones and ashes, his partial remains in a silver casket,” and that “‘he died with

lonesome memories”. She goes onto tell the heirs that Columbus once “dreamed that he was a

child in our tribal world”. These series of trickster stories being told over the warm stones in the

stone tavern reverse the western constructions of Columbus’s colonial endeavor to establish the

Americas to create a strong sense of community and shared tribal stories, establishing their

intellectual sovereignty. This is Vizenor’s mythic, material, and visionary sovereignty of motion

manifest in tribal stories (Fugitive Poses 182). This group sovereignty manifests even further still

upon the telling of the poacher trickster, Felipa Flowers, who sets out on a mission to “repatriate

sacred medicine pouches,” and instead finds the opportunity to recover the partial remains of

Columbus from another (45).

Felipa Flowers, wife of Stone Columbus (and who shares the namesake of Columbus’s

wife, Doña Felipa Perestrello e Moniz), lives a life of hybridity, transmotion, and process, as she

once left the White Earth Reservation and became an international fashion model and later

“earned a law degree, married, and practiced criminal law out west” (45). Yet, after living and

thriving in this western world, she then moved back to reservation and lived within the

community as a poacher trickster. Her story of the repatriation of some stolen medicine pouches
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from Doric Michéd, a “crossblood member of the exclusive circle of explorers” of the

Conquistador Club at the Brotherhood of American Explorers creates a chance situation to also

reclaim the partial remains of Christopher Columbus. Doric, who “pretended to be tribal when

his timeworn crossblood heirs served his economic and political interests,” provides a foil

against Felipa, who repatriates these materials for the common interest of her tribe, and not for

her own personal gain. She realized his “obscure crossblood” nature and even teased him with

trickster tales, telling him “that the world was united in clever tribal stories, imagination,

memories,” (46) while Doric simply resisted her and her stories, rebutting that “The right price

are the words that heal” (47).

Vizenor uses this narrative chance to emphasize the differences in how this language

game can be played through the contrast between Felipa and Doric. While Felipa once thrived in

the western world, she displayed true trickster capabilities with her ability to manipulate her

situations. After she repatriates the remains of Columbus, she is questioned by Captain Brink

who is trying to tease out information about the stolen remains of Columbus. Felipa states that

“Nothing was stolen,” and Brink replied laughing that “You even stole the crime” (60). After

Felipa tells Brink more about the stories and ceremonies (such as the “transmutation in the tent”

performed by Transom) surrounding these objects, Brink’s ears begin to move with “pleasure”.

Felipa promises to tell him the whole story, if she brings him to the “colossal blue” Statue of

Liberty by midnight. There, Almost Browne tells his laser story in the night sky, interweaving all

of the moving stories with the resurrection of the first voyage to the New World (62). Almost

conjures the appearance of the Santa Maria in the west, Christopher Columbus, Samana the

golden hand talker with the blue puppets, and a recorded broadcast of Judge Lord’s “favorable

court decision on tribal sovereignty … ‘The notion of sovereignty is not tied to the earth,
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sovereignty is neither fence nor feathers’” (62). With his laser caravel, he created “sovereign

states in the night sky, the first maritime reservation on a laser anchor”. The Heirs of Columbus

are all gathered around to witness, as a tribe, the transmotion of these stories and traditions,

anchoring their sovereignty in these stories, not with printed stories, documents, treaties or land,

but with a laser anchor fixed in the blue imagination of their memories in the blood.

This moment is quickly contested by another move to Lord’s courtroom. Crows

“announce the demons and bad weather” at the beginning of “Bone Courts” (63). Felipa awoke

to the sound of the crows’ “rave notice” that she and “the heirs were subpoenaed … to answer

questions about the shamanic repatriation of medicine pouches and human remains”. Yet, this

narrative chance, these charges put on by Doric are but another language game for the trickster

heirs to discuss the Native construction of reality as it is compared to the Western, in part, thanks

to an impressed Judge Lord, who starts to play the inherent game in language.

Vizenor uses this opportunity in the courtroom, one of the last platforms in our Western

culture for oral testimonies, as a way to play trickster language games with the Western bent on

linguistic determinism. Whether Memphis de Panther revealing our animal nature or Almost

Browne’s virtual realities “’that were stolen by cold reason and manifest manners,’” each of the

testimonies contest and play around with scientific constructions. These language games

instigate the most lucid and direct discussions surrounding the nature of trickster and comic

holotropes in the story, which bring forth the group of Heirs of Columbus to tell their stories in

totemic fashion.

Specifically, Lappet Tulip Browne has a discussion with judge Beatrice Lord on the

subject of stories and imagination, languages, and the power of native medicine. Lappet is quick

to correct Lord on how the power behind the medicine is not the pouch or what is inside the
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pouch, but rather the stories that have permeated the pouch and can be released and remembered.

While Lord believes the stories are contingent on and of the material artifact, Lappet again

emphasizes that it is “Not the pouches, but the stories” (80). The presence of the pouch is but

another mnemonic, which serves as one way to instigate the remembrance of tribal stories, as

Lappet argues that “…words are traces, and stories hold the wild traces of the told and heard, the

sounds of imagination and creation” (81). Lord, then, contends that these tribal stories are

nothing more than “hearsay,” and that “evidence is rational and reason has precedent”. Their

discussion turns into a bantering game on language, where Lord takes up the linguistic

deterministic view that language must have rules and “can be a prison,” but Lappet impresses the

judge with her response by saying that “‘Trickster stories liberate the mind in language games”

(82).

This moment can be traced back to a 1968 trial between the federal government and

Ojibway on the regulation of the harvesting of wild rice on a deemed wildlife refuge “near the

East Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota” (Vizenor, “Native Transmotion,” 167). Vizenor

discusses the trial, overseen by Judge Miles Lord (the source of Beatrice Lord’s name), as a

regulatory dispute on who retained sovereignty over these lands traced back to the 1837 treaty,

which provided the “privilege of hunting, fishing, and gathering wild rice, upon the lands”.

While the document could not be produced by the anishinaabe, the trial included the testimony

of Charles Aubid (Anishinaabe), who spoke in his Native language anishinaabemowin, who

“told the judge that there once was a document, but the anishinaabe always understood their

rights in stories, not hearsay” (168). He testified of his presence, when the government agents

told Old John Squirrel that the anishinaabe would always have control of the manoomin
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harvest.” John Squirrel, as Vizenor said, “was there in memories, a storied presence, and he

could have been heard by the court as a visual trace of parol agreement”.

Vizenor has created, with these bone courts, an intertexuality between the retrieval of

these ancestral bones to that of the trial over the sovereignty of land. While Judge Miles Lord

contested Aubid’s testimony as hearsay, just as Judge Beatrice Lord does with Lappet, Aubid

refutes Judge Miles Lord with his dependence upon the legal books in the courtroom that

“contained the stories of dead white men” (“Native Transmotion” 168). Judge Miles Lord is just

as impressed as Judge Beatrice Lord, and we see an overturned game of language in the

courtroom, which usually holds the bias of “the stories of dead white men,” with the creation of

tribal presence, totemic creations and intellectual sovereignty via the Native transmotion.

At the end of the bone courts, the Heirs of Columbus’s Native transmotion revealed the

through this language game, that Doric was a wiindigoo. But, perhaps more importantly, the

healing power of these stories of the blood and blue imagination helped a western outsider like

Judge Beatrice Lord come to a higher understanding of language and trickster games. Binn

Columbus, Miigis, and Admire offer the judge gifts in reciprocity, acknowledging her newfound

perspective, as they invite her to join them at the stone tavern (90). This propels the story into the

second part centered upon Point Asinika: the source of the stones.

Similar issues of Western and Native opposition are confronted in this part of the novel,

and ultimately leads into the thawing of the wiindigoo who wants to finish the moccasin game

with the heirs. It begins with Felipa setting out on a mission to repatriate Pocahontas’s bones in

England, but this mission results in her murder. After her death, the heirs established a new

sovereign nation at Point Assinika (formerly Point Roberts), and “hired contractors to build a

marina and pavilions on the south shore” (121). After receiving political pressure from both
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westerners and tribal governments, Stone Columbus becomes “inspired” by the Santa Maria

Casino court decision on sovereignty and “the heirs moved the stone tavern, one stone at a time,

and soon the earth was warm and healed at the point” (121).

From a western perspective, the Heirs of Columbus are motioning towards sovereignty

through their presence on the literal land caught between the borders of Canada and the U.S.

However, Stone is creating a different type of medicine with the stories enacted in their blood

and genetic source of survivance from Columbus. The heirs enact a series of ceremonies and

traditions, including a reburial ceremony for Felipa, Pocohontas, and Christopher Columbus;

more laser light shows from Almost Browne; and even new traditions and performances such as

crossdressing or manicures brought upon by new tribal members such as Harmonia Dewikwe

and Teets Melanos. Stone intends for this migration to Point Assinika, “the place of the stones,”

to be a place of convergence where people can be healed by the blue imagination within the

blood, the genetic source of survivance traced back to Christopher Columbus. Even Luckie

White, “‘the admiral of Carp Radio’” (169), who once saw the Santa Maria Casino as more of a

profitable experience in the beginning of this experience, comes to understand the power of

language. When talking with Treves about the nature behind the discovery of objects, Luckie

said that “Stone is a healer in his stories, and he discovered the course of humor that heals here,

but others are determined to hold him to the discoveries of a place, an image, a nation” (169).

Treves replied, “Yes, yes, objects could be discovered alone,” and Luckie responded to Treves’s

focus on objects by saying that

Yes, yes, objects can be lost once we have them, but how can a place be an object, or be

discovered like a continent, when no one knew what it would become? … I mean, how

could Columbus know he had discovered America, or that his heirs would be healers?
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Luckie’s insight into how and where sovereignty truly resides in the stones of trickster stories is

true testimony behind the power of such stories. She continues with this discussion with Treves

on language, objects, and Stone Columbus until the narrator also reveals how “Luckie was

pleased to tell the stories of the heirs and the nation. She once raised the very same questions that

she now answers,” as she defined as a condition of coming “too close to trickster stories,” and

that “‘your questions are my very answers’” (170-71). Luckie’s testimony provides a window

into the power of the trickster stories of the Heirs of Columbus. Her comic liberation has

provided a way into this new sovereign nation with the heirs, which is not contingent on found

objects or discovered places, but inherent in the stories of the group, the heirs, and the memory in

the blood. Stone wishes to exercise the sovereignty in motion by opening the doors to anyone

who desires to be a part of the group, the community of heirs who are serious about the trickster

language games, and Luckie is one of the many examples of the types of people who are

included in the circle of stones, and set into this transmotion in the trickster language games.

Notably, her transition into this sovereign nation is still in its primacy, as the narrator later

mentions how “She was impatient for conclusions, a worldview that was frustrated by the heirs

who imagine the starts but never the ends” (173).

Yet, despite this surge of blue imagination at Point Assinika, Stone and the heirs’s

success culminates into the retaliation of some “racist federal agents” who steal some of the

stones from the tavern, but are subsequently are burned by the power of the stones. Out of

revenge, these federal agents reportedly thawed out the wiindigoo, who then sought the heirs to

complete their moccasin game that began in the start of this story.

Throughout the “Moccasin Games” chapter, we see a slow building of momentum into

the actual moccasin game with the wiindigo. As mentioned before, Treves comes to the point to
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reveal the story of the murder of Felipa and Transom in England. While Treves reveals the facts

about what happened to Felipa and Transom, many of the central characters gather at this place

before the game and partake in its telling, adding their own insights and complexities along the

way. Caliban and the first lady share their knowledge of Transom as a shaman and crossdresser,

and Treves also began to see Samana as a bear in the reflection of a mirror. Vizenor argues that

“Native transmotion is an original natural union in the stories of emergence and migration that

relate humans to an environment and to the spiritual and political significance of animals and

other creations” (“Native Transmotion” 182-83).

Later, Stone and the heirs hold a reburial ceremony, when other characters such as

Captain Brink and Judge Lord return to the story and past and present stories converge during the

ceremony for Felipa, Pocohontas, and Christopher Columbus (176). Black Elk, “the common

tribal man with a great vision,” is then set within the transmotion of this story, as his vision of a

strong “war herb” also comes to Stone in a vision of his own (178). Now, just before the

moccasin game, we find the heirs gathering at “the place of the stones,” Point Assinika, telling

the story of the death of Felipa and Transom, and during the ceremony, the “wiindigoo soughed

at the morning star and told the heirs that the time had come at last to finish the moccasin game”

(177).

Immediately, there is a sense that the game is all but over and in the hands of the

wiindigoo, who only needs to reveal the coin in the last and fourth moccasin. Yet, Stone invokes

the power of the war herb within the moccasin game, saying that he has also hidden it within the

moccasin with the coin, reversing the power of the game. Unlike Doric Michéd, who the heirs

saw as a wiindigoo demon and a Native spirit destroyed by the culture of death by the material

world, the Heirs of Columbus place their defense within their most powerful medicine: their
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stories. The heyoka power of the war herb is evident in the “host of laser figures … on both sides

of the moccasin game” told by Almost Browne that resurrected and interwove the stories of

Jesus Christ and Chrisopher Columbus in the south; Crazy Horse, Black Elk, and Louis Riel in

the north; and Felipa and Pocahontas in the east (183). This motion, set forth by the war herb,

soon sparked Admire to whistle, the mongrels to bark, and the heirs and children to shout at the

“morning stars to come” (183). The narrator then notes how there are seven figures dancing in

the sky around the Trickster of Liberty, representing the seven clans of the anishinaabe, and how

“The mere mention of the soldier weed caused the cannibal to reconsider his choice of

moccasins”. With this utterance of the soldier weed, which came to Black Elk and Stone in a

vision, the game continues, as the “pleased” wiindingo said that “The game never ends,” as he

slipped back into the shadows. The culture of death has no grip on the Heirs of Columbus.

This communal act of storytelling throughout The Heirs of Columbus creates a strong

force of transmotion for the gambling, serious set of trickster healers. The Heirs of Columbus

establish and maintain their sovereignty through the use of their language games, their

intellectuality, and their sense of community created by the warming of the circle of stones in the

stone tavern. They are able to take on all of the opposing forces throughout the story with their

ability to reverse the situation, just as Vizenor does with his retelling of the history of Columbus.

As Stone told Treves with regards to the tithe owed unto them from the government, “We heal

with opposition, we are held together with opposition, not separation, or silence, and the best

humor in the world is pinched from opposition” (176). The ability to find a story in the face of

adversity, whether it’s by lasers, storm puppets, ceremonies, or testimonies in the courtroom is a

feat of perpetual transmotion and survivance. These stories liberate the mind and bring people

together in a shared ideal sense of intellectual sovereignty that can be shared by anyone willing
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to listen: even a federal judge or military captain. The heirs understand the most powerful form

of sovereignty does not live within the treaties or land allotments. They know that it is “more

than metes and bounds,” and that the true trickster healer resides as sovereignty in motion within

the never-ending game of language.

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Works Cited

Vizenor, Gerald. The Heirs of Columbus. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Press, 1991. Print.

Vizenor, Gerald. “Native Transmotion.” Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of

Absence and Presence. Lincoln, NA: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. 167-199. Print.

Vizenor, Gerald. “Trickster Discourse: Comic Holotropes and Language Games.” Narrative

Chance: Postmodern Discourse on Native American Indian Literatures. Albuquerque,

NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. 187-212. Print.

Vizenor, Gerald. “Trickster Hermeneutics: Naanabozho Curiousa and Capricious Tease.”

Literary Chance: Essays on Native American Survivance. Universitat de Valencia, 2007.

43-52. Print.

Warrior, Robert Allen. Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions.

Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Print.