Wind from an Enemy Sky

Henry Jim is the older brother and narrative foil to Bull. While Bull represents the Indigenous resistance to colonial pressure, Henry Jim chose to integrate into that world and cooperate with government officials. He believed that acting alone and in his best interests was the best path for him to take. He built a ranch with a wooden house, where he lived with his son and daughter-in-law. This choice led Bull to speak out against his actions. As a result, the elders of the tribe named Bull the chief, despite Henry Jim being the elder of the two. As an act of jealousy, Henry Jim took the Little Elks’ Feather Boy bundle to Welles, the local missionary. This decision then led to a rift between Henry Jim and Bull, leading to three decades of estrangement. Henry Jim’s alignment with the settlers and his move to the ranch house alienated him from his family, who refused to enter it.

Despite his efforts, Henry Jim cannot completely abandon his Indigenous American roots. As his health fails throughout the story, he attempts to reconcile and make amends for his past actions. He apologizes to his brother and tries to work with Rafferty to get the medicine bundle back for his people. In his final days, he leaves his Western-style house to reside in a tepee surrounded by his family, returning to his tribal customs. Symbolic of this decision, Henry Jim, in his delirium, loses his ability to speak English entirely. However, despite his best efforts and intentions, his dreams of reconciliation and a future for his people are dashed by the novel’s end.

The Boy, also known as Son Child or Richard Marks, serves as the tribal police for the community. Despite being 54 and a big man, he is still called “The Boy” rather than either his English or Indigenous American name. This signifies his place as an outsider within both communities. While he is a police officer, his more important role in the story is as the interpreter between the Little Elk tribe and the agency. While his position and the trust he gains from Bull and the others is initially a sign of coming peace in the area, it also places him in a precarious position between conflicting loyalties and the harsh realities of oppression. At the end of the story, when Bull shoots Pell, Rafferty calls for The Boy to stop him before being killed as well. The Boy complies and fulfills his duty by shooting Bull with his revolver, thereby aligning himself with the colonial position rather than his identity as an Indigenous American man. Before firing, however, he expresses his regret over the necessity of his actions, saying, “Brother! I have to do this” (256).

Pell is an industrialist and museum owner, along with the designer of the dam on the Little Elk reservation. He is tall and angular, with tufted eyebrows and graying blond hair. His position, along with his tweed clothing, highlights his representation as the archetypal figure of colonialist progress and the commodification of Indigenous culture. Despite his supposed empathy for Indigenous peoples, his actions often result in more harm than good. While he attempted to help descendants of the Incas in Peru build a dam, he also created the dam opposed by the Little Elk tribe and directed the museum that mishandled and ultimately destroyed the Feather Boy bundle. Despite his belief that he shares an understanding with the Little Elk people, his choice to offer the gold statuette as a replacement for the medicine bundle shows him to be wholly misguided. Despite warnings from both Rafferty and Edwards not to tell the Little Elk men that the bundle was destroyed, Pell does so anyway. Ultimately, he is too focused on his idealism and on assuaging his guilt over his role in the situation to do otherwise. At the news, Bull shoots Pell, who, even in death, cannot grasp the full impact of what he did.

Rafferty is the superintendent at the Little Elk Indian Agency. He is described as having a round face and “red hair which [comes] out only on top of his head and in little tufts out of his ears” (27). He embodies a humanist ideal and wants to improve the lives of the people under his care. His appointment to the position represents an acknowledgment of the need to depart from the oppressive practices of the past. However, due to the tribe’s long history of issues with the government, Rafferty is unsuccessful at gaining the tribe’s trust. He grapples with the expectations placed upon him by his superiors in Washington and the reality of life at the agency. His frustration is evident in his reflections on the “instructions” he receives, which are disconnected from the actual needs and circumstances of the Little Elk people.

Rafferty becomes involved in the story when Henry Jim reaches out to him for help in getting the Feather Boy bundle back. When he eventually proves that he is willing to help, primarily through his actions at Henry Jim’s funeral, many of the others also begin to go to him for assistance. However, this success is short-lived, and the connections he makes are not enough in the end. When Bull kills Pell at the story’s conclusion, Rafferty tries to stop him and is shot in the head as a result.

Edwards is the physician at the Little Elk Indian Agency. He is described as “a small, graying, but quickmoving man, full of crotchets and opinions, and devoted to the Indian people” (35). As the oldest and longest serving person at the agency, Edwards is also a foil to Rafferty, who is still new. His commitment to his work resulted in him turning down better job opportunities elsewhere. He is one of three sympathetic white characters in the story, along with Rafferty and Pell. Of them, and despite his position as a man of Western medicine, Edwards is the one who understands the tribe the best. He refers to Welles by the same nickname used by the Little Elk people, and he refuses to medically intervene when Henry Jim is dying, knowing that the action would not be welcome. His understanding of the Little Elk people is not idealistic but practical, and his attempts to impart his advice on dealing with the tribe are met with mixed success. Of the three men, he is the only one not to die by Bull’s hand at the end of the novel.

Antoine is Bull’s grandson. At the story’s beginning, he has recently returned from residential school in Oregon. His mother, Celeste, never recovered from his loss. He was returned to his tribe after news arrived of her death. The traumatic experiences Antoine experienced at the school left a lasting impact on him. That he was stripped of his traditional name and given the English name “Antoine” epitomizes attempts to erase his cultural identity, a matter referred to throughout the story. Antoine makes attempts to recover from these experiences, with one example being that he “[i]s letting his hair grow long again […] Sometimes he chew[s] on the end of a braid, just to know it [i]s there” (1).

Before Antoine was taken, Bull ignored the boy due to the circumstances of his birth, as Celeste was his first and favorite child. To make up for his previous failings, Bull attempts to impart his knowledge to Antoine and prepare him to eventually take over his position as the leader of their tribe. He also keeps Antoine with him throughout the novel, including the meeting at the agency compound with Pell. When they first see the dam, Antoine imagines his grandfather becoming an avenging force for his people, an idea that is fulfilled at the end of the story when Bull turns on Pell and Rafferty. Rather than being afraid when his grandfather takes the gun, “the boy [i]s proud for him” (255).

Pock Face is a “tall and stringy” young man from Bull’s camp (41). He is rebellious and prone to trouble. His behavior, often a mix of bravado and actual defiance, shows a break from the older generation’s more measured approach to dealing with issues. His inclination toward violence leads him to make remarks about shooting the man who built the dam. While the others believe it to be just talk at first, he does take Bull’s rifle and shoot Jimmie Cooke, the dam’s caretaker and nephew of its creator, Adam Pell. This act precipitates a murder investigation, one of the central conflicts of the novel.

Personal pride and a desire to assert power in a world where he feels increasingly marginalized drive Pock Face’s actions. Like many of the other characters, he is caught between his cultural heritage and external influences, as evident in his cowboy boots and ability to “talk about horses like a white man” (41). He struggles to connect with the elders’ teachings and ultimately misunderstands the situation, resulting in the shooting. However, his attitude changes in the aftermath; he becomes more subdued and eventually confesses to the murder.