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BEVAN THOMAS

~ Writer, editor, storyteller

BEVAN THOMAS

Tag Archives: Dungeons & Dragons

Welsh D&D 1: Races

08 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by Bevan Thomas in Role-Playing, Uncategorized, Welsh Folklore

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Dungeons & Dragons, fairies, giants

Here are three (or rather four) different races for a version of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition based in Welsh folklore. Though these are the most obvious ones, other races could be selected as well with the DM’s will. For example, the triton from Volo’s Guide to Monsters could work well as merfolk and the shifter from the D&D website could be a good fit for werewolves and even Saxon werebears and strange Annwn wereboars.

Note that the language “Annwn” is that of the fey of the Otherworld, and thus replaces the normal D&D language “Sylvan.”

Half-Giant

Before humans ruled, Britain and Ireland belonged to the giants. Then the Picts came, but these folk saw the wisdom with allying with the lords of the land. Even marriages were made, with giant chieftains taking Pictish brides and Pictish chieftains taking giant brides. Then Brutus the Trojan brought his people to the island and warred against giants and Picts alike until he conquered the giant king Albion and claimed the island for his people – who became known as the “Brythons” in his honour. However, there are still giants in Britain – especially in the far north above Hadrian’s Wall. Most despise the Brythons, though are content to be left alone in the wild places. Still, some do make they wrath known.

And then there are the half-giants.

Between Human and Giant

Though many half-giants are the product of a human and a giant parent, the bloodlines of Picts and giants have been so intermingled that it is not uncommon for a half-giant to have two Pictish parents or two giant ones. Though much shorter than regular giants, half-giants are still tall, imposing figures with powerful bodies and long limbs. Their hair and eyes can be a variety of colours, but are most often black or dark brown. Though not as prone to mutation as regular giants, some are still born with a single eye or leg, huge tusks, or unusual coloration. They often dress like the community they’re trying to fit in with – like a giant when with giants, like a Pict when with Picts.

Hermits and Tribesfolk

There are not enough half-giants to form their own communities, so if they wish the company of others, they must associate with either giants or humans. In some tribes they are welcomed, though in others they face derision – this is especially true among giants, who value physical strength so highly. Scornful giants call them “half-breeds” or “runts.” They frequently receive more respect among Picts – Caw, one of the greatest Pictish kings, was a half-giant. It is often easier to be perceived as an unusually large, powerful human than an unusually small, weak giant. Occasionally a half-giant gets raised by humans who are not Picts – for example, King Arthur’s wife Gwenhuvar was raised a Brython by Lord Cador despite being the daughter of Ogrfran the Giant.

Like many giants, many half-giants become hermits. In some ways they can do it far more effectively, for the smaller half-giants can disappear into the wilderness much better than their larger cousins can. They adapt well to heights and the cold, and so are most often found in mountain ranges, though they also make their homes in dense forests and hidden valleys.

Half-Giant Characters

Barbarian is by far the most common character class for half-giants, as it is not only common in giant and Pictish cultures, but also gives them useful wilderness survival skills and voice to the rage and frustration that often dwells within them. Certain half-giants who develop a more spiritual approach to the natural world may become rangers instead; these often befriend creatures of great physical power: boars, bears, and giant serpents. Not surprisingly, an unusually large proportion of giant-soul sorcerers are half-giants. Druids and warlocks are not uncommon either. The druids will often be shamans in the Pictish tradition that follow the Circle of the Shepherd, but mountain or forest Circle of the Land are frequent too. Warlocks will usually have pacts with the Archfey or the Undying (spirits of dead giants and Picts). Other character classes are rare and often involve contact with other cultures.

HALF-GIANT TRAITS

Half-giants share a number of traits in common with each other.

  • Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1.
  • Giant: Half-giants are giants not humanoids.
  • Age. Though not as long-lived as many other giants, half-giants can still live longer than humans. They reach maturity at 15 and often live to at least 200 years.
  • Alignment. Their raging spirits and solitary natures means that most half-giants tend more towards chaos than law. Chaotic evil half-giants are pitiless raiders who attack others to get what they want, whereas chaotic neutral ones are usually either solitary recluses or wanderers. However the more tranquil hermits among them are often true neutral.
  • Size. “Runts” compared to regular giants, half-giants are generally between 7 and 9 feet tall and weigh between 280 and 400 pounds. However, certain ones (such as Queen Gwenhuvar) are even shorter, perhaps a mere 6 feet tall. Your size is Medium.
  • Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
  • Menacing. You gain proficiency in the Intimidation skill.
  • Savage Attacks. When you score a critical hit with a melee weapon attack, you can roll one of the weapon’s damage dice one additional time and add it to the extra damage of the critical hit.
  • Long-Limbed. When you make a melee attack on your turn, your reach for it is 5 feet greater than normal.
  • Powerful Build. You count as one size larger when determining your carrying capacity and the weight you can push, drag, or lift.
  • Mountain Born. You’re acclimated to high altitude, including elevations above 20,000 feet. You’re also naturally adapted to cold climates, as described in chapter 5 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
  • Languages. You can speak, read, and write either Brythonic and Giant or Brythonic and Pict (depending upon which culture you were raised in). Many learn both Pict and Giant.

Ellylon

There exists a world beside the moral one, a world often reached through mysterious mist and hollow hills, across the ocean and deep under the earth. This world is Annwn, the Otherworld. It is not above Earth like Heaven or below it like Hell – it is beside it and through it. It is the realm of the fey.

The lords of Annwn find the words “fey” and “fairy” offensive (as well as the Saxon term “elf”), so various euphemisms are used instead: the Good Neighbours, the Fair Folk, the Shining Ones, the Lords and the Ladies, or most commonly the Tylwyth Teg – the “Beautiful Family.” Their term for themselves is the “Ellylon.” They are often curious about humans, and so cross-over to the mortal to visit them, while others prefer instead to draw mortals into their own world.

The Fair Folk

Ellylon appear as tall, lithe humanoids of unearthly beauty. In their natural form, their hair is always yellow (though depending on the ellylon, it may be a shining gold, the rich colour of wheat, or a paler platinum) and their eyes are hypnotic and golden. Their skin is pale, often almost white, and their features are angular and pointed, including their ears. Ellylon clothes are usually rich and elegant, coloured white and gold. However, they all possess the power to appear perfectly human, and often will wander among mortals in that form.

Lords of the Otherworld

As befits many of their titles, the ellylon are the lords of the fey. Their mightiest include Arawn, Gwyn ap Nudd, Morgen and her sisters, and other rulers of Annwn. Lesser ellylon are the courtiers, warriors, and hunters of the courts, following the dictates of their masters. They are known for their whimsy and for their pride, for most ellylon consider other beings – giants, humans, goblins – to be their clear inferiors. Many grow bored of the Otherworld, and seek to enter the mortal plane for sport. Most will only engage in brief sojourns but some choose to remain among humanity. These are usually the least influential ellylon, who believe they will be prominent among mortals than among other fey.

Ellylon Characters

Ellylon are masters of magic, and produce many powerful fey-born sorcerers, fey-pact warlocks, and bards of all sorts. Those more martially inclined are generally ancient-oathed paladins or rangers, or fighters that become arcane archers or eldritch knights. However, they are ruled by whim, and could end up taking on almost any class. However, no ellylon can become a mystic or a devoted-0athed paladin. They do not have souls as mortals do and cannot comprehend the ways of God.

ELLYLON TRAITS

Ellylon share a number of traits in common with each other.

  • Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 2, and your Dexterity score increases by 1.
  • Fey: Ellyllon are fey not humanoids.
  • Age. Ellyllon reach physical maturity at the about the same age as humans. As fey, they will never get old or die of old age. An ellyllon 1000 years old is just as healthy as she was at 20.
  • Alignment. The lords of the fey have little concept of good and evil and their moods can be as changeable as a breeze, compassionate at one moment and cruelly vengeful the next. Most are chaotic neutral and they are almost never lawful.
  • Size. Ellyllon are tall, usually from under 6 to over 7 feet, and with slender builds. Your size is Medium.
  • Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
  • Darkvision. Accustomed to twilit forests and the night sky, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light.
  • Unnatural Beauty. You have proficiency in the Persuasion skill. Whenever you make a Charisma (Persuasion) check that takes particular advantage of your physical attractiveness, add double your proficiency bonus to the check instead of your normal proficiency bonus. Though you always possess the Persuasion skill no matter what form you take, the second option can only be employed in your natural ellyllon form.
  • Human Form. You can at will change your form to appear human. Whenever you use this ability, you take the same unique human form – it resembles you though with all fey traits replaced by human ones and your beauty is no longer unnatural (though still striking). The only thing that you can vary when you transform is your coloration – eye, hair, and skin colour. You can stay in your human form as much as you wish, but it is a magical transformation, and so is affected by dispel magic and similar effects.
  • Age Immunity. You are immune to any aging magic.
  • Cantrips. You know two cantrips of your choice from the bard and/or warlock spell lists, as well as the cantrip Otherworldly Door. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for them.
  • Languages. You can speak, read, and write Brythonic and Annwn.

Goblin

While the ellylon rule and hunt, the goblins serve. By far the most populous kind of fey, they perform all the various tasks that the Fair Folk consider too degrading or dull to perform. The two most prominent kinds are the hearth goblins (“booka”) and the mine goblins (“coblynau”).

Rough and Crude

In appearance, the goblins are the opposite of the ellylon. Instead of being tall and graceful, they are short and awkward. Instead of being inhumanly beautiful, they are inhumanly ugly. Their faces are wide, their mouths huge, their voices high-pitched, their eyes large and goggling. They look like caricatures of humanity, and even though they are actually very dexterous, when they move it often seems animalistic, like a scurrying rat or lopping rabbit. Some have animal features, such as horns, fangs, or tails. Their behaviour is generally blunt and unsophisticated, with a strong liking for practical jokes.

Many goblins seek self-expression through their costumes, wearing garish outfits that combine particular clashing styles. Those who live around mortals will frequently combine the looks of those individuals they admire.

Fey Servants

In Annwn, the goblins are menial servants. Booka are house servants – maids, butlers, cooks – while coblynau are miners. Many are content to serve their ellylon masters, but others flee to the mortal realm. After all, though their magic is considered insignificant in the Otherworld, it can produce respect and fear among mortals.

Goblins in the mortal realm generally fall into one of fours categories. There are goblins being sent on missions by their fey masters. There are those (especially booka) who seek to serve humans as they did ellylon, believing that these masters will give them more respect. There are those who instead toy with mortals for their own amusement, playing tricks on them. And there are those goblins that instead strive to be treated as equals, such as the warrior-bard Eiddilig, who joined King Arthur’s court.

Goblin Characters

Goblins favour classes that reward stealth and cunning. They are frequently rogues and bards, and sometimes rangers or fey-pact warlocks. Though in theory they could be almost any other class, they cannot be mystics or devoted-oathed paladins. Like all fey, they cannot channel the power of God.

GOBLIN TRAITS

Goblins share a number of traits in common with each other.

  • Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2.
  • Fey. Goblins are fey not humanoids.
  • Age. Goblins reach maturity surprisingly early, often at 10. As fey, they never die of old age. Very old goblins (such as 500 or 600 years) will often be very wrinkled and wizened, but they are still just as healthy as they ever were.
  • Alignment. Goblins are often less whimsical than ellyllon and can be neutral as often as chaotic neutral. Those who travel to the mortal realm frequently form a bond with humans, either helping them in the home (for booka) or in the mines (for coblynau) – these goblins are most often neutral good. However, others realize they can toy with humans like the ellyllon toy with them, becoming chaotic neutral or even chaotic evil.
  • Size. Goblins are between 3 and 4 feet tall and average around 40 pounds. Your size is Small.
  • Speed. Your base walking speed is 25 feet.
  • Age Immunity. You are immune to any aging magic.
  • Naturally Stealthy. You have proficiency in the Stealth skill.
  • Languages. You can speak, read, and write Brythonic and Annwn.
    Subraces. Two subraces exist: booka (hearth goblins) and coblynau (mine goblins).

Booka

  • Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1.
  • Cantrips. You know the Mending and Otherworldly Door cantrips. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for them.
  • Dark Vision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light.
  • Tool Proficiency. You gain proficiency with two artisan’s tools of your choice: brewer’s, carpenter’s, cobbler’s, or cook’s. If you then acquire one of these proficiencies a second time (such as through a background), add double your proficiency bonus to the check.
  • Speak with Small Beasts. Through sounds and gestures, you can communicate simple ideas with Small or smaller beasts.

Coblyn

  • Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1.
    Cantrips. You know the Mold Earth and Otherworldly Door cantrips. Wisdom is your spellcasting ability for them.
  • Superior Dark Vision. You can see in dim light within 120 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light.
  • Tool Proficiency. You gain proficiency with mason’s tools. If you then acquire this proficiency again (such as through a background), add double your proficiency bonus to the check.
  • Stonecunning. Whenever you make an Intelligence (History) check related to the origin of stonework, you are considered proficient in the History skill and add double your proficiency bonus to the check instead of your normal proficiency bonus

Half-Demon

Some times demons or the Evil One himself will seduce mortals for their own dark purposes. Such unions will sometimes produce children, beings generally known as “half-demons.” Such wretched creatures are treated as tieflings from the Player’s Handbook with the following exceptions:

  • Depending upon their demon sire, the exact nature of the half-demon varies. You can use any of the tiefling variants from Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes. 
  • All half-demons are proficient with the disguise kit.  
  • Half-demons look much more human than conventional tieflings, and will generally only have one or two demonic traits that can be hidden with a successful disguise kit proficiency roll. Such traits might include small horns, reddish skin, pointed ears, fangs, a forked tongue, or other small yet disquieting features.

Narnian Dwarfs in Dungeons & Dragons

11 Saturday Feb 2017

Posted by Bevan Thomas in Role-Playing

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C. S. Lewis, Dungeons & Dragons, dwarf, Narnia

Red Dwarf

C. S. Lewis is one of my favourite authors and I’ve always loved his Chronicles of Narnia. So, for the curious-minded, here is how the Narnian dwarfs (as Lewis spelled it), might work as a dwarven subrace in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition.

Dwarf, Narnian (subrace)

There is much that can be said about the dwarfs of Narnia, both good and bad. It is said that there have been no creature created by Aslan who is more cunning and more skilled… and (with the possible exception of humans) more vulnerable to corruption. Dwarfs value hard work, craftsmanship, pragmatism, and loyalty above all, especially loyalty to kin and kind.

Industrious
Above all, dwarfs love to work. They are smiths, miners, stonemasons, jewellers, even brewers. A dwarf is never happier than when he is working, and their are well-known for their craftsmanship throughout the land. So much of their identity is tied-up with industry that dwarfs have a hard time understanding people who do not work like they do – there are few insults among dwarfs greater than being called “lazy.” This devotion to hard-work is further enhanced by the fact that dwarfs require far less rest than any other races do. They can work long and hard, and are constantly shocked by long other people have to be “lying around.”

Practical
Dwarfs pride themselves on their practically and “down-to-earth” nature. They have no interest in pomp and ceremony, court manners and whatnot. They prefer to be blunt, forward, and get the job done as efficiently as possible. This explains their skill in archery. Most Narnian human nobility are knights who favour melee combat with sword and lance. Though these folk recognize archery’s importance on the battlefield, they consider it less honourable and heroic than facing the enemy in direct melee combat. Dwarfs have no such qualms, and are cheerfully willing to shower their enemies with arrows before they get anywhere near them. As a result, the archery units of Narnian armies often consists mainly of dwarfs and yeoman (who don’t follow the knightly code), and the occasional woman (who also is not bound by the code).

Black Dwarf

Ethnically Loyal
Most dwarfs recognize any other dwarf as a like-minded individual, cut from the same stone (metaphorically), more alike than any human, faun, or talking animal could ever be. That isn’t to say that dwarfs feel no loyalty to non-dwarfs – many do – but everything else being equal, a dwarf is likely to take a fellow dwarf’s side in an argument, and few things will enrage a dwarf more than the notion that his “people” aren’t being treated fairly. As a result, dwarfs generally prefer to live with other dwarfs, often with three, five, or seven dwarfs all sharing the same cavern or cottage. Some rare dwarfs will share a home with non-dwarfs, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

Corruptible
It is no secret that of all the non-human races created by Aslan, dwarfs are the ones most likely to fall from grace. Some find their industriousness warped to greed and pride, others care so strong about the dwarf race that they turn against all others, and some become so coldly utilitarian that they will willingly work for any side that seems to be treating them fair enough – whether dark king, wicked witch, or demon.

Red Dwarfs & Black Dwarfs
Narnian dwarfs are divided into two kinds. Red dwarfs have red hair and beards as soft as fox fur, whereas black dwarfs have black hair and beards as tough as horse hair. Red dwarfs are generally friendlier than black dwarfs, more willing to associate and even befriend non-dwarfs, whereas black dwarfs are far more suspicious and bad-tempered, often believing that the only kind of person a dwarf can trust is another dwarf. Though black dwarfs are more likely to go astray than red dwarfs, there have certainly been bad red dwarfs and good black black dwarfs.

Half-Dwarfs
Either the child of a dwarf and a human or the descendent of people who were. Most half-dwarfs were born after the Telmarine Invasion, when many dwarfs disguised themselves as humans to avoid the purges. Many dwarfs (especially black dwarfs) despise half-dwarfs, both for not being “pure” dwarfs and because their very existence reminds people that their ancestors chose to deny their dwarf identity (something utterly repugnant to most dwarfs). With the rise of King Caspian X, much of the dwarfen prejudice against half-dwarfs is decreased.

Narnian Dwarf Traits
With the exception of alignment, red and black dwarfs have identical statistics.

Dwarf: Narnian dwarfs have all of the traits of regulars dwarves.

Alignment: Dwarfs value laws, tradition, and orderliness, and are almost always Lawful. Red dwarfs, relatively friendly and easy-going, are generally Lawful Neutral or Lawful Good. Black dwarfs, however, are more likely Lawful Neutral or Lawful Evil.

Ability Increase: Your Intelligence score increases by 1.

Fell Archer: You have proficiency in shortbows and composite shortbows. If your character class already gives you proficiency in those weapons, then you gain +1 to hit with them.

Unrelenting: Narnian dwarfs need less rest than others do, and if necessary can march all day and all night. You only need to rest for 15 minutes to gain the benefit of a short rest (rather than an hour) and sleep for 3 hours to gain the benefits of an extended rest (rather than 8 hours).

Monster Name Game: Flumph

12 Friday Aug 2011

Posted by Bevan Thomas in Monsters

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Dungeons & Dragons, flumph, monster, Name Game, role-playing

Hey, I’m back with another Monster Name Game, where I take a picture and name of a classic Dungeons & Dragons monster and create a totally new monster from it. Because I love a challenge, I’ve decided to go with the flumph, a strange jelly-fish monster who was the only “Lawful Good” creature in the classic Fiend Folio book. The creature has long been derided by D&D fans, both for its strange appearance and for the incongruous alignment. What is so benevolent about these floating jellyfish? Do they rescue maidens? Heal the sick? Always pay their taxes on time? What good deeds do jellyfish perform?

So what direction could I go based on their appearance and their name, which sounds like it’s being spoken by someone with his mouth full of marshmallows? Just to make things extra difficult, how about I keep the “Lawful Good” alignment. Whatever kind of creature my flumph is, it’s benevolent.

Well, what do I think of when I see a bizarre tentacled creature with a peculiar name? Aliens. Now fantasy fiction is not generally big about visitors from another planet, but what about visitors from another universe? Some extraplanar entities who have phased into our reality for some special purpose. What if the flumph is like those benevolent “star-brother” aliens you often get in stories? The ones who show-up to deliver some message of peace to humanity or perhaps to supply use with knowledge that will improve our lot as a species. The flumph look so strange because they are inhabitants of a higher plane of existence, one where our heavy, clumsy bodies would not function. They’re not angels, not servants of a divine power, but simply a more self-aware kind of being than us who has watched us for a long time and sometimes given a helping tentacle. They almost treat us like we were their little siblings to be taught and protected, though they are aware that us mere four-dimensional beings often respond to the strange with fear and hate, so the flumph generally keep their appearance known to only a deserving few.

What’s interesting about them being extra-dimensional beings is that then their strange appearance and goofy name makes sense. Their universe is different from ours, and their views of what’s beautiful are different as well. To each other, the flumph appear handsome and heroic, and their species name is grand and noble. It shows the jarring contrast of the two universes that we have a hard time taking the flumph seriously.

“Do not be afraid, young one. We come in peace. We have much to teach you.”

Monster Name Game: Fairy Dragon

13 Wednesday Jul 2011

Posted by Bevan Thomas in Monsters

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dragon, Dungeons & Dragons, fairy, monster, Name Game, role-playing

There’s a game my brother Ian likes to play: he flips through some old role-playing book of monsters, randomly puts his finger on one of the creatures, and then invents a totally new being based only on the existing monster’s appearance and name.

Fairy Dragon

That’s fun. Let’s try it. Flipping through my Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition Monster Manual II, I come to the Faerie Dragon, a grinning little reptile who unlike other dragons has butterfly instead of bat wings. The normal D&D version is a precocious little pixy who bobs along some sylvan forest, playing magical pranks on any mortals who stumble through and breathing out a fog that knocks people into a euphoric stupor. Certainly that’s one way to interpret a dragon of the fay world, but right now I’d prefer to go a little darker.

Depending upon how you interpret the term, giants can be classified as fairies: they’re nonhuman beings, often with supernatural powers, who inhabit lands away from human civilization. And if so, then the greatest “fairy” dragon was Fafnir from Norse mythology, a giant who murdered his family for their treasure and then turned himself into a huge dragon to be better guard it. In some versions of the story, his transformation was on purpose, but in others it was that the treasure’s curse twisted his own greed and made him into a monster against his will.

So what if that’s a fairy dragon? An ancient fairy lord, some elf king or giant chief or satyr elder whose power, greed, and wickedness become so great that he degenerates into a ravenous monster. He still keeps court in his castle, but now his subjects have to contend with an impatient monster who will swallow them whole if displeased and who desires more and more: more food, more gold, more playthings.

Fafnir breathed fire, but for our fairy dragon, let’s pick something a little more unusual. Fairy powers are frequently illusions, so perhaps the fairy dragon breathes out a gas that causes hallucinations that dance before a person’s eyes so that they believe themselves to be beset by monsters and cannot tell friend from foe. A sadistic trickster, the fairy dragon giggles in glee as its enemies murder each other, each believing themselves to be defeating one of the dragon’s slaves.

The fairy dragon maintains all its power from before its transfiguration: the elf king’s magic, the giant chief’s strength, and as well is a master shape-shifter. It can change its size, become different creatures, even take on the fey form it had before it became a monster. Subtle and manipulative, the dragon often uses its shape-shifting to infiltrate groups, spreading discord and dividing its enemies. However, taking on such forms requires a lot of focus. The moment the monster’s concentration slips, such as when it loses its temper, it becomes a raging dragon again.

The fairy dragon looks more or less the same as how D&D depicted it, except much bigger. Its smile, while originally gentle, is now mocking and sardonic, while its butterfly wings create a hypnotic whirring as it flies through the sky. People look up and can’t take their gaze off the wings’ patterns as the creature descends upon them.

Beware of fairies who become dragons….

Putting on the Feathers 3: Bibliography

23 Tuesday Nov 2010

Posted by Bevan Thomas in Essay

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aboriginal, Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, noble savage, role-playing, Shadowrun, World of Darkness

Here are all my referenced sources for Putting on the Feathers to assist those who desire further reading in that area.

______________________

Bibliography

Bridges, Bill, developer. Werewolf Player’s Guide. Stone Mountain, USA: White Wolf, 1993.

Brucato, Phil. Mage the Ascension 2nd Edition. Clarkson, USA: White Wolf, 1995.

Carella, C. J. GURPS Voodoo the Shadow War. Austin, USA: Steve Jackson Games, 1995.

Churchill, Ward. Acts of Rebellion: The Ward Churchill Reader. New York, USA: Routledge, 2003.

Cro, Stelio. The Noble Savage. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1990.

Deloria, Philip J. Playing Indian. New Haven, USA: Yale University, 1994.

Dowd, Tom. Shadowrun Second Edition. Chicago, USA: FASA, 1992.

Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton, USA: Princeton University Press, 1964.

Francis, Daniel. The Imaginary Indian. Vancouver, Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1992.

Gill, Sam D. and Irene F. Sullivan. Dictionary of Native American Mythology. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Greer, John Michael. The Element Encyclopaedia of Secret Societies and Hidden History. London, England: Harper Collins, 2006.

Hacket, Martin. Fantasy Wargaming. Wellingbourough, England: Patrick Stephens Ltd., 1990.

Hassall, Kevin and Steve Miller. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition: Shamans. Lake Geneva, USA: TSR, 1996.

Hobson, Geary. “The Rise of the White Shaman as a New Version of Cultural Imperialism.” In The Remembered Earth, edited by Geary Hobson, 100-108. Albuquerque, USA: Red Earth Press, 1979.

Huhndorf, Shari M. Going Native. Ithaca, USA: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Longfellow, Henry. The Song of Hiawatha and Other Poems. Pleasantville, USA: Reader’s Digest Association Inc., 1989.

Rein-Hagen, Mark, Robert Hatch, and Bill Bridges. Werewolf the Apocalypse 2nd Edition. Clarkston, USA: White Wolf, 1997.

Smith, Donald B. From the Land of Shadows. Saskatoon, Canada: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1990.

Summers, Cynthia, editor. Changeling Players Guide. Clarkston, USA: White Wolf, 1996.

Thoreau, Henry D. Walden, Civil Disobedience, and Other Writings. New York, USA: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.

Ward, James M. and Troy Denning. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition: Legends & Lore. Lake Geneva, USA: TSR, 1990.

Williams, J Patrick, Sean Q. Hendricks, and W. Keith Winkler, editors. Gaming as Culture. Jefferson, USA: McFarland & Company, 2006.

Wordsworth, William. “The World Is Too Much With Us.” In Romantic and Victorian Poetry Volume IV, edited by William Frost, 92. USA: Prentice Hall Inc., 1961.

Wyatt, James. Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition: Player’s Handbook II. Renton, USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2009.

Putting on the Feathers Part 2: Role-Playing Games

22 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by Bevan Thomas in Essay

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aboriginal, Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, noble savage, role-playing, Shadowrun, World of Darkness

Here is the second half of the essay, where I bring in my own experiences of “playing Indian.”

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Putting on the Feathers Part 2: Role-Playing Games

The Wendigo of Werewolf: the Apocalypse

As has been shown, ever since the Europeans encountered the aboriginals, many Europeans and Euro-North Americans have been fascinated by the aboriginals and often taken on their roles in various ways in order to deal with the problems they saw n their own society. Then, in the 1970s, a new format granted even more people a framework to play with aboriginal identity: the role-playing games. In such a game, a group of friends seated around a table can explore a fantasy world peopled with all sorts of strange creatures and cultures while a set of rules, usually accompanied by dice, is used to show if someone succeeds at a particular action, such as whether a player character wins in a fight against a dragon or whether a player character is able to successfully scale a wall.[1]

Role-playing games are an opportunity for people of all ages to play-out particular fantasies and yearnings, to take-on idealized identities different from their own, just like the people dressing-up in feathers at the powwows or adopting aboriginal names as part of secret societies. Many of the players of role-playing games are normally shy, introverted individuals who have a hard time interacting socially in most environments, and are drawn to role-playing games because these present a fantasy environment in which they can more easily express themselves. If such games as Dungeons & Dragons had been around when Grey Owl was a child, it is likely that he would have become engrossed in them, for he spent a lot of his childhood, and of course adulthood, adopting roles of his own, as “young Archie… sought refuge in a warm, friendly fantasy world.”[2] In role-playing games, players battle monsters, perform magic, save the world, do all the things they could not in the real world, and through that “players are imbued with a sense of power and control over their lives that they may feel is lacking in reality.”[3] Though this exploration of identity, a person can explore parts of themselves or get in touch with what they feel is missing from their lives.

Role-playing games as a commercial enterprise is generally considered to have started in 1970s with the first version of Dungeons & Dragons, created by E. Gary Gygax and David Arneson, and Dungeons & Dragons has remained the most popular role-playing game.[4] It is a fantasy game in which the player characters are usually a group of wandering adventurers whose role is to explore catacombs and wildernesses where they use magic and skill at arms to slay armies of monsters and steal their treasure. Though the game generally tries to invoke a primarily medieval Europe ambiance, it draws inspiration from virtually every kind of mythology and form of fantasy fiction, including some with aboriginal overtones.

Over the years, Dungeons & Dragons has published various books that collected the mythologies from numerous cultures for use in their game, and these have often included an “American Indian Mythos” as well that would include figures taken from numerous aboriginal mythologies. The use of the aboriginal elements has often been generic and little researched. One rulebook, Legends & Lore, explicitly states that “there are many analogies between tribes, even those located on opposite ends of the continent…. We can use these analogies to draw rather broad and coarse generalizations that will allow us to create a unified and consistent pantheon where, in historical reality, one did not exist.”[5] This produces a vague pantheon ruled by the “Great Spirit” with various deities possessing names such as “Sun,” Wind,” and “Fire,” and with various animal spirits such as “Raven” and “Snake.”[6] The diverse aboriginal beliefs across of North America homogenized into a single generic pantheon. Ultimately, the most prominent use of aboriginal imagery in Dungeons & Dragons has been through the use of the shaman archetype.

Shamanism, which is to say the practice of communing with spirits and sending one’s soul into a spirit realm, is a global phenomenon, and in fact the word itself derives from Siberia.[7] However, as discussed previously in this article, in North America, shamanism is generally identified with the spiritual practices of North American aboriginals, and ever since the 1960s such imagery has been very potent for Euro-North Americans. The Player`s Handbook II, a supplement for the latest version of Dungeons & Dragons, says that if a player character is a shaman, “in a rite of passage or initiation, you pledged yourself to the spirits, to be their voice and hands in the world…. Their power flows through you, calling you to lead, to fight, and to triumph.”[8] The idea of being intimately connected with mystical forces in such a way presents a sharp contrast to our impersonal, mechanistic modern world.

It was some time back in the 1990s that I stumbled upon a Dungeons & Dragons book called simply Shaman. It gave detailed information for playing shamans in the game, their magic powers, their mystical tools, their philosophies and cosmology, as well as information on the various spirits that they could summon and get their powers from (spirits with such generic names “Ancestor Spirit,” “Animal Spirit,” “Primal Spirit,” and so forth).[9] The role-playing games that I played with my brothers and friends were soon filled with enigmatic characters possessing names such as “Touches-the-Sky” and “Kilatchi Dawn-Sprinter.” These figures strode out of the forest, dressed in animal skins and with talismans hanging in their unkempt hair, offending the prissy sensibilities of the knights, wizards, and all the other “civilized” player characters that made-up the majority of the adventuring parties. These shamans were fun to play because they seemed so strange and counter-culture, existing outside of the normal “civilized” roles of the game, and more alien to my own society than the pseudo-medieval figures were. Furthermore, the shamans had a much more intimate and dynamic relationship with their source of power than the traditional Dungeons & Dragons clerics and wizards did, bargaining with spirits directly instead of spending quiet hours in prayer or arcane study. The shamans were unusual, enigmatic, exciting, and opened the door for the sort of melodramatic overacting that role-playing games bring-out in people. They were not taken very seriously, but then nothing in Dungeons & Dragons is. It’s just there for cathartic, heroic fun.

Though role-playing games try to be egalitarian, at least in North America, the people who play role-playing games are “predominately white, well-educated, middle-class males in their late teens to late twenties.”[10] Though more women play role-playing games than they used to, the amount of non-Caucasian gamers is still relatively small. Vancouver is a multicultural city, and yet in all my years of playing role-playing games with numerous groups of people, most of the participants have been of European descent with only a small amount being of another ethnicity, and none of them aboriginal. Most role-playing game designers are European or Euro-North Americans as well. Despite, or more likely because of that, numerous role-playing games cater to the players taking on the identities of members of persecuted non-white cultures fighting against Western hegemony, a result of the increased dissatisfaction among many Euro-North Americans towards their own culture, and the desire to escape from it.

Shadowrun is a role-playing game that uses aboriginals as sharp contrast to its world’s dominant culture. It is a science fiction game set in the middle of the 21st-century, inspired by the cyberpunk writing of William Gibson and similar authors while also adding the idea that magic has returned to the world, presenting an environment in which sorcerers, trolls, elves, and dragons all rub shoulders with cyborgs, computer hackers, and cold-hearted CEOs.[11] Because of the presence of magic, many aboriginal shamans in Shadowrun became incredibly powerful and were able to lead their people in rebellion against the North American governments and take back most of western North American with only a few “reservations” in which European-American communities are still allowed to exist (the largest being Seattle, the favoured location for Shadowrun games).[12] Among the kinds of characters that players can chose from are members of the aboriginal tribes that now dominate most of North American in the Shadowrun world and shamans who are each devoted to a particular animal totem which is heavily influenced by aboriginal archetypes (Bear is a healer, Coyote a trickster, Raven a trickster and transformer, etc.).[13] The tribes and shamans serve as a sharp contrast with the computer hackers, corporations, and cyborgs that serve as cyberpunk tropes. In the world of Shadowrun, most Euro-North Americans are under the thumb of greedy capitalist CEOs who want to pillage the environment to make a few bucks, while numerous people spend all their time jacked-into their computers or replace much of their bodies with cybernetic hardware that enhances their abilities while draining their soul (or “Essence” as it is called in the game). The game presents this as the dark product of Western civilization, while the tribes and their shamans provided an antidote: return to nature and embrace the magic there, which provides more power than machines do, and does not force you to sacrifice your Essence in the process.

Though it does not generally deal with North American aboriginals, the role-playing game GURPS Voodoo the Shadow War still features a persecuted North American racial minority striking back against the oppressors. In this game, the players play practitioners of Voodoo, generally lower class blacks, the descendents of the African slaves brought over to the New World who practice their religion in the slums and ghettos of the Americas.[14] Their main enemies are the Lodges, a secret society that is “the force behind the Inquisition, the Reformation, the Industrial revolution, and most major conflicts and events since before the fall of the Roman Empires. They sabotaged the Ghost Dance, the Boxer Rebellion, and every mystical attempt of magical cultures to fight-off European invaders. They have been the secret protectors of Western civilization for 1,000 years and the secret masters of the world for longer than that.”[15] Thus the commonly white, middle-classed players adopt the roles of members of an oppressed culture, a culture that follows a more naturalistic and intimate form of spirituality than what is primarily practiced in the West, and through this powers, the players’ characters are able to strike a blow against the sins of the players’ own Western tradition.

Still, perhaps the greatest example of a role-playing system that thematically places itself in opposition to modern Western society is White Wolf’s “World of Darkness,” This is a series of linked games set in the modern world, each one about playing a particular kind of supernatural creature (vampire, werewolf, ghost, etc.) that possesses its own separate culture that existing secretly alongside the human one. They include such games as Changeling the Dreaming, in which the characters are fairies trapped in human bodies who must fight against the increased banality of the modern world which does not believe in magic or dreams, and Mage the Ascension, where the player characters are members of the Traditions, practitioners of cultural magic who battle against the Technocracy, a cabal that wishes to purge the world of all sorcery save that produced by its own machines.[16] As with Changeling, modern society in Mage is perceived as being overly materialistic, banal, and toxic, crushing the souls of its inhabitants because it cuts them off from magic and dreams. Among the Traditions, side-by-side with Zen martial artists and Celtic witches, are the Dreamspeakers, mages who specialize in spirit magic and come from numerous tribal cultures; their symbol is a stylized bird in a manner similar to the carvings of the Haida and other aboriginal tribes of the Pacific Northwest Coast.[17]

Though both Changeling and Mage grant opportunities to “play Indian,” any aboriginal overtones are peripheral to the game. This is not the case with another World of Darkness role-playing game: Werewolf the Apocalypse. The premise of Werewolf is that werewolves, or the “Garou,” are the champions of Gaia, the Earth, and are fighting a losing battle against the forces of the Weaver, the embodiment of technology that wishes to enslave the world through machines and cities, and most especially the Wyrm, the embodiment of corruption and destruction that seeks to obliterate all existence, and uses pollution to ravage the Earth.[18] The werewolves are divided into thirteen tribes that represent either philosophical stances (the Red Talons despise all technology while conversely the Glass Walkers believe that technology can be redeemed to serve Gaia) or cultural stereotypes (the Get of Fenris are bigoted berserkers of Nordic descent while the Fianna are Celtic poets and singers who have close contact with the fairies); two of the tribes, the Wendigo and the Uktena, are American aboriginal.[19]

Both of these tribes embody a particular aboriginal stereotype: the raging warrior filled with rage towards the white man, and the mysterious shaman. Though the Wendigo contains elements of numerous aboriginal cultures, including a totem and name taken from the mythology of the Algonquians and their neighbours,[20] in general behaviour, the Wendigo are most influenced by the Lakota, Dakota, and other tribes that fought in the Indian Wars. The Wendigo as a whole despise European society and especially the European werewolves for stealing their land and wiping-out many of their people, and believe that the invaders brought the Wyrm to their lands. While the Wendigo rage against the invaders, the Uktena are more willing to deal with them. Though originally purely Americans, now the Uktena mingle with the disenfranchised from all over the world; “they can be found meeting with aboriginal shamanic lodges in the wilds of Africa and Australia, as well as with hedge wizards and holy men among the poor blacks, Asian immigrants, and refugees in the United States.”[21] The voice of disposed peoples all over the world, the Uktena are mighty shamans and keepers of secrets. The Wendigo and the Uktena together provide aboriginal stereotypes for players of the game to explore.

Though the Wendigo and the Uktena are the two specifically aboriginal tribes in Werewolf, even when choosing characters from other tribes, the player characters are still effectively playing Indian. Mark Rein-Hagen, the creator of Werewolf the Apocalypse, described his motivation to create the game as coming from his dissatisfaction with the modern world, which he found materialistic, cold, and antiseptic. He experimented with various religions to try and gain a mystical experience, but failed to achieve any divine connection. He didn’t want to live in a world “without meaning, without passion. I don’t want to live my life without spirituality…. I decided to create a spirituality for myself, practically from scratch. Through the medium of storytelling. Through my art. I call it Werewolf the Apocalypse.”[22] In Werewolf, all the werewolves are the beloved of Gaia, the Earth, who fight against all elements of the modern world that Rein-Hagen dislikes, like the Indians descending on General Custer at the Little Big Horn. The 2nd edition Werewolf rulebook even begins with a quote from the Lakota mystic Black Elk: “if the vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet.”[23] Therefore, the game associates itself with the visions of Black Elk, who witnessed the massacre of Wounded Knee and who cried for the torment of his people. The game connects itself to Black Elk’s yearning for the old, tribal ways, for the purity of nature. Ultimately, the quote links the pain of Black Elk and aboriginals like him to the personal frustration of the people who play Werewolf and similar games. No matter whether someone in Werewolf plays a red power Wendigo or a soulfully Celtic Fianna, he is still “playing Indian” and “through Werewolf we vented our inner anger at not being able to affect our lives and losing our connection to the natural world.”[24] Through Werewolf, the players express their frustration at the modern world and the sins of modern Western society, and seek to return to nature, to return to the spirits.

Though role-playing games are usually played around a table, like they were board games but with no board, there is a variation that is especially popular with White Wolf’s World of Darkness. This is live-action role-playing (often called a “larp” for short). In a larp, the players dress-up in costumes and act-out their character’s actions, like improv acting with no audience. It was through a Werewolf the Apocalypse larp that I received my most intense role-playing experience. As mentioned at the beginning of the essay, for the really big Werewolf meetings in this larp, the players would all congregate together in a tipi where we’d spend the whole night as our characters, crouched around the campfire as we told stories of our adventures in the realm of spirits, of our battles against the forces of pollution, corruption, and technology, and of the visions our pack totems saw fit to grant us. This was a potent experience, but paled in comparison to the session when my character and his particular werewolf pack earned their totem.

It was winter and our larp’s referee led us onto a snow-covered field just out of downtown, and told us that our characters had now entered the Umbra, the Spirit World, and were going a quest to get a totem for our particular werewolf pack. We went past piles of tires and other discarded objects; the Umbra looked like this field, this place, but interlaced with spirits: the spirits of the tires, the spirits of the snow, everything that was in the real world had a heightened, more mystical presence in the Spirit World. As we hunted for the totem, the whole pack joked and played around, for we were a circle of friends and allies that had formed under the will of Gaia, what werewolf society had instead of family units. Eventually we encountered what we were searching for, and despite some misunderstanding that resulted in some scratches, the Racoon totem chose us as its own. We were Racoon’s children and we felt welcomed by the spirits.

None of the characters in my Werewolf pack were aboriginal, and my own character was in fact Nordic, an ethnicity not too far from my real one. That said, we were all still “playing Indian.” We rebelled against our existence in this modern world, against the lack of spirituality or closeness to nature, against the lack of camaraderie we felt from the general populace. We wanted to pretend that we were champions of the Earth, warriors dedicated to protecting Mother Nature from all her enemies. We wanted to walk the spirit realms, be immersed in that intimate spirituality, and to be part of a closely-knit tribe, a pack, a band of brothers… and the occasional sister, all joined together against the darkness. We wanted to become the noble savage, who seemed blessed with everything that was missing from our own lives.

Everyone yearns for what he does not have and sees in others the things that are missing from his own life. This modern world has brought numerous marvels, but with those marvels comes pollution and artificiality, built upon the suffering of numerous people, include the aboriginal societies in whose land we now inhabit. Through powwows and secret societies and numerous other techniques, people have long tried to assume aboriginal roles to replace what they felt was absent in their own lives, and now role-playing games have served that purpose as well. In Dungeons & Dragons, I’ve put on the robes of a shaman, in Werewolf, I’ve worn the skin of a werewolf. My pack may have adopted the Racoon totem in Werewolf, but in truth the totem I was searching for was that of the aboriginal archetype, who is fighting for his land and the sanctity of his world, who is wise in the ways of the spirits and of nature. No matter if these role-players say their characters are following Raven or Bear, Coyote or Racoon, ultimately the aboriginal is the totem that anyone who is playing Indian is trying to take into himself.


[1] Martin Hackett, Fantasy Wargaming (Wellingborough: Patrick Stephens Limited, 1990), 41-47.

[2] Donald B. Smith, From the Land of Shadows, 215.

[3] Michael Nephew, “Playing with Identity” from Gaming as Culture, ed. J Patrick Williams, Sean Q. Hendricks, and W. Keith Winkler (Jefferson, USA: McFarland & Company, 2006), 127.

[4] Martin Hackett, Fantasy Wargaming, 23.

[5] James M. Ward and Troy Denning, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition: Legends & Lore (Lake Geneva, USA: TSR, 1990), 15.

[6] Ibid, 15-27.

[7] Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, translated by Willard R. Trask (Princeton, USA: Princeton University Press, 1964).

[8] James Wyatt, Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition: Player’s Handbook II (Renton, USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2009), 118.

[9] Kevin Hassall and Steve Miller, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition: Shaman (Lake Geneva, Wisconsin: TSR, 1995).

[10] Michael Nephew, “Playing with Identity” from Gaming as Culture, ed. J Patrick Williams, Sean Q. Hendricks, and W. Keith Winkler (Jefferson, USA: McFarland & Company, 2006), 127.

[11] Tom Dowd, Shadowrun Second Edition (Chicago, USA: FASA, 1992).

[12] Ibid, 23-25.

[13] Ibid, 46-94.

[14] C. J. Carella, GURPS Voodoo the Shadow War, 11.

[15] Ibid, 23.

[16] Phil Brucato, Mage the Ascension 2nd Edition (Clarkson, USA: White Wolf, 1995),18.

[17] Ibid, 101.

[18] Mark Rein-Hagen, Robert Hatch, and Bill Bridges, Werewolf the Apocalypse 2nd Edition, 24-25.

[19] Ibid, 39.

[20]Sam D. Gill and Irene F. Sullivan, Dictionary of Native American Mythology (Oxford,

England: Oxford University Press, 1992), 344.

[21] Bill Bridges, Werewolf Player’s Guide, 91.

[22] Mark Rein-Hagen, “Spirit Quest” from Werewolf Player’s Guide, ed. Bill Bridges, 202.

[23] Black Elk, as quoted by Mark Rein-Hagen, Robert Hatch, and Bill Bridges, Werewolf the Apocalypse 2nd Edition, 2.

[24] Steve Herman, “Oh Boy! A Cat’s Eye Shooter!” from Changeling Players Guide, ed. Cynthia Summers (Clarkston, USA: White Wolf, 1996), 182.

Putting on the Feathers Part 1: Historical Context

21 Sunday Nov 2010

Posted by Bevan Thomas in Essay

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aboriginal, Dungeons & Dragons, GURPS, noble savage, role-playing, Shadowrun, World of Darkness

 

This is the first part of a research essay that I wrote for a history class. In this essay, I look at the fascination that Europeans and Euro-North Americans, myself included, have had with pretending to be North American aboriginals, with “playing Indian.” Particular focus is given to my experiences playing Dungeons & Dragons and Werewolf the Apocalypse, but a fair amount of historical context is supplied as well.

______________________________________

Putting on the Feathers Part 1: Historical Context

Grey Owl

It was one in the morning and there were perhaps thirteen of us, twelve men and one woman, are sitting cross-legged inside a tepee in the middle of the forest. It was my turn to tell a tale and I told of how my pack and I had destroyed an evil spirit, a spirit of corruption and greed who had controlled a shopping mall. I swelled with pride as I recounted the story, since no matter how much humanity laid waste to the old ways and wounded the Earth with their greed and pride, I knew that I was blessed. After all, Gaia and all her children were mighty within me, for I was a werewolf and a mighty spirit-warrior of the Earth.

Through role-playing games, such as the session of Werewolf the Apocalypse described above, people are able to take on roles different from themselves, to explore different perspectives, different identities, and even different cultures. In many cases, the players are drawn to embrace a culture closer to nature and more spiritual than their own, one not unlike a stereotype of the aboriginals of North America. In exploring this stereotype, these role-players echo a desire that many Europeans have had for centuries. From the Enlightenment philosophers and Romantic poets who mused about the “noble savage” to the pseudo-aboriginal organizations and the powwows of North America, numerous people of European descent have gazed at the aboriginals in envy for what they felt was missing in their own lives.

Despite Western Europe’s dominant philosophy of industrial and technological advancement, many Europeans and Euro-North Americans throughout history have yearned for a simpler and more naturalistic environment, like a return to the Garden of Eden, when people were primitive and wild and full of joy. The 16th-century French statesman Michel de Montaigne conjured forth the idea of the “noble savage” when he described the aboriginal inhabitants of North America as a culture that has no trade, no leaders, no servants, even the very words which mean lie, treason, simulation, avarice, envy, slander, forgiveness, are unknown.[1] Numerous other philosophers after Montaigne, such as the 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, similarly crafted this image of the aboriginal as the “noble savage” who intuitively possesses wisdom that more “civilized” men have lost.[2] For these people, the aboriginal person was primarily useful as a metaphor to explain their own political theories.

This fascination with the aboriginal perspective continued into the 19th-century. When philosopher and early environmentalist Henry David Thoreau recalled his self-imposed near isolation at Walden Pond, he frequently referred to himself as a “heathen” because of his closeness with nature and commented that in living in rapport with the natural world that “I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that ‘for yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow they have only one word.’”[3] This yearning for a pre-Christian closeness to the natural world is mirrored in the writings of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, who said “little we see in Nature that is ours…. It moves us not. – Great God! I’d rather be a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn,”[4] though in his case it was the spirituality of the Greek pagans that he envied. Even more dramatic was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 19th-century epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, in which he says “ye who love the haunts of Nature, love the sunshine of the meadow, love the shadow of the forest…. Listen to this Indian legend, to this Song of Hiawatha!”[5] Longfellow specifically calls out to lovers of both nature and legends, and indeed the poem evokes an idealized world full of potent myths in which man can be one with the natural world. All of these writings were an attempt to connect with something powerful outside the authors’ own culture.

Though all these philosophers and poets tried to emulate some of the traits they perceived this “noble savage” had, they did not try to copy his general behaviour or adopt his religion. Not even Thoreau put on a feathered bonnet and danced around a tipi. This was instead the province of various Masonic-style fraternal orders and secret societies that sprung up in the United States after the American Revolution with such names as the Society of St. Tammany, the Grand Order of the Iroquois, the Order of the White Crane, and the Improved Order of Red Men.[6] The members of these secret societies performed faux-aboriginal ceremonies while decked-out in buckskins and feathers and underwent initiations that supposedly transformed them from “palefaces” to “redskins” to gain access to the sacred knowledge of the aboriginals and the connection with the spirit of the North American continent, as distinct from the Europe that they had abandoned.[7] Ironically enough, real aboriginals (and all other non-whites) were forbidden from joining.[8] In fact real ones would have damaged the organizations’ own myths, that the initiates themselves were the perfect “redskins,” the preservers of America’s primal lore. Like many aboriginals who adopted animal totems to gain their power (the strength of the bear, the cunning of the wolf, etc.), these Euro-Americans sought to adopt aboriginal totems to gain what they saw as the aboriginal strength (their spirituality, link to nature, etc.).

The massacre of the Ghost Dancers at Wounded Knee in 1890 marked the end of the Indian Wars, and the end of any perception of the aboriginals as being a threat to European hegemony of the continent.[9] Because of this, Americans were free to admire them and by the beginning of the 20th-century, “people began to believe that the Indian retained qualities that ‘modern man’ had lost. If civilization was artificial, frenetic, and soulless, the Indian seemed to live a more authentic existence, closer to nature and basic human values.” [10] This was when going on camping or fishing trips started to become popular, when men could escape from the drudgery of working in the city by spending a weekend “getting back to nature.” It also saw the creation of such groups as the Boy Scouts of America; one of this group’s co-founders was Canadian author Ernest Thompson Seaton, who was disgusted with the increased mechanization of society, and felt the modern world alienated people from their roots and from each other.[11] Thus, he wanted to see young boys learning woodcraft while dressed as “braves” in aboriginal-style outfits and with such ranks as Chief of the Painted Robe and Chief of the Council Fires, believing that the aboriginal archetype would teach the boys to understand and love nature, and produce far more balanced individuals than he felt modern civilization was capable of making.[12]

An especially dramatic example of someone who sought to flee the emptiness he saw in modern society was Archie Belaney who had an unhappy lonely childhood in England and immigrated to Canada in 1906 where he fell in love with the intense wilderness and the rich aboriginal culture he found there.[13] Belaney adopted the name “Grey Owl” and claimed to be a Metis who was raised fully aboriginal. He became an outspoken environmental activist and author who was especially concerned about the well-being of the beaver, and enraptured people with his “Indian wisdom” about the important of nature and the folly of modern civilization, as when Grey Owl described what he claimed was his first view of London: “I knew how an animal feels when he is trapped. There seemed no escape for me from this maelstrom of haggard people and roaring machines; I was caught. Mankind, I thought, had become a stampeding herd. I thought of the wilderness, cold and clean.”[14] It was a huge shock to people when Grey Owl died in 1938 and it was revealed that he had no aboriginal heritage at all.[15]

While Grey Owl had done his best to utterly embrace an aboriginal existence, others tried to experience it in less dramatic ways. The early 1960s started the idea of “powwows.” At these gatherings, “one could expect to find native people of different tribes mingling with costumed non-Indians interested in the recreation of detailed craftwork and the performances of Indian dance and song.”[16] They were places where white people could go to dance and pretend to be native alongside real aboriginals. For the Euro-North Americans, these gatherings provided “music, dance, and literature afforded personal paths of entry into other cultures.”[17] The powwows were often held on reservations, and though they often provided money for the tribe, many aboriginals perceived it as being yet another example of cultural exploitation, with their cultures being relegated to a hobby akin to building model trains or collecting old coins.[18] Through the powwows, numerous people were given the opportunity to explore aboriginal traditions and many of them revelled in the chance to play the role of some aboriginal figure. Soon, many of the Euro-North Americans took this one step further and sought to embrace aboriginal spirituality.

With the rise of the counterculture movements in the 1960s, many people sought to rebel against European society, seeing it bloated with colonization, forced conversions, warfare, pollution, and general suffering. The Vietnam War and other atrocities had caused many people to develop a “collective revulsion to the European heritage of colonization and genocide…. Some went deeper, addressing what they felt to be the intrinsically unacceptable character of European civilization’s relationship to the natural order in its entirety.”[19] They sought for answers outside their own cultures, and many flocked to self-proclaimed aboriginal medicine men such as Sun Bear and Rolling Thunder, who offered seekers the chance to become one with nature by communing with the Great Spirit.[20] The philosophy that united these seekers of a non-European spirituality was the perception that the modern capitalist world with its overemphasis on material accumulation and individual competitiveness has gone awry in spiritual, racial, economic, and ecological terms.[21]

If real aboriginal mystics were unavailable, than people flocked to Europeans who claimed to have been initiated into aboriginal mysticism, such as Carlos Castaneda, who, starting in 1968, published a very popular series of books in which he supposedly imparted secrets taught to him by a Yaqui shaman named Don Juan Matus.[22] Also popular was Lynn Andrews, whose New Age feminism revolved around what she described as the “Indian Medicine Way” in which she “goes native by learning ‘traditional’ secrets about the ‘red road of womanhood.’”[23] Many of the people of European descent drawn to these aboriginal systems felt the need to flee their own cultural framework, like “drowning men clutching at the straws of convenient cultures, as though to save themselves from their own history.”[24] Because of their guilt and dissatisfaction with their own culture, they sought to escape to a new one.


[1] Michel de Montaigne, as quoted by Stelio Cro, The Noble Savage (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1990), 32.

[2] Stelio Cro, The Noble Savage, 135.

[3] Henry D. Thoreau, Walden, Civil Disobedience, and Other Writings, 143.

[4] William Wordsworth, “The World Is Too Much With Us,” in Romantic and Victorian

Poetry Volume IV, ed. William Frost (USA: Prentice Hall Inc., 1961) 92.

[5] Henry Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha and Other Poems, (Pleasantville, USA:

Reader’s Digest Association Inc., 1989), 11.

[6] Shari M. Huhndorf, Going Native (Ithaca, USA: Cornell University Press, 2001), 65

[7] Philip J. Delorea, Playing Indian (New Haven, USA: Yale University, 1994), 59-60.

[8] John Michael Greer, The Element Encyclopaedia of Secret Societies and Hidden History, 297.

[9] Shari M. Huhndorf, Going Native, 21.

[10] Daniel Francis, The Imaginary Indian (Vancouver, Canada: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1992), 154.

[11] Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian, 100.

[12] Ibid, 96-108.

[13] Donald B. Smith, From the Land of Shadows (Saskatoon, Canada: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1990), 1-82.

[14] Grey Owl as quoted by Donald B. Smith, From the Land of Shadows, 126.

[15] Donald B. Smith, From the Land of the Shadows, 211.

[16] Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian, 128.

[17] Ibid, 141.

[18] Ibid, 145.

[19] Ward Churchill, Acts of Rebellion: The Ward Churchill Reader (New York, USA: Routledge, 2003), 231.

[20] Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian, 168.

[21] Shari M. Huhndorf, Going Native, 164.

[22] Philip Deloria, Playing Indian, 168.

[23] Shari M. Huhndorf, Going Native, 178.

[24] Geary Hobson, “The Rise of the White Shaman as a New Version of Cultural Imperialism” in The Remembered Earth, 107.


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