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The Man to Send Rainclouds | Introduction

Written in 1967 and published two years later in the New Mexico Quarterly, ‘‘The Man to Send Rain Clouds'' established Silko as a brilliant new Native-American writer. The story brought her wide recognition as well as a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The story is based on an incident Silko had heard about in her hometown of Laguna, New Mexico: an old man had been found dead in a sheep camp and had been given a traditional Indian burial. The local Catholic priest resented the fact that he had not been called in to officiate at the service. Silko's story explores the Indians' blending of Catholic rituals with traditional Indian rituals during a funeral ceremony. The tension of maintaining traditional Pueblo practices and the co-opting of outside influences—in this case, the Catholic church—is a recurring interest of Silko's and appears in several of her stories.

As a story about Native Americans, ''The Man to Send Rain Clouds’’ describes the quality of contemporary Laguna Pueblo life. The story is admired for Silko's masterful portrayal of the Indians' quiet acceptance of death and for its highly controlled narrative.

The Man to Send Rainclouds Summary

''The Man to Send Rain Clouds'' is set on an Indian reservation in the American Southwest, with its wide mesas (plateaus) and arroyos (ravines). As the story opens, Leon and his brother-in-law, Ken, find an old man, Teofilo, dead under a cottonwood tree. They ritually paint his face and take his body, wrapped in a red blanket, to their home for a traditional Pueblo funeral ceremony. (The Pueblo people paint the faces of the dead so that they will be recognized in the next world. They also scatter corn and sprinkle water to provide food and water for the spirit on its journey to the other world. To the Pueblo, death is not the end of existence, but part of a cycle in which the spirit of the deceased returns to its source and then helps the community of the living by... » Complete The Man to Send Rainclouds Summary