MYTHCOMICS: "NAWANDO'S LAST VISION" (RED ARROW #1, 1951)

 

I came across this mythcomic thanks to my having continued to survey Native American comics-characters on my OUROBOROS DREAMS blog. Three issues of a western comic, RED ARROW, were released in 1951 by one of America's smallest comics-publishers, P.L. Publishing. I have not yet read any of the company's other magazines but everything in the RED ARROW series is absolutely ordinary. GCD attributes the art to one Richard Case, of whom I know nothing, except that he was working before another Richard Case, one made famous for working with Grant Morrison, was even born. Since there's no writer credited, I will proceed as I often have before, using the artist's name as if I knew he were the sole author. Whether it was Case or not, someone involved with this forgotten tale brought to it a mythic density that demonstrates the desire to research what was then known of Native American medicine-men rituals.

   Although the story's action is set in 1876, it might have just as easily set in the pre-colonial days of the continent, for there are no indications of the influence of European colonists upon the shaman Nawando or any of the Native Americans. The opening caption claims that only Nawando can speak to animals, yet many pre-colonial tales show animals freely conversing with all human beings, to say nothing of intermarrying with them. Here, Nawando feels a great vision approaching, so he isolates himself from his tribespeople. The mountain he seeks is guarded by a serpent who claims that the domain belongs to the dead, but one of Nawando's allies casts the serpent aside. 

Nawando's vision allows him (and the readers) to peer in on the life of a discontented young fellow named White Bull, who lives in a pueblo "far across the desert." The distance may not have been all that great, given that the Southwestern lands of the Navajo, the Pueblos, and their neighbors the Apaches bordered one another. But the main focus of the vision is not to show where White Bull is, but what he does, and what he does is to predict that he will never settle down and become a commonplace householder. Two pretty maidens think White Bull is too conceited, removing himself from the tribe to sit out in the wilderness at night, so they set a trap, a hole for the young brave to fall into so that he'll be duly humiliated.

Though some readers might expect this contrivance to end with some romantic hookup, this idea is ended when Case has the two mischievous maidens captured by marauding Apaches, "never to return to their people." White Bull for his part takes his ordeal in stride, simply meditating in the pit despite hunger and circling vultures. He seems to understand now that he's on the cusp of becoming a medicine man himself, though he doesn't know he's now being watched by a full-fledged spirit-guide. Nawando's vision ends and he prepares to go to the aid of "a son in deadly danger."

Nawando and his animal friends cross the desert, but again they meet malign creatures who apparently just don't like foreign shamans trespassing on their territory. But all of the inimical forces are circumvented thanks to the medicine-man's allies.

  Then a storm comes up, as if signaling the opposition of the heavens as well. However, Nawando decides to simply face the tempest, assuming an attitude of acceptance much like that of White Bull, saying "I go to meet the Great Spirit." But by chance or design the tornado-like turbulence drops Nawando and his allies right near the pit of White Bull, so that they are able to rescue him. And in the arguably rushed conclusion, White Bull receives his new status as the future "seer of visions" (though without stating which tribe he'll be seeing visions for, and without going through years of metaphysical training). Nawando announces that he's happy to let his figurative son succeed him, for he's ready to retire to his cave in the mountains. He doesn't say he anticipates death, though the serpent does claim that the mountains-- at least the only ones we've seen-- are the domain of death.

And so Richard Case rendered to his few readers a quixotic take on how visionary seers propagate their line by reaching out to similarly gifted individuals who also stand outside the normal travails of birth, marriage and death. It's also worth mentioning that although White Bull doesn't intentionally become isolated inside the pit made by the malfeasant maidens, some shamans in various cultures have been known to seek enlightenment within such declivities-- whether it's to get away from people, to get closer to the earth, and any number of similar reasons. Also, in terms of imagery a pit would be gendered as feminine, and from page 3 on it's evident that the aspiring shaman plans to reject that path for the sake of the illumination of "higher" visions.