Global Community in James Welch’s The Heartsong of Charging Elk

Abstract

Human beings have had beautiful dreams for a harmonious world since centuries ago; this can be termed cosmopolitanism, shijie datong, or global community. Based on theories expounded by Confucius, Tönnies, Anderson, Bauman, Derrida, and Appiah, we closely examine the concept of “global cultural community” or “international community”, that is, the community involving individuals or groups of two or more countries by way of textual analysis, with James Welch’s The Heartsong of Charging Elk as an example. Through an analysis of the plot in the novel, we find that the American Indian protagonist Charging Elk integrates into the local French culture, while retaining his indigenous cultural identity, and thus negotiates a global community. This finding is also evaluated in the context of all five novels by Welch and in a broader scope of American Indian literature with inter-continental themes. The studies on cosmopolitanism or global community in American Indian literature can play an important role in exploring the construction of a global community for humanity for a shared future.

1. Introduction

James Welch (1940–2003), one of the four great Native American Renaissance masters,1 had a unique place in Native American literature. James Welch (Blackfoot), as a writer and poet, was deeply influenced by Blackfoot culture from an early age. His works show obvious Indigenous features and local color. Welch spent his whole life describing Indians’ struggling life, trying to capture the true situations of Indian resurgence. In his poems, he inherited and spread the rich heritage of American Indian traditions. His poems are at once concise and fabulous, simple and absurd. His first published poem collection Riding the Earthboy Forty (1970) caused a big sensation, being considered one of the greatest poem collections of 20th century America and responsible for introducing a new Native American style in American poetic circles. In terms of novels, Welch also made a good contribution to Native American literature. His novels, almost every one of them, are classics: Winter in the blood (1974), The Death of Jim Loney (1979), The Indian Lawyer (1990), Fools Crow (1986), and The Heartsong of Charging Elk (2000).

The Heartsong of Charging Elk tells the story of Charging Elk, an Oglala Sioux. During the childhood of the protagonist, his tribe surrenders to the American soldiers and is corralled on the reservation in 1877. After 12 years, he participates in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West World Tour and arrives in France. He later contracts the flu in Marseille and is hospitalized because of a broken rib after falling off a horse during a performance. However, his troupe does not wait for him to recover and leaves to continue with the show. After Charging Elk leaves the hospital, his life is difficult because he cannot speak French or English. He is arrested by the police for wandering, but after his release he is unable to leave France because of paperwork problems. During his stay in France, he receives kindness from strangers, such as the American vice consul and a journalist, who help him join a fishmonger’s family. After a considerable period of time, the protagonist gradually integrates into local life, marries, and has a child. After 16 years in France, Elk finally finds his sense of belonging, learns the French language, finds a job loading and unloading ships, and raises a happy family. In The Heartsong of Charging Elk, Welch spans time and space, people and geography to set the story in a foreign land. The protagonist is unexpectedly left in a strange environment, penniless, and with language difficulties. In the novel, Welch shifts his setting away from the United States, where Native Americans and white people fight, and imagines the road of ethnic integration on the new continent, opening a new window for the integration of an Indian into a global cultural community. In this work, the Indian protagonist blends with the local French culture, and the idea of global community is embodied in the work. This work is no doubt representative and important in manifesting the theme of global/international community in American Indian Literature.

The Research Questions are as follows:

(1) What are the background and reasons for the formation of a global community in the novel?

(2) What are the changes in Charging Elk when he transforms from a stranger to a part of the global community?

(3) What is the meaning of establishing the global community from the perspectives of culture and society?

The significance of the topic of this study lies in the in-depth study of the embodiment of the global community in American Indian literature, the exploration of the idea of global community in American Indian literature, and the bridging of the research gap in the idea of global community in American Indian literature, which has certain innovative significance.

This study will mainly use the textual analysis method to conduct a comprehensive and detailed analysis of James Welch’s The Heartsong of Charging Elk and delve into global community construction therein. Through an analysis of the plot in the novel, we will explore why the protagonist is first unable to adapt to life in France and is trapped in an identity dilemma, how he then integrates into the local culture, and how he finally becomes an integral part of the global community and benefits from it.

In the first part of the research, we will analyze the reasons and driving factors for the protagonist’s integration into the foreign culture. For example, in Marseille, Charging Elk does not speak French and has no social ability. The nomadic lifestyle of the American Indians leads to his lack of other survival skills after entering the city, with the exception of horse riding. In order to survive, “he filled his stomach with things he scavenged from trash cans behind restaurants” (Welch 2000, p. 45). When he is wandering the streets of Marseille alone, the French are very unfriendly towards him: “they looked at him with suspicion, as the Americans do” (Welch 2000, p. 52). When the French police approach Franklin Bell, an official at the American Consulate, and ask him to give Elk proof of American citizenship, Bell refuses on the grounds that “by treaty, Indian tribes have their own country within the United States, and Charging Elk is not a citizen of the United States” (Welch 2000, p. 80). Some people believe that, after experiencing marginalization, the non-mainstream group must approach the lifestyle of the mainstream society in terms of living habits and cultural customs in order to survive in the mainstream society, which is the inevitable result of the cultural adaptation of the non-mainstream group (Li and Chen 2023, p. 67).

In the second part of the research, we will analyze the changes that take place when the protagonist integrates into local life. When he arrives at Mr. Sollars’s house, he learns to wash his face with soap and water, and he learns to brush his teeth after dipping his toothbrush in soapy water. His long hair has also been cut around his ears, and there is not a trace of an Indian in Elk now, except for his appearance (Li and Chen 2023, p. 67). “Only a few nights before, he had been wearing animal skins, a barret-style name tag and a badger claw necklace given to him by his father and had long hair that had never been cut” (Welch 2000, p. 133). Elk has to learn new skills if he is to survive in white society. Mr. Rene Sollars teaches Elk how to sell fish in the market, and then “Mr. Sollars let him work alone in the fairground stall” (Welch 2000, p. 136).

In the third part of the research, we will analyze the significance of the hero’s integration into local life to build a global community. For example, in the novel, “Elk obtained the citizenship of the French Republic at the wedding ceremony” (Welch 2000, p. 403), which reflects the possibility of the two different cultures to abandon prejudice, tolerate each other, and realize integration. When his fellow tribesman Claudio Joseph urges Charging Elk to come back to the reservation with him, Charging Elk says: “This is my home, Joseph. I have a wife. Soon I will have a child” (Welch 2000, p. 437). His expectant child is a symbol of cultural integration, representing the future and hope (Li and Chen 2023, p. 67).

2. Literature Review

Research on The Heartsong of Charging Elk mainly focuses on the theme of the cultural identity transformation of the protagonist and the function of imagination in the work. Research about Welch’s other works is primarily about language features, the reconstruction of culture, and the return to tradition. Some scholars have also studied the irrational expression of surrealism and absurdity in James Welch’s poetry.

The Heartsong of Charging Elk is a novel about Indian transnational travel, and the name of the protagonist, Charging Elk, symbolizes his flight from American society like an elk to start a new life in France (Li and Chen 2023, p. 67). Li and Chen (2023) believe that in his integration into mainstream French culture, the French Indian in this work has closed the identity gap and completed the cultural identity transformation from the adherent of tribal language and from a member of the diaspora of the third space to the survivor in a foreign culture. Welch’s transnational perspective has certain significance for ethnic minority groups to break the opposition between nationalism and cosmopolitanism and realize their survival and development (Li and Chen 2023, p. 67). Other scholars have studied the role of imagination in the work and believe that imaginative description plays a crucial role in the narrative of the protagonist’s transformation from captivity to freedom (Anamaria 2016, p. 296).

As for the other works of James Welch, some scholars have studied the deterritorialization of language and the reconstruction of the Blackfoot tribal culture in Fools Crow. Although this historical novel is written in English, by “manipulating” the conventional pattern of English language the text has a defamiliarization effect among English readers. While writing the history of the tribe, the work attempts to reconstruct the “linguistic identity” of the Blackfoot tribe in the context of the English language and to reconstruct the tribal culture carried by the language (Xu 2017, p. 129). A study on the identity of Indian culture in James Welch’s Winter in the Blood points out that “the literary creations of ethnic minority writers have centripetal force and do not advocate external expansion, so the protagonist will eventually return home, be it real or ‘idealized’ return, and tracing the origin has become the basic mode for the characters in the novel to explore their identity” (Chen 2011, p. 138). The idealized return of the unnamed protagonist reflects Welch’s adherence to the dominant pattern of “return to tradition” in Indian literature at the beginning of the Indian Renaissance” (Chen 2011, p. 138). Some scholars have interpreted the return to Indian tradition in Winter in Blood and expounded Welch’s inheritance and development of literary creation from the perspectives of Indian rites, Indian cosmology, and Indian oral literature (Chen and Zou 2008, p. 163). In addition, a study of James Welch’s poetic art proposed that he borrowed the irrational expression of surrealism and absurdity and guided a group of young poets who adhered to local traditions and had an international vision on the path of Indian poetic revival (Yuan 2007, p. 76).

Professor Anfeng Sheng argued in his study of the cosmopolitan vision in American Indian literature that those Indian writers’ aim is not to return to a pure and authentic Indian identity because “the fluidity and amalgamation of modern society or post-modern society, the spread of Christianity and the decline and hybridization of traditional tribal beliefs, the acceleration of globalization and the integration and penetration of various ethnic cultures in the world have hindered any national culture from returning to the so-called original state” (Sheng 2019, p. 131). He also pointed out that we should “re-interpret and re-discuss ethnic identity, and then re-establish a mixed cultural identity so that we can find the way and cultural direction for Indian nationalism” (Sheng 2019, p. 126). He further opined that an inclusive and open cultural community that respects differences is the cornerstone and soul of building a community with a shared future for mankind (Sheng 2019, p. 126).

In terms of community studies in the works of individual North American Indian writers, Liu and He maintained that, in Eye Killers, Carr tried to eliminate the boundary between the margin and the center and construct a community across ethnicity and gender and between human and nature. In Eye Killers, Carr envisioned a society in which people of different races lived in harmony with one another and nature, transcending race and gender, against the background of the collision between Indian culture and white culture. In the novel, Carr actively negotiated different cultures and integrated the Indian culture with the white mainstream culture through the novel and built the Indian–white cultural community, as well as a gender community in which men and women are equal. At the same time, following the Indian tribe’s ecological concept of “unity of nature and man”, Carr showed a harmonious beauty in ecological community. While constructing cultural community, gender community, and ecological community, Carr dissolved the negative community of white centrism, male centrism, and anthropocentrism (Liu and He 2023, p. 90).

A study of the cosmopolitanism and heterogeneous community in Sherman Alexie’s short story collection Ten Little Indians shows that, by utilizing the motifs of searching for identity and returning cultural objects, Alexie depicts the internal contradictions and disputes of Indian groups and their relations with external ethnic groups, reflecting the writer’s anti-essential thinking on Indian sovereignty, Indianness, and other issues and reflecting the distinct tendency of cosmopolitanism, with special caution against the narrow and extreme mentality of tribalism. By writing about the heterogeneity of communities, terrorism, and community relations in postmodern cities, Alexie constructs a heterogeneous community based on empathy, which transcends racial and ethnic differences (Li 2023, p. 66).

The Heartsong of Charging Elk manifests the idea of a global community through the protagonist Charging Elk’s integration into the local (French) mainstream culture, defying the essentialist preconception that American Indians should die out on reservations.

3. Theoretical Framework

The concept of “Community” originates from the Latin word “Communis”, which originally means “Common”. Since Plato published The Republic, there has been a tradition of envisaging community in Western thought. However, the idea of community was produced around the 18th century. By the time of the Industrial Revolution and capitalist globalization, people suddenly found that the communities around them were disintegrating. Traditional values broke apart, interpersonal relationships faltered, social centripetal forces disappeared, and the gaps between the rich and poor were enlarged. In other words, human society, in the dire mire of modernization, was in urgent need of community. As a response to the call, some people explored and spread the idea of community in Europe. They wrote books and spread ideas in the fields of philosophy and sociology or explored the imagination of community in literature. In the interaction between these two, the idea of community was evolving and changing (Yin 2016, p. 71).

According to Williams’s Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, the word “community” has four basic meanings in different times: (1) civilian (from the 14 to the 17th century); (2) country or organized society (from the 14th century); (3) people in a certain region (from the 18th century); (4) the nature of joint ownership (from the 16th century). Williams believed that community had an important feature: “It seems that community is often used to stimulate good imagination unlike other terms that refer to social organizations, such as country, nationality, and society…” (qtd. in Yin 2016, p. 71). Benedict Anderson also had a great impact in the field, ascribing the intrinsic nature of community (nation) to imagination: “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson 2006, p. 6). German sociologist and philosopher Ferdinand Tönnies made a classical distinction between community and society: “The relationship itself, and the social bond that stems from it, may be conceived either as having real organic life, and that is the essence of Community [Gemeinschaft]; or else as a purely mechanical construction, existing in the mind, and that is what we think of as Society [Gesellschaft]” (Tönnies 2001, p. 17). Many people endeavored to inherit and spread Tönnies’ thoughts of community.

Ferdinand Tönnies proposed the concepts of community by blood, community of place, and community of spirit (Tönnies 2001, p. 27), among which community by blood and community of place are often based on tribes or villages, while the spiritual community and Benedict Anderson’s imaginary community extend the scope of the community to regions and even countries (Anderson 2006, p. 37). Professor Anfeng Sheng has also defined a community: in the modern sense, a community is a collection of individuals or social units that share a common social norm, religion, values, or identity. It can be related to the region, or it can refer to the network of virtual community, which can be as small as the residential community but also as large as the country, the regional international alliance, and even the human community (Sheng 2019).

Communities can be as large as the globe, the universe, the galaxy, or as small as the core of the family. Tönnies outlined the basic bonds of communities: the mother–child bond (Tönnies 2001, p. 22), the husband–wife bond (Tönnies 2001, p. 23), the sibling–sibling bond (Tönnies 2001, pp. 23–24), and the father–child bond (Tönnies 2001, pp. 24–25).

According to the explanation of the “Community” concept of the above scholars, we think the connotation of “Community” can be summed up as a kind of living and prosperous organism that inspires people’s good imagination about life in which human beings can have real and continual life together. We can also put forward the concept of “global community”, a community traversing at least two continents of the globe, or “international community”, a community involving individuals or groups in two or more countries, which is by nature a cosmopolitan community.

Cultural concepts restrain people’s comprehensive understanding of life in community, and literary classics are key media in expressing and communicating these understandings. The changing and development of cultural concepts directly influence the production of literary works, which in turn have important impacts on the changing direction of cultural concepts (Li and Yin 2021, p. 63).

In the field of international politics, community research can reveal different and sometimes even contradictory arguments. Marxism stipulates that individual freedom and community coexist and depend on each other, being a dialectical relationship. On the contrary, some scholars and politicians do not view community positively. For instance, American scholar Stephan Holmes defines the community mode as embeddedness and believes that this embeddedness is similar to restriction or restraint; he believes that the calling for community must mean the loss of individual freedom (Holmes 1989, p. 219). This extreme way of thinking has its connection with enlightenment modernity, when ideologists were over-reliant on instrumental rationality and over-passionate about individual subjective feelings of happiness. Thus, it places individual freedom against the calling for community, leading to the division of ideas of modern happiness in the dimensions of cognition and ethics (Li and Yin 2021, p. 64). In Alasdair MacIntyre’s words, “all the links between duty and happiness were gradually broken” (MacIntyre [1966] 2017, p. 167).

International community is the external basis of the global community for a shared future. States are sovereign and independent of each other, and there is no international government above the state and central political authority to which different states are subject. However, there is something more powerful than all powerful separatist forces, namely common interests. These common interests and the necessary intercourse to serve them have long since united divided nations into an indivisible community (Song 2020, p. 116).

The concept of global community or international community can be explained from the perspective of international relationship: (1) The idea of international community comes into being with the development of modern communications; (2) The international community is primarily regarded as an important and valid moral concept, which in turn can influence institutions and instill policy choices; (3) The international community is an imagination of a better world shared by all mankind in international law, international institutions (such as the United Nations), selfless humanitarian action such as disaster assistance, peacekeeping, and social movements for the betterment of the human condition; (4) The international community is an actual community, and it will be able to push forward common goals or legitimize common action as a potential source of strength; (5) The present international community is a social fact only to a small extent. It is more a way of evoking the common national character of the nation-state and the most basic rules of conduct that govern relations between states (Buzan and Gonzalez-Pelaez 2005, p. 31). Apparently, there are different opinions about the definition of international community from politicians: some regard the international community as a certain form of human morality that exists as an ethical object, even if it is not organized in any way; others see the international community as an agent with some capacity to act (Buzan and Gonzalez-Pelaez 2005, p. 32). We would like to exploit part of Explanation (3), that international community is “an imagination of a better world shared by all mankind”; in Charging Elk’s case, that there is a better place on the globe other than the reservations in the U. S. for the American Indians.

People in different parts of the world have had beautiful dreams of the whole world living in great harmony since thousands of years ago. Confucius proposed the concept of “shijie datong”, a world of “Great Harmony or Great Unity”, an ideal or perfect society, in which “people of different races, classes, and countries would enjoy equal rights and live happily together” (Sheng 2018, p. 89), whereas “cosmopolitanism”, meaning “citizen of the world”, was developed during the European Renaissance period and enriched by modern philosophers like Immanuel Kant and more recent thinkers like Jacques Derrida and Kwame Anthony Appiah (Sheng 2018, p. 87). Although the Chinese concept stresses a collective perspective, an overall harmony, and the Western concept departs from an individualistic point, one being able to live wherever (in the world or the cosmos) he desires, and although the scope of “world” may differ immensely for Easterners and Westerners, both concepts are utopian and denote harmony, love, and hospitality. Appiah (1997) envisioned the idea of a cosmopolitan community in which “individuals with different beliefs from different places promote each other and enter a relationship of mutual respect and dialogical communication” (Sheng 2018, p. 88).

In the case of Charging Elk, an American Indigenous individual, intimidated by the hostility of the settler-colonizers and the stark reality on the reservation, on the verge of the surety of being assimilated or forced into extinction, and inconvenienced by his unfortunate injury in another country (France) on another continent of the globe (Europe), his loss of official identity papers, and his equal misfortune of not being recognized as a U.S. citizen, seeks livelihood in that place, hence overcoming frustrations with local hospitality and forming a global community, a new family with a local individual and a new life in a new city plus his memories of his parents’ family and his tribal life.

4. Factors That Induce the Global Community Formation

Charging Elk’s tribal community ceases to function unhindered as in the pre-contact era. Defeated in war against the white settler-colonizers, the tribe is corralled on the reservation, confined, oppressed, and assimilated: “It was early in the moon of the shedding ponies, less than a year after the fight with the longknives on the Greasy Grass, and the people looked down in the valley and they saw the white man’s fort and several of the women wept… Their gaunt faces were painted as if for war, but there was no fight left in them” (Welch 2000, p. 1). The last sentence of this paragraph shows that these Indian people will no longer be independent and that they have no more opportunities to fight for their independence or freedom. Crazy Horse, the Oglala chief, “led the weary, ragged people to Fort Robinson and Red Cloud Agency” (Welch 2000, p. 12), and he is killed afterwards. It is correspondent with the truth that the Oglala Sioux tribe was confined on a reservation on 6 May 1877.

The family community ceases to function. Charging Elk is bewildered about the change: “He understood that these wasichus had made his sister and brother and his mother cry. He understood that his father and the other men would not fight anymore. He understood that his people would not be allowed to go back to the buffalo ranges. They were prisoners. What he didn’t know was what would become of them” (Welch 2000, p. 3). Because of the oppression by the American whites, the family in the tribe sees no future. Family members apparently do not see those whites as their brothers or sisters, or, in other words, their kin. Instead, they see these whites as enemies because they are literally imprisoned on the reservation by them. They are forced by the whites to leave “buffalo ranges”, so Charging Elk feels lost about his own life and his family’s life in the future. Charging Elk’s family has become broken now that the tribe is reservation-confined.

The conditions that the Oglala Sioux are in prove to be desolate. Charging Elk’s siblings have all died of contagious diseases. Diseases like smallpox transmitted by blankets were used by the settler-colonizers as a means to reduce the Indigenous population:

With few exceptions all these plains Indians were reported to be free of anything that would even approach an epidemic up to at least 1882. Between 1882 and 1885 for some reason there was a tremendous increase in the frequency of the disease, and at a later date, on practically all the reserves on the plains, the disease had taken the proportions of an epidemic.

(Daschuk 2019, p. 100)

As a result, Charging Elk is the only child that his parents have left, so they want him to stay on the reservation and keep them company, though the housing is not so satisfactory, being cramped and dilapidated, and though the whites plan to convert the Sioux into Christians and assimilate them into white ways of life.

Now that the home environment is not agreeable, Charging Elk needs to act, to exercise his agency and seek hospitality elsewhere, to “experience and experiment” cosmopolitanism (Derrida 2001, p. 23). Charging Elk’s action is taken with the encouragement of his friend Strikes Plenty, who entices him to cross the big water (the Atlantic Ocean) and join the Wild West Show: “‘It is for the best’, said Strikes Plenty. ‘You will see the land where these white men come from. You will see many great things, make money, enjoy yourself. Me, I will become fat with potatoes, and maybe I will have a winyan and many children when you return’” (Welch 2000, p. 36). Apparently, Charging Elk’s friend supports him to leave where he has lived since his birth and persuades him to see the larger world beyond the sea.

However, the direct cause for Charging Elk’s visit to France, which later turns into residence, is the Wild West Show in which Charging Elk participates, which brings him to France and leaves him there alone. He is hurt by the buffalo in the Wild West Show, which results in his being hospitalized. If it had been a chase and kill for his sustenance in the old days, Charging Elk would not have stunted the “performative” act of increasing the difficulty of chasing the buffalo herd (Welch 2000, p. 15). Everything now is for the white spectators’ benefit at the risk of his own life. His life is worthless; it only matters when he can provide entertainment for the whites.

He feels disappointed when he realizes that the Wild West Show has abandoned him, leading to his homeless condition. He feels lost about his future because at present he cannot find his friends in the Wild West Show or return to his family in the U.S. He is now a helpless stranger in this unfamiliar land. He once cherished the hope that maybe someone in the Show, maybe Broncho Billy, the interpreter, would come and fetch him, but no one does (Welch 2000, p. 19). They have proceeded and left him behind. His life is only good for profit. Now that he is injured and in a coma for a week or more, Buffalo Bill and his troupe simply leave. Charging Elk regretfully wishes that he had stayed on the reservation with his parents despite all the restraints. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show is a miniature of the exploiting settler-colonizer collective, profiting on the American Indians while not treating them as humans. However, the show functions as a vehicle for Charging Elk to be in another country and on another continent.

Both objective factors and subjective factors promote the integration of Charging Elk into mainstream French culture. From the perspective of objective factors, Charging Elk not only has difficulties in expressing himself but also has a bad health condition. At first, he cannot be accepted by the local people and is marginalized. In terms of subjective factors, Charging Elk is curious about the local culture and intends to stay in France because he does not like the condition of his tribe in the U.S. now. These are two key factors that promote the integration of Charging Elk into mainstream French culture.

It is clear that Charging Elk has some difficulties with the language: he cannot communicate with the local people fluently when he wants to get some information or show his willingness to be friendly to the local people. When the local people want to confirm his identity, he can only use fragmented English to express himself. “He could do nothing [linguistically] but look at their suits, even though his eyes took in their somber faces” (Welch 2000, p. 13).

A global cosmopolitan community presupposes the freedom of the individual (Appiah 1997, p. 621). Charging Elk does not want to be confined in the hospital, just as he does not want to be corralled on the reservation. The consequence is, however, that he is in a bad health condition because he escapes from the hospital without recovering from the injury entirely. He is hungry and weak, wandering on the street and even stealing things from a stall and eating left-over food from a restaurant.

Apart from that, due to the limitations of the times, people in Marseilles in the late 19th century cannot accept his appearance and stare at him with suspicion and even hostility due to their thoroughly different cultural background. Charging Elk feels that he is just a stranger in this land. Although he tries to hold his head high, maintaining his dignity, it is extremely hard. In order to survive, Charging Elk has to acculturate. Therefore, he adjusts to the living habits and cultural conventions of the mainstream culture so that he can make a living in the mainstream society (Li and Chen 2023, p. 67).

The formation of the global community is facilitated by mutual interest. Charging Elk’s integration into local culture happens because he is fascinated. Charging Elk becomes interested in a woman with specific attire: “a flat gold cross hung from a chain” around the woman’s neck (Welch 2000, p. 8), which the protagonist has seen on other people before. The description shows the curiosity of Charging Elk towards the local people. The cross shows that the nurse is a Christian. Charging Elk’s curiosity about local culture means that he aspires to know more about French culture and that he has the potential to make a living in a new environment. Food prompts his hunger and interest. He remembers “those times in Paris when he and some of his friends would go to such a house to buy the puffy things filled with fruit or chocolate. Boulangerie. It was one of the words he recognized. And charcuterie, where they would buy sticks of greasy meat. Brasserie and Café. The interpreters always named things” (Welch 2000, p. 27). These instances demonstrate that the protagonist Charging Elk is curious about this foreign culture. He wants to know more about French life when he is travelling with his friends in Paris. He still remembers some words he has encountered on the tablets of those shops on the street. These details show that he has a willingness to blend into the local French culture. Though woman (through whom religion is also embodied in this case) and food signify basic needs, a young man like Charging Elk is still eager to learn, full of curiosity.

On the other hand, the French have curiosity about the Indians, especially when the latter are in their cultural regalia: “When he and the others walked down a street in their blue wool leggings and fancy shirts and blankets, with their earrings and feathers and brass armbands, the French would stop and stare. Sometimes they would clap their hands and cheer, just like the audiences in the arenas” (Welch 2000, p. 29). The curiosity may not be equal, but it is reciprocal. That is why some of the Indians express their will to stay in France rather than go back home. In addition, once the ways of living on the reservation are forced to become farming instead of hunting and gathering, the Indian ways are dead, and there is no hope for them. Staying in France could mean more chances.

It is obvious that Charging Elk has the intention to stay in France, the only obstacle being that he cannot make his living by himself. Thus, he needs a woman who can take care of him and help him to blend into the local culture.

5. The Transformation Process from a Stranger to Becoming a Member of the Global Community

The protagonist’s transformation from a stranger to a member of the global community is mainly embodied in three parts. We will analyze it from the changes taking place on Charging Elk’s appearance and living habits, his social role and behavioral pattern, and his individual value and personal identification.

Charging Elk’s appearance has changed much, and he gradually dresses up like a modern person in France; “Except for his mustache and the little puff of hair on his chin, one wouldn’t have recognized him as the great warrior who thrilled the audiences with his buckskin suit, beaded gauntlets, and shiny black boots that came halfway up his thighs” (Welch 2000, pp. 125–26). The suit and hat on him show his adjustment to the local culture. Rene Soulas, the person who provides Charging Elk with shelter, teaches him how to dress like a local and lets him wash himself so that he looks clean and like one of them: “He washed his face with soap and water; then he dipped the toothbrush into the soapy water and brushed his teeth. It felt good to clean his teeth, even with the bitter water” (Welch 2000, p. 133). He acquires the knowledge to brush his teeth like locals, and he changes his hair style and clothes so as to look similar to local people. He even has difficulty recognizing himself once his symbolic long hair is cut short, which indicates his integration into the mainstream French culture. Charging Elk’s adjustment in appearance and habits is not to be taken as complete assimilation. It is acculturation that is necessary for his syncretization into the local culture. The “mustache and the little puff of hair on his chin” is still a reminder to the reader and local people that he is an American Indian, who has reached his maturity with a whole set of Indigenous beliefs in him. He is only making an effort to conform to local ways of life.

Charging Elk’s social role also changes after he is taken in by René Soulas. Soulas wants to show Charging Elk how he (Soulas) earns his living, even though he is not sure whether Charging Elk would like it: “René still hadn’t decided if Charging Elk was strictly a guest or a contributing member of the family. Would he want to work?” (Welch 2000, p. 136). Mr. Soulas introduces Charging Elk to a job which means that Charging Elk will no longer be a homeless person wandering on the street. He finds his place and role in society, which leads to his integration into the local mainstream culture. To be a guest means to be visiting a place, not having to work, only to enjoy the hospitality, and to be a contributing member would mean work and responsibility. According to Kant, hospitality is a right of visitation rather than that of residence (qtd. in Derrida 2001, p. 21). In Charging Elk’s case, he works and contributes to the family, so he has become a member of the family.

Charging Elk senses a personal identity crisis. He starts to feel that he is not a pure Indian person anymore, puzzled about his own self-identity. He wants to speak the “American tongue [English]” as the reservation Indians do and adapt into “the new life of strangers [the Euro-American lifestyle]”, but he cannot fuse into it yet. Thus, he feels he is a “fire boat out on the big water” (Welch 2000, p. 130). Intense conflicts occur inside Charging Elk’s mind when he is adjusting to the local culture. On the one hand, he is pleased that he can adjust to local life. On the other hand, he feels that he has betrayed his Wakan Tanka because he looks like a whole new person compared with who he used be: “Of course, he had touched the short hair in disbelief many times since yesterday morning, but to see it now filled him with fear. How would Wakan Tanka know him? Charging Elk suddenly felt ashamed of himself” (Welch 2000, p. 133). He thinks that he has lost his Oglala identity after changing his appearance and feels like some changes have taken place in his own personal identity. In fact, this reflection demonstrates that he is not completely assimilated. He still has awe for the Great Spirit, his adjustment to local ways is only for practical reasons, and he often dreams of his parents and his kinsfolk on the reservation.

6. The Significance of Building a Global Community

Global community formation in this novel has significant meaning. We will analyze it from the perspective of individual, social, and cultural significance.

The protagonist Charging Elk finally establishes a family with Nathalie Nazier, a young French woman, and finds a job in France. From the perspective of the individual, Charging Elk finds his sense of belonging and happiness in this strange land far away from his home. From the perspective of the society, his marriage is good evidence that an American Indian can get along with the locals well. It manifests the possibility of two different cultures’ combination notwithstanding possible prejudices. “Nathalie and Charging Elk were married in a civil ceremony at the Hôtel de Ville in Agen. It was a simple proceeding and took less than fifteen minutes” (Welch 2000, p. 403). He has his best man, and his wife has her bridesmaid. Although the ceremony is brief, it is official. He has become a French citizen with rights (Welch 2000, p. 403). The civil service instead of a religious service indicates that Charging Elk can still retain his Indigenous beliefs, which can be considered in a way a neutral ground, or third space. In this space, Charging Elk finally finds his “cozy home” (Bauman 2001, p. 4).

Apart from that, Charging Elk has integrated into the local society and ceases to be the stranger upon arrival: “Now here I am, a man of thirty-seven winters. I load and unload ships. I speak the language of these people. My wife is one of them and my heart is her heart. She is my life now and soon we will have another life and the same heart will sing in all of us” (Welch 2000, p. 437). As Tönnies expounds, the smallest unit of the community is the family. Now, Charging Elk has established a family in a previously foreign land. The culture of Oglala is dying: “Buffalo Bill says they are disappearing like the bison. He says their culture is dying and soon they will be gone too. It is a tragedy that such things happen” (Welch 2000, p. 137). Under such circumstances, Charging Elk’s survival in France is significant. He has taken his roots with him and successfully transplanted in a foreign soil (Appiah 1997, p. 622). After Charging Elk is taken in by René Soulas, he is gradually accepted, and local people know more about the Indian culture. The author portrays Charging Elk as “a beautiful human being. Even in the clothes of the workingman, he is above the humble station of the prolétaire”. In René Soulas’ eyes, Charging Elk is like a dark prince. He thinks Charging Elk is “the one who took the most chances who rode among the stampeding bison as though they were his pets” (Welch 2000, p. 134). Moreover, Mr. Soulas wants his children Mathias and Chloé to travel to where Charging Elk once lived: “Perhaps someday Mathias would go there to see Charging Elk in his habitation and learn the skills of survival. It was not out of the question. Mathias had a nose for adventure” (Welch 2000, p. 134). The transplantation can be both ways provided that conditions are ready.

It is beneficial to expand the inter-cultural communication between the Indian and French people, and it is helpful to protect the Indian culture. What is more, the marriage between Charging Elk and Nathalie embodies that people from two different cultures can be tolerant of each other and discard prejudice.

A survey of all five of James Welch’s novels informs the reader that The Heartsong of Charging Elk is significant in presenting a global community, as the first four get their protagonists either back to the reservation or nowhere, nothing close to a transatlantic quest. In Welch’s debut novel Winter in the Blood (1974), he creates a nameless but “articulate” Blackfoot protagonist (Welch and Bevis 1982, p. 167), who is caught between the Indian world in northern Montana and the white world, who is pursued by vicious white men, and who experiences the deaths of his brother, father, and grandma. His only accomplishment is that through his visit and talk with Yellow Calf, an elder, he sorts out his family and tribal history. In other words, he resolidifies his family and tribal community mentally, though many relatives have died. In Welch’s second novel Death of Jim Loney (1979), a half breed Blackfoot youth, Loney, equally intelligent, has an identity crisis, since his Indigenous mother is dead, his white father abandons him, his sister lives in another city, and his white girlfriend simply does not know how to console him. He simply cannot re-establish the bond by blood. Hence, he cannot reconstruct the family or tribal community. The only positive note is that he takes control of his life by “orchestrat[ing] his own death” (Welch and Bevis 1982, p. 176). Fools Crow (1986) depicts a protagonist by the same name (originally named White-Man’s-Dog), who transforms from a coward, to a warrior, to a healer, to a prophet, who foresees the destruction of the tribal community by the Anglo-Americans but cannot stop it. The Indian Lawyer (1990) showcases Sylvester Yellow Calf, who is successful in basketball and law, on the verge of becoming a congressman. The story does show that Sylvester can negotiate the mainstream community (in Helena, Montana) (Welch and Lupton 2005, p. 201), but when he feels manipulated, he has to go back to his tribal community on the reservation. Compared with all the previous four novels, in which no one has left North America, mostly actually remaining within Montana, The Heartsong of Charging Elk sees the protagonist traveling across the Atlantic, taking his cultural roots with him, building a home there, adapting to local life, and cherishing his own home in memory. “In Welch’s novel, tribal culture is envisioned as portable; ‘home’ is maintained through imagination and memory” (Merish 2018, p. 347). Upon readers’ request, Welch intended to write a sequel to bring Charging Elk home to Dakota, so that Charging Elk would have the freedom of crossing the border in two directions, but he died in 2003, unable to fulfill the dream of homing, a pity (Welch and Lupton 2005, p. 200), which dream could be only possible in a more diversified, more ethnic, and more inclusive American society like that in the late 20th century or the present day.

Although a pity is felt by many, and although Charging Elk’s experience in France is not always smooth, undergoing sexual abuse, “the social and emotional difficulties of travel and transnational encounter—including painful experiences of racial prejudice and feelings of ‘invisibility’, loneliness, and alienation—and the nuances of his slow, sixteen-year adaptation to French life” (Merish 2018, p. 347), his survival in France epitomizes survival and success for American Indians. Global cultural communities will boil down to interactions between individuals: “While cultures may clash at their borders, the front lines of such encounters are manned by individuals. As Appiah (2006) reminds us, ‘[a] tenable cosmopolitanism tempers a respect for difference with a respect for actual human beings’” (p. 113, cited in Donahue 2014, p. 72).

Even in a Native American literature context (works with inter-continental themes), the global community that is developed in The Heartsong of Charging Elk stands out. Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes only has Indigo in England and Italy for a few months as a tourist, and Gerald Vizenor’s Griever: An American Monkey King in China simply enables the main character to go on a sojourn in China for a year as an English language teacher. Although both protagonists gain culturally from their travel destinations (Indigo finds resemblances of people’s attachment to land between European pagan, pre-Christian cultures and American Indians, while Griever is fascinated by aspects of Chinese culture like comic opera and martial arts) (Merish 2018, p. 341; Vizenor 1990, pp. 19, 21, 90, 192), they are in another country (on another continent) as a sight seer or a temporary resident, whereas Charging Elk has become a citizen, already boasting of 16 years of residence and promising more.

France strikes many as a country of hospitality. It has functioned as a “home” for many American expatriates: the Lost Generation represented by Ernest Hemingway (1920s)2, Henry Miller (1930s), Langston Hughes (1923, less than 6 months), and Ralph Ellison (a very few weeks in 1954) (Chester et al. 1955), Josephine Baker (1930s onward), and many more. Even James Welch himself travelled to countries including France, when his wife Lois had sabbaticals. These artists, ethnic or other, were either disillusioned by the U.S. or attracted by the vibrant French cultural atmosphere, especially drawn to the metropolitan Paris. Although some only sojourned for a few weeks or months, the metropolis became famous for its willingness to accept, hence an ideal spot for visitation and an exemplary place for cosmopolitan dreamers. Compared with these expatriates who made the stay out of choice, Charging Elk’s Marseille experience as a common American Indian (in the 19th century) predating the aforementioned American expatriates is out of necessity, more enduring, and probably uniquely significant.

7. Conclusions and Reflections

The discussion on the community in The Heartsong of Charging Elk gives us some inspirations about exploring the vision of a global community for a shared future in American Indian Literature.

In answer to the research questions raised in the introduction of this paper:

(1) A global community is formed in the novel because Charging Elk has an alienated homeland that he is reluctant to return to (with the free plains lifestyle terminated and the reservation being forcibly and oppressively assimilative), he is accidentally stranded in France, he is willing to find livelihood in France, and the French people are interested in a foreign culture and hospitable to an alien.

(2) Charging Elk learns the French language, adapts to local lifestyle, and contributes to the local economy, while retaining his Indigenous culture and belief, when he transforms from a stranger to a member of the global community.

(3) The formation of a global community is significant in that it epitomizes, from an individualistic perspective, the wish to be cosmopolitan and the reciprocal interests for people in different cultures and societies to know each other.

The protagonist’s integration into glocal (global in scope but local in practice) life to build an international/global community has significance in three aspects: personal, social, and cultural. As mentioned in the novel, “Charging Elk’s pardon, which declared his rights and duties as a citizen of the Republic of France, served as his official papers. And so, by quirk of fate, he finally acquired his citizenship, as well as a bride” (Welch 2000, p. 403). This reflects the possibility of the two different cultures to abandon prejudice, tolerate each other, and realize integration. When Charging Elk’s fellow Joseph urges him to come back to the reservation with him, Elk argues that France is his home now because he has his wife and soon will have a child there. He says to Joseph that he experiences and changes much in France. His expectant child is a symbol of cultural integration, representing the future and hope (Li and Chen 2023, p. 67).

With the advancement of globalization, humanity has entered an era of increasing connection. The communication, collision, conflict, and fusion between different nations and cultures have become the focus of literary theorists, cultural researchers, and even politicians. Observing the cultures of different ethnic groups and countries in the perspective of cultural globalization, we begin to expect the vision of cultural community for humanity, whether it originates from the traditional cosmopolitanism of Western culture or the ideal of world harmony derived from Chinese traditional culture. It provides spiritual inspirations and theoretical support for us to imagine a shared future for humanity (Sheng 2019, p. 132). All human beings on Earth belong to one community, living in a “community”, a shrinking global village; All human beings, even all lives, are related. This is the cultural and political embodiment of the spirit of cosmopolitanism in today’s global perspective. In this multicultural era in human history, many writers, especially post-colonial writers, immigrant writers, or diasporic writers, present a mixed and symbiotic state due to cultural collision, cultural conflict, and multi-element integration, thus more profoundly expressing the characteristics of cultural differences and identity differences as well as cultural transformation and integration (Sheng 2019, p. 132).