The Man Who Killed the Deer by Frank Waters

First published: 1942

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of work: The late 1930’s, before the outbreak of World War II

Locale: The Pueblo Indian Reservation, near Taos, New Mexico

Principal Characters:

• Martiniano, the protagonist, a young maverick (part Pueblo Indian and part Apache)
• Flowers Playing, his wife (part Ute and part Arapahoe)
• Palemon, Martiniano’s closest friend
• Rodolfo Byers, a white man who runs a trading post adjacent to the Pueblo land
• Manuel Rena, the Peyote chief, leader of a controversial peyote cult

The Novel

Martiniano, a troubled young Pueblo Indian who has been sent away to the white man’s school, shoots a deer on government land exactly two days after the hunting season has closed. Martiniano is soon spotted by a forest ranger, who flies into a rage over the killing of the animal and strikes Martiniano with his gun. With his head bleeding, Martiniano manages to escape by hiding in a stream. The next morning, Palemon, who has been unable to sleep, rescues him, drawn by some powerful, intuitive knowledge of his friend’s distress.

Martiniano is found guilty and given a fine of $150, which is paid by Rodolfo Byers, the white man who runs the trading post. After the trial, Martiniano’s life begins to fall apart. His marriage to Flowers Playing becomes more and more unhappy; the couple begin to drift apart. He is increasingly aware of his role as an outsider, a man who does not seem to belong in either the world of whites or the world of Indians. He is not allowed to live in the pueblo proper but in a hut at the edge of the pueblo. Martiniano refuses to remove the heels of his boots, cut out the seat of his pants, or sing the required tribal songs—and he is punished for all these acts of rebellion. At the center of all his problems is the killing of the deer: “ That deer!’ he exclaimed suddenly. That’s what they are holding against me most of all. That cursed deer which I killed! That is what has destroyed my wife’s love and faith!’”

In a desperate attempt to shake off his profound depression, Martiniano becomes involved with Manuel Rena and his peyote cult. The drug, however, only exacerbates Martiniano’s sense of guilt. In a peyote-induced trance, he once again sees the deer he killed: “The deer raced after him. Its hot breath burnt the back of his head, its pointed forefeet struck at and thundered behind him.” Martiniano realizes that peyote is not for him, and soon the rest of the cult members are arrested by the tribal Council. Martiniano is still implicated, however, since his distinctive blanket was confiscated during the raid.

A new phase begins in Martiniano’s life when he decides to clear some mountain land which was left to him by his father. Martiniano cleans out the spring and repairs the little hut. Unfortunately, a Mexican sheepherder tries to take over the hut, and in the scuffle Martiniano wounds him slightly and accidentally with the Mexican’s own gun. This time the tribe supports him. The Mexican seems to represent all the intruders who have encroached on Indian land for generations. Ever since Martiniano’s killing of the deer, the Pueblo people have been demanding the return of their ancient lands, especially Dawn Lake, a sacred spot in the mountains which they regard as their tribal church and the center of their being. Martiniano slowly begins to feel connected to the tribe; he decides to accept fifteen lashes, administered by his friend Palemon, to retrieve his blanket from the Council. The Fiesta of San Geronimo occurs soon thereafter, and Martiniano and Flowers Playing (now pregnant) come down from the mountain to attend. No one can climb the tall ceremonial pole with a deer tied to its top. When Martiniano attempts the feat, he too fails—a sign that he has still not atoned for his guilt.

Martiniano’s redemption comes through an act of selfless devotion. He rescues Palemon’s son, Napaita, who has been trapped in a remote mountain cave. Soon, a son of his own is born, Juan de Bautista, and Martiniano feels peace at last: “The deer he had killed. It no longer troubled him.” Congress passes a bill to compensate the tribe for lost land and to return thirty thousand acres of national forest to the tribe, including their sacred center, Dawn Lake. The book ends, then, with Martiniano and the tribe in full control of their most precious possession—their identity.

The Characters

At no point does Frank Waters provide a police-blotter description of his protagonist, Martiniano. The reader comes to appreciate Martiniano through his bold actions and sharply reasoned speeches, like the one in which he defends his killing of the deer to the Council. After explaining that the Council slowed him down by refusing to let him use the communal threshing machine, he concludes: “What is the difference between killing a deer on Tuesday or Thursday? Would I not have killed it anyway?” Later, when Palemon applies the fifteen lashes, Martiniano submits stoically, even though the pain is excruciating. Yet he can feel tenderness, too. After Flowers Playing becomes pregnant, Martiniano matures into a kind of inarticulate poet, recording but not enunciating the beauty of his little mountain retreat: “The yellow moon low over the desert, the stars twinkling above the tips of the high ridge pines, the fireflies, the far-off throb of a drum, the silence, the tragic, soundless rushing of the great world through time—it caught at his breath, his heart.”

Flowers Playing, by contrast, is presented with photographic clarity. She is the Arapahoe maiden: “Have you ever seen an Arapahoe maiden down in the willows by the stream? The fresh, cool dew clinging like Navajo-silver buttons to her plain brown moccasins, the first arrows of sunlight glancing off the shining wings of her blue-black hair, the flush of dawn still in her smooth brown cheeks?” She becomes an Earth Mother, taming two wild deer in the mountain clearing and donning the costume of the Deer Mother in a sacred Pueblo dance. Her sensitivity to the animal kingdom is a source of strength for Martiniano in his painful process of self-atonement.

Palemon serves as a foil to Martiniano; he is the “good” Indian, adhering to the codes and customs of the tribe. His natural sensitivity to danger alerts him to Martiniano’s trouble with the ranger, and his good reputation assures him a seat on the Council. When Martiniano chooses to accept his fifteen lashes, Palemon is assigned to whip him. It is a sign of their friendship that each man accepts his role unhesitatingly in the grisly little drama. Martiniano pretends not to recognize him: “Palemon too was a man. No sign of recognition showed on his face as he lifted the lash.” The novel comes full circle when Martiniano rescues Palemon’s son, Napaita, using the same power of intuition upon which Palemon relied in the opening pages.

The most complicated character is Rodolfo Byers, the crusty Anglo who runs the trading post. Some critics see Byers as a kind of alter ego of Frank Waters himself. Byers has known the Indians all his life, but he avoids the dangers of either romanticizing them or ignoring their flaws. Once, when he was bitten by a rattlesnake, Byers was saved by an old Indian who appeared out of nowhere and stroked his body with eagle feathers. Byers survived, and he began to accept the Indians and all their inscrutable ways. He empathizes with Martiniano and the apparent curse of the deer: “ Boy, I too have had my deer,’ muttered the white man, staring into the fire. Believe me, son, it will pass’ ”—and so it does.

Manuel Rena sets up a tepee next to the pueblo and establishes a local peyote cult after he has learned about this “strange herb of mystery and power” on a visit to other tribes. The use of peyote is forbidden in the rest of the state, but the District Indian Superintendent encourages the tribe to try it. The Council disagrees, however, and orders the cult disbanded. Peyote cults cannot coexist with the native religion as celebrated at Dawn Lake.

Critical Context

The Man Who Killed the Deer is Waters’s best-known and probably his best-loved book, as suggested by the fact that the original 1942 edition was reprinted many times, with a second edition issued in 1965 and a third edition in 1971 (which has also been reprinted many times). Conceived as part of a trilogy on the minorities of the Southwest, The Man Who Killed the Deer appeared after People of the Valley (1941), which deals with Spanish colonial settlers, and before The Yogi of the Cockroach Court (1947), a story of casinos and lowlife on the Mexican American border.

In a larger context, The Man Who Killed the Deer can be seen as one of the best examples of a genre which traces the roots of a particular ethnic group. This tradition would include such classic books as Edwin Corle’s People on the Earth (1937) and more recent works such as Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968). The Man Who Killed the Deer is significant because it transcends this tradition by offering characters and situations of universal appeal, presented in a style that can truly be called poetic.

Bibliography

Blackburn, Alexander. A Sunrise Brighter Still: The Visionary Novels of Frank Waters. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1991. Chapters on each of Waters’s novels, with an introduction that surveys the writer’s purposes and his career and a conclusion arguing that Waters is a major American writer. Includes detailed notes and extensive bibliography.

Deloria, Vine, Jr., ed. Frank Waters: Man and Mystic. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993. Memoirs of Waters and commentaries on his novels, emphasizing his prophetic style and sense of the sacred.

Lyon, Thomas J. Frank Waters. New York: Twayne, 1973. Fills a critical vacuum by analyzing Waters’s themes and artistic style. After sketching Waters’s life, Lyon examines his nonfiction, showing him to be a writer of ideas with a sacred theory of the earth and Hopi mythic values. Focuses on seven novels as narrations of these ideas, from Fever Pitch to Pike’s Peak, and also discusses his minor works, including the biography of The Earp Brothers of Tombstone, the children’s biography of Robert Gilruth, his book reviews, and his essays on writing. The last chapter summarizes the book’s thesis and calls for more study of Waters’s work. Contains a chronology, notes and references, a selected annotated bibliography, and an index.

South Dakota Review 15 (Autumn, 1977). A special Frank Waters issue, containing these essays: “The Sound of Space,” by John Milton; “Frank Waters’s Mexico Mystique: The Ontology of the Occult,” by Jack L. Davis; “Frank Waters and the Visual Sense,” by Robert Kostka; “Frank Waters and the Concept of Nothing Special,’ ” by Thomas J. Lyon; “Teaching Yoga in Las Vegas,” by Charles L. Adams; “Frank Waters and the Mountain Spirit,” by Quay Grigg; “The Conflict in The Man Who Killed the Deer,” by Christopher Hoy; “Mysticism and Witchcraft,” by Waters; and “Frank Waters,” by John Manchester.