Wooden Leg

Wooden Leg was an modernized Native American. He was a Northern Cheyenne warrior. Being that he was known for being able to keeping up with his uncle, who could out walk everyone in the tribe, he inherited his uncle’s name. Later in life Wooden Leg was enlisted as an Indian Scout, meaning he switched sides. He was then baptized due to his belief that the Natives and the Whites worshiped the same god. This I believe influenced his Act of Sadness quote in both literal and metaphoric terms. 

In Act of Sadness Wooden Leg says, “The trees and the grass have spirits.“ As a Native American  he was taught to respect and work with nature. He was taught that all living things have spirits and must be respected. He was showing that the Natives appreciate and respect nature. He then states, "Whatever one of such growth may be destroyed by some good Indian, his act is done in sadness and with a prayer for forgiveness because of his necessities.” This is because the only time a Native will kill something with a spirit is because of necessity; they will pray over it to ask for forgiveness. They feel bad, which is why the Natives kill one animal at a time and use the animal to its entirety (tools, food, and clothes). 

Although Wooden Leg was baptized and became a Christian, he was still a Native at heart. I believe that he used imagery as his rhetoric device because he said, “It may be cut off, but it should not be uprooted.” He gave the reader the image of nature and plants being pulled. Wooden Leg was modernized and it could be seen in his picture but his Native roots were still there. He looked Native and still had the long hair but had assimilated into the dominant culture. Wooden Leg I believe assimilated into the dominant culture because it was his way of survival, he said, “...his act is done in sadness and with a prayer for forgiveness because of his necessities.“ He also showed his Christian side of himself in that. He basically calls what he did an act of Sadness, however he may have done it for survival. He believed the Natives and the whites were similar, because he saw the God being worshiped was the same one just known under different names. What Wooden Leg did was bring the white’s system onto the reservation by becoming a judge on their lands. He believed because he still looked native his roots were not damaged, they were only cut. 

To Wooden Leg the idea of assimilating into the dominant culture was: don’t fight it, just accept it. He was okay with being cut from his roots (becoming modernized) because at least his roots would still be in the ground (he was still a Native American no matter what). Wooden Leg felt he was no where in the wrong because he tried to help both sides. He helped the whites by becoming a Native hunter and thought he was helping the Natives by bringing American law onto the reservation. All in all, Wooden Leg’s experiences in his life gave both a literal and metaphorical meaning to Act of Sadness.