In Wind from an Enemy Sky, D’Arcy McNickle uses the motif of “smallness” to showcase the psychological and cultural diminishment Native characters experience under colonial oppression, revealing how white institutional power systematically erodes Indigenous identity, autonomy, and dignity. “Smallness,” as it’s presented in the novel, is not just a metaphor for weakness; it is a recurring emotional and existential condition produced by encounters with colonial authority, where individuals feel belittled or erased. Through the experiences of Bull, Antoine, and other members of the Little Elk tribe, McNickle illustrates how this imposed smallness becomes a tool of domination–used not only to control physical autonomy, but also to shrink the ethos and self-worth of the Indigenous people. Examining McNickle’s authorial intentions, the novel’s publication history, and situating the theme within broader contexts of Native identity, settler-colonial power, and cultural resistance will bolster this idea. This paper relies primarily on the novel but also draws on relevant scholarship will deepen the understanding of how Wind from an Enemy Sky portrays the shrinking of Indigenous identity under colonial rule, as well as how it hints at the possibilities of the potential reclamation of that which has been made small.
GENERATIONAL SMALLNESS UNDER COLONIAL POWER
The early relationship between Bull and his grandson, Antoine, establishes a generational structure that explores metaphorical size differences through power and reverence. The novel opens with them traveling together as a “great man and small boy” in a meaningful silence, the boy learning “even without words” from Bull’s presence (McNickle 4). In this peaceful dynamic, smallness is natural and respectful. It is a child learning from an elder–small in stature but not in dignity–reflecting a traditional power structure rooted in the communal essence of the Little Elk. However, this balance is disrupted when they come upon the newly built dam, a symbol of the unnatural interference imposed by the settlers. Bull, a man revered for his size and strength in his community, is shaken, and he later says to his grandson: “I fired my gun – a puff of smoke. You were frightened because I could do nothing… The white man makes us forget our holy places. He makes us small” (McNickle 9). The dam’s very existence challenges Bull’s inherent authority, not just in Antoine’s eyes but in his own self-conception. In an instant, he feels he is no longer a “big man.” His reaction–turning to a futile act of gunfire and then mourning his helplessness–shows that colonial “progress” annihilates not only the land and resources of the Indigenous people but also the self-ascribed narratives that give men like Bull their meaning and stature. What was once reverential smallness (a child’s humility before a respected elder) is distorted into oppressive smallness (the elder’s humiliation before the colonizer’s power).
Antoine’s deeply psychological response to this incident reflects an internalization of smallness. Witnessing his grandfather’s powerlessness, the boy begins associating being seen with being vulnerable, and thus instinctively prefers to become invisible: “Antoine then tried to make himself small” (McNickle 11). This brief line is revealing of the psyche taking shape within the younger generation of Little Elk under colonial dominance. Antoine’s instinct to shrink in the presence of danger is a direct consequence of watching his grandfather falter in the face of white institutional power. He has inherited the trauma of diminishment that settler culture has imposed upon the Little Elk. Even though Antoine tries to reassure himself that his grandfather would have been able to act “if given the chance,” a painful realization has begun to set in: what made Bull great–the ability to protect and to act with agency–has been stripped away by forces beyond their control. Bull’s status as a “man” in the traditional sense is undermined, symbolized by the metaphorical impotence of that puff of smoke from his gun. For Antoine, smallness starts to become a method of survival–the only way to remain safe in a world where any display of Native strength or pride is met with punishment or failure. In this sense, McNickle shows how colonization teaches even children to “feel small” as a protective reflex, a poignant insight into how domination imprints itself on the next generation.
The state-sponsored suppression of Native pride and resistance is reinforced throughout the novel by other colonial institutions, especially the boarding school and the government bureaucracy. Antoine recalls being whipped by “the disciplinarian at the government school,” a man he later imagines Bull defeating in his dreams (McNickle 9). This memory showcases a displacement of power and a fantasy of reclaiming dignity through imagined revenge. In reality, colonized people are often forced to internalize their oppression without any safe outlet for resistance. Antoine’s description of the disciplinarian as a “man with one long arm” (McNickle 9) is striking–his authority, bodily form, and weapon (a whip) all fuse into a single monstrous entity in the child’s mind. It is a distortion of the human form through the eyes of the colonized; the power that the settlers wield is not just overwhelming but grotesque, designed to make others feel small and helpless. This resonates with the way colonization psychologically transforms the oppressor into something superhuman or inhuman in the imagination of the oppressed.
Anti-colonial theorist Aimé Césaire observed that colonial rule deliberately instills fear and inferiority in its subjects: “I am talking about millions of men in whom fear has been cunningly instilled, who have been taught to have an inferiority complex, to tremble, kneel, despair, and behave like flunkeys” (Césaire). Antoine’s fearful impulse to cower and shrink–to “tremble” and hide himself–is an intentional fictional illustration of this very real psychological violence that Césaire describes. The boarding school’s disciplinarian, with his grotesquely exaggerated “long arm,” embodies how institutional power reaches into the lives of Native children to enforce obedience and inferiority. Such schools, as part of the U.S. government’s project of assimilation, aimed to annihilate Indigenous identity. Captain Richard H. Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian School, infamously declared in 1892, “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” In practice, this meant stripping away Native languages, names, and customs–killing the “Indianness” of the child in order to mold them into something supposedly “civilized.” The effect of these policies in Wind from an Enemy Sky is evident: by the time Antoine returns from the government school, he carries an instinctual shame and fear that his grandfather Bull immediately recognizes. Bull pointedly asks the boy, “Am I talking to you or a piece of paper?”–when Antoine’s knowledge about the dam comes not from lived experience but from an English-language newspaper (McNickle 26). Bull’s question incisively highlights the loss of authentic voice; he fears he may now be speaking to a colonial construct (a “piece of paper”) rather than to his own kin. The boarding school has done its work–it made Antoine literate in the white man’s language and news, but at the cost of alienating him from Bull’s world. The “piece of paper” remark underscores how colonial education threatens to flatten a person into an object, erasing their Native identity and replacing it with a frail paper-thin facsimile. In short, the institutional arm of colonialism reaches into the minds of the colonized, making them feel small, silenced, and severed from themselves.
Further, Bull’s sense of being reduced–of literally being “made small”–continues to haunt him, especially in his direct interactions with white officials. When white men address him by his Anglicized name with a certain smile, Bull feels belittled: “It made him small, the way they smiled” (McNickle 26). Their condescension is casual, even seemingly friendly, but its effect on Bull is palpable. He cannot respond in kind; as the narrator notes, “he never found out how to answer the smilers” (McNickle 26). McNickle is deliberate here: Bull’s silence in these exchanges represents the subtle psychological state of the colonized even in mundane social interactions. The name “Bull,” which within his community is a symbol of strength and respect, becomes an empty shell in the mouths of white officials–even a source of quiet mockery. Their polite smiles mask a power dynamic in which Bull is being patronized rather than engaged as an equal. He is spoken at, not spoken with. In this moment, smallness manifests as the choking inability to assert one’s dignity in conversation; Bull’s voice fails him because the entire dialogue (in English, under settler terms) is predicated on his inferiority. This scene echoes what postcolonial critics have noted about language and power: the colonizer’s language can become a trap that robs the colonized of the ability to express themselves confidently. Bull’s English name, given or used by whites, carries none of the respect that his Indigenous name or status would carry among his own people. It effectively reduces him to a caricature in the eyes of those“smiling” men, just as colonization reduces a rich culture to stereotypes. Here, smallness is feltin Bull’s quiet humiliation and his resultant wordlessness.
The most poignant exploration of imposed smallness comes later in the novel through the character of Louis, a younger member of the Little Elk, who laments: “The outside is closing in on us, and I’m growing small” (McNickle 220). Louis’s words underscore how colonialism is not a single event but an ongoing siege–a pressure that slowly suffocates the Indigenous way of life and identity. Everything–land, water, children, sacred objects–is being taken or destroyed by external forces. Louis’s statement parallels Bull’s early realization in the canyon (when faced with the dam), but with an added note of resignation. By Louis’s time, the shrinking has been fully internalized; it’s no longer just external forces making the Little Elk feel small, but an internal acceptance that “I’m growing small because the world is closing in.” McNickle offers no easy solution to this generational despair. The novel suggests that smallness, once imposed, perpetuates itself across time. In Louis’s surrendering tone–“I’m growing small”–we hear the echo of Antoine’s learned silence and Bull’s crushed pride. The chain of diminishment runs from grandfather to father-figure to grandson; once colonial power has made one generation feel small, that feeling reproduces itself, embedding a narrative of inferiority and helplessness into the community’s psyche. This is strongly reminiscent of what a scholar of Indigenous historical trauma, Suzanne Methot, observed in her book, Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing: “the unresolved trauma of Indigenous peoples who have experienced, witnessed, or inherited the memory of horrific events creates an ongoing cycle of patterns and behaviours that are passed down from generation to generation” (Methot 26), leading later generations to inherit a sense of loss and powerlessness even if they themselves did not witness the original injustices. In Wind from an Enemy Sky, that inheritance is symbolized by the motif of smallness–Bull’s shame, Antoine’s fear, Louis’s despair, all woven into a single cultural trauma.
MCNICKLE’S VISION, REVISIONS, AND THE SHADOW OF PUBLICATION
Understanding how and why McNickle crafted such a despairing narrative of “smallness” benefits from exploring the author’s biography and intentions for the novel. As reported by Dorthy Parker in Singing an Indian Song: A Biography of D’Arcy McNickle, William D’Arcy McNickle (1904–1977) was himself an enrolled Salish Kootenai tribal member, of mixed Cree-Métis and Irish descent. He grew up on the Flathead Reservation in Montana and later became an influential Native American activist, anthropologist, and writer. McNickle’s life straddled both Indigenous and Euro-American worlds–he attended mission and government schools as a child, then university, and even worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs under Commissioner John Collier in the 1930s. This background as a cultural mediator and policy insider gave McNickle a nuanced perspective on Native–white relations, which is evident in his writing. He consistently attempted to speak to both Native and non-Native audiences, often by presenting divergent points of view in his fiction. In Wind from an Enemy Sky, for example, he alternates chapters between the Little Elk characters and the white characters, asking readers to constantly shift perspectives and confront their own assumptions. This technique reflects McNickle’s lifelong effort to promote understanding across cultures, even as he unflinchingly depicted the injustices of colonialism.
What is striking, however, is that Wind from an Enemy Sky ultimately offers a very bleak view of cross-cultural understanding. As Parker notes, McNickle worked on this novel for nearly forty years–from its initial conception in the late 1930s until its posthumous publication in 1978. As explained by Daniel Duane, early on, McNickle envisioned a story centered on a relatively sympathetic white character: the reservation agent. The original working title of the manuscript was The Indian Agent, suggesting that McNickle once placed hope (or at least focus) on the figure of the white government man who lives among the tribe. Indeed, one of the key characters in the novel is Toby Rafferty, the U.S. Indian agent assigned to the Little Elk Reservation, who is portrayed as tolerant and well-intentioned. Duane also says that in early drafts, it appears McNickle may have imagined a more conciliatory or even “happy” ending in which mutual understanding could be reached. Scholar Daniel Duane notes that McNickle “was sensitive to both the white and Native sides of the cultural conflict” (25), and for much of the narrative, Wind from an Enemy Sky sets the stage for possible reconciliation. The agent Rafferty genuinely tries to help the Little Elk: he listens to Henry Jim’s plea to recover the stolen Feather Boy medicine bundle, he communicates the tribe’s concerns to his superiors, and he urges restraint on both sides. This narrative trajectory initially raises the prospect that, through figures like Rafferty, bridges could be built between the two cultures.
However, the final version of the novel takes a much more pessimistic turn. McNickle ultimately renamed the book Wind from an Enemy Sky, a title far more foreboding than The Indian Agent, and delivered an ending filled with tragedy and misunderstanding. As Duane observes, the change in title itself reflects McNickle’s “turn to a more pessimistic view of white–Native relations” (26). Despite the ostensibly good intentions of some individuals (Rafferty’s compassion, or the dam-builder Adam Pell’s late attempt to make amends), the story concludes with violence and loss. In the climax, when Pell convenes a meeting to try to reconcile with the Little Elk and finally tells them the truth–that the sacred Feather Boy bundle which had been taken is now irretrievably destroyed–Bull’s last shred of hope is obliterated. Enraged by this ultimate desecration of his people’s spiritual core, Bull reacts by fatally shooting Pell. In the chaos, he also shoots Agent Rafferty (the very man who had tried to mediate), and moments later Bull himself is gunned down by a tribal policeman, Sun Child. The sacred bundle is lost; the white leader and the Indian leader lie dead side by side; any possibility of cross-cultural understanding dies with them. Wind ends with not only the loss of the Feather Boy bundle, but the death of leaders on “both sides.”. This grim symmetry–tragedy for both Native and white–underscores McNickle’s final message: even earnest attempts at bridge-building were doomed by the weight of history and ongoing injustice. It serves as McNickle’s attempt to test the waters of a cross-cultural America that, much like what’s seen throughout history with the colonizers and colonized, tragically falls apart. In other words, McNickle’s long years of experience likely taught him how intractable the “Indian-White” divide could be when structural power imbalances went unaddressed. By the 1970s (after decades that saw termination policies, continued land disputes, and Native activism met with resistance), McNickle seemingly concluded that the idealistic cooperation implied in The Indian Agent had given way to the harsher reality symbolized by an enemy sky–an unavoidable clash from above that rains destruction on all.
It is worth considering whether McNickle originally wanted a different ending and changed it due to either evolving personal convictions or external pressures. We know that he struggled to get this novel published. According to Louis Owens (writer of an afterword for the novel, and a leading scholar in Native American fiction), publishers initially declined Wind from an Enemy Sky in part because McNickle’s earlier novel The Surrounded had sold poorly, but also because Wind “was not considered ‘Indian’ enough” by industry standards. This notion of not being “Indian enough” hints at the publishing world’s expectations (or stereotypes) regarding Native American fiction at mid-century. McNickle began this project in the late 1930s, when a prevailing expectation might have been for “Indian novels” to fit a certain tragic or folkloric mold, or to showcase obvious “Indianness” (perhaps romanticized traditions, noble savagery, or simplistic clashes). McNickle’s nuanced, cross-cultural approach may have confounded those expectations. It is plausible that the manuscript’s long evolution–through the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s, and into the ’70s–was shaped by McNickle’s negotiations with editors or the literary market. The fact that by the time it was finally published (in 1978, after McNickle’s death), the novel had a bleaker, more tragic resolution could reflect an attempt to make it more dramatically “Indian” in the eyes of publishers. Tragic conflict certainly was a common theme in acclaimed Native American novels of the later 20th century (and The Surrounded itself is an example), so emphasizing tragedy might have been seen as adding authenticity or marketability. We cannot say for certain if McNickle had a genuinely more hopeful ending in mind that he abandoned–there is evidence only that early drafts set up a potential understanding that was then thwarted. What is clear is that McNickle refused to deliver a simple or falsely reassuring conclusion. Instead, he crafted an ending that is deeply critical of the “good intentions” of colonial actors. Adam Pell’s far-too-late remorse and offer of a substitute token (a Peruvian Virgin Mary statue to replace the lost sacred bundle) comes across as almost absurdly tone-deaf in the face of Indigenous loss. With this scene, McNickle may be commenting on the broader pattern of colonial paternalism: after inflicting irreparable harm, the colonizer belatedly offers trivial compensation–an act that only adds insult to injury. Not even accounting for the religious implications of offering a Christian relic as a replacement for an Indian religious symbol. Bull’s fury in that moment (“He makes us forget our holy places. He makes us small!”) is the fury of a man who sees that even his people’s most cherished values can be desecrated without consequence or understanding. The tragic ending, then, is McNickle’s indictment of the entire colonial system. It demonstrates what he described in his own words as a “critical statement about the quality of human behavior when people of different cultures meet” (Duane 1, from Parker 225). McNickle wrote to a friend that he wanted readers to see the Little Elk’s story “not as an isolated episode of tragedy… but as a critical statement” on cross-cultural encounters. The editorial and institutional pressures might have influenced how stark that statement became, but ultimately it aligns with McNickle’s lifetime of witnessing broken promises and cultural misunderstandings. By drawing the novel to such a dire close, he ensured that the theme of smallness–the shrinking of Indigenous lives–would resonate as a cautionary cry rather than a resolved fable.
“SMALLNESS” IN THE WIDER CONTEXT OF SETTLER COLONIALISM
While McNickle’s narrative is firmly grounded in the specific experiences of the fictional Little Elk tribe, the motif of “smallness” connects to broader literary and historical conversations about Native identity, erasure, and trauma under settler colonialism. Colonization in the Americas was not only a military or political conquest; it was also a sustained assault on the psychological and cultural integrity of Indigenous peoples. The diminishment of the Little Elk characters in the novel echoes patterns observed across colonized communities. A key aspect of settler colonial strategy was to make Indigenous peoples feel inferior or irrelevant–to reduce them in their own eyes. As noted earlier, Pratt’s “Kill the Indian, and save the man” encapsulated the U.S. assimilation policy. This policy sought to shrink Indigeneity out of existence: through forced education, religious conversion, land allotment, and the banning of Native languages and ceremonies. In Wind from an Enemy Sky, we see the legacy of those policies: Antoine’s boarding school experience has taught him that being visibly “Indian” invites pain (hence his urge to become invisible and small), and Henry Jim’s story shows another angle of assimilation–the tragic outcome of a man who tried to live as a white man. Henry Jim had once taken the path of accommodating the whites: he gave away the Feather Boy bundle to a missionary and adopted a more “civilized” lifestyle, which caused a rift with his traditionalist brother Bull. But as an old man, Henry Jim is filled with regret and seeks reconciliation with his people, recognizing that only by returning the lost sacred bundle can he mend what he played a part in breaking. His journey illustrates how colonial influences convinced some Native individuals that their own culture was small or expendable in comparison to the grand narrative of Western progress. Henry Jim’s earlier belief that selling the sacred bundle was acceptable might stem from an internalized sense that the white world’s values were superior–that the Little Elk’s sacred objects could be treated as curiosities in a museum without harm. The result, however, is spiritual devastation for the tribe and personal guilt for Henry Jim. Assimilation promised to “save the man” by destroying the Indian in him; instead, it left a man like Henry Jim spiritually adrift and ultimately desperate to recover what was lost.
The “smallness” imposed by colonialism also operates on a cultural level as a kind of erasure. Colonizers often portrayed Indigenous cultures as primitive, childlike, or vanishing–essentially small and doomed in the face of Euro-American expansion. This rhetoric justified the takeover of lands and the suppression of rights. A famous formulation by a U.S. government official in the 19th century claimed it was futile to protest European expansion in the name of Native rights because that would mean leaving resources “idle in the hands of incompetents.” Such sentiments blatantly cast Native peoples as too “small” (in number, in capability, in civilization) to matter. In the novel, the dam builders and government agents carry that same dismissive attitude. To them, modernizing the land (with a hydroelectric dam) is unquestionably good, and the Little Elk’s sacred connection to that land is invisible or negligible. One government character argues that the land must be “modernized” for the greater good and that the Little Elk simply doesn’t understand progress. This mirrors real historical arguments that Indigenous ways of life were an inefficient use of resources. The consequence of that mindset is not only physical dispossession but also what Native scholar Jean O’Brien calls “firsting and lasting” – a settler narrative that writes Indigenous peoples out of history by treating them as relics of the past. Wind from an Enemy Sky dramatizes this process: the Little Elk’s central ceremonial item (the Feather Boy bundle) literally ends up rotting in a museum box under the care of a white institution. The museum’s neglect of the bundle (allowing it to rot) is a poignant metaphor for how settler society attempts to confine Native cultures to the past – something to be catalogued and forgotten, rendered small and powerless in the grand museum of “American” history. Bull’s anguish at this fate–that their greatest medicine, their story, was taken and destroyed–speaks to a profound sense of cultural diminishment. The external loss (of land and objects) induces an internal crisis of identity; how do you remain big in spirit when everything around you insists that you are small, a ghost of a dying culture?
Settler colonialism is often described as having a “logic of elimination,” aimed not just at taking land but at eliminating Indigenousness as distinct peoples. Scholar Patrick Wolfe argued that settler colonialism is a structure that continuously seeks to remove or assimilate Natives to secure the settlers’ claim to land: “…settler society required the practical elimination of the natives in order to establish itself on their territory” (Wolfe 389). In Wind from an Enemy Sky, this logic is evident: the dam floods the Little Elk’s ancestral canyon, their children are sent to distant schools, their sacred bundle is appropriated, and even language becomes a barrier between generations (Bull’s Salish vs. Antoine’s English). Each of these acts is an elimination of some aspect of Indigeneity; holy places, kinship, bonds, cultural property, mother tongue. Over time, these losses compound into what the novel portrays as a feeling of being gradually erased, made smaller and smaller until one fears disappearing entirely. Louis’s line about “the outside… closing in on us” vividly captures this encroaching annihilation of a people’s space and identity. We can read “smallness” here as both metaphor and literal outcome: the Little Elk’s physical territory has been whittled down by allotment and damming (they have been forced into the foothills, as the novel notes), and their population and cultural presence have also been diminished by death and assimilation. The pain conveyed by characters like Bull, Antoine, and Louis resonates with what Indigenous communities throughout history have described as historical trauma–the cumulative emotional wounding across generations that results from cataclysmic events like genocide, land dispossession, and the destruction of cultural practices. Genocide may seem a lofty term–typically the Western imagination casts genocide as the work of an “other,” something incapable of happening “here.” Yet, as Bonnie St. Charles notes, “Genocide is a sensitive topic. While the Genocide Convention is traditionally understood … to prohibit mass killings, its provisions prohibit a far broader array of conduct” (St. Charles). Symptoms of this historical trauma can include depression, low self-esteem, and self-destructive behavior, essentially a collective “shrinking” of the spirit. In the novel, Antoine’s withdrawal, Bull’s despair, and Louis’s hopelessness personify these symptoms in narrative form. McNickle, through fiction, is giving voice to the psychological reality behind terms like colonial oppression or cultural genocide. When Bull says, “He makes us small,” it is another way of expressing that “our souls have been wounded and scarred.”
Yet, important to note, McNickle’s depiction of smallness is not one-dimensional. He acknowledges that this state of diminishment is an imposed one–a result of oppression–not an inherent truth of Indigenous identity. The tragedy in Wind is that the characters themselves begin to believe in their smallness. Herein lies McNickle’s critique: the real triumph of colonialism is when the colonized internalize the idea of their own inferiority. The novel urges readers to see how unjust and unnatural this is. After all, within their own cultural framework, the Little Elk are anything but “small.” This is evident in the way McNickle portrays their community life and values when untouched by outside interference: the respect between generations, the depth of spiritual connection to the land, and the richness of their storytelling and traditions (Bull sharing the Feather Boy legend with Antoine, for example, to instill pride and continuity). The contrast between those scenes and the scenes of humiliation highlights the absurdity of the colonial worldview that judges societies by its own yardstick of size and power (big dams, big cities, big machinery). McNickle implicitly asks: Who decided that “big” is better? The inherent folly of equating might with right is laid bare by the novel’s end, when all the mighty machinery and authority lead only to mutual destruction. In this sense, Wind from an Enemy Sky contributes to the broader postcolonial conversation by illustrating the catastrophic failure of colonial arrogance. It aligns with works by other Indigenous writers and thinkers who have insisted that what seems “small” or “primitive” from the colonizer’s perspective is often profoundly sophisticated and sufficient in its own context. As Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna Pueblo) implies in Ceremony, healing for Native communities lies in rejecting the colonizer’s narrative that they are broken or inferior and instead returning to their own stories and rituals: “They aren’t just entertainment…. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off / illness and death…. You don’t have anything if you don’t have the stories,” and, as the poem concludes, “The only cure / I know / is a good ceremony” (Silko 23).
RESISTING SMALLNESS: RECLAMATION AND SURVIVANCE
Amid the overwhelming darkness of the novel, McNickle offers a subtle but crucial counterpoint: the idea that smallness can be reimagined and even resisted. In a key scene, the elderly medicine man Two-Sleeps comforts Antoine with the words, “the part that is man is not less because our world is small” (McNickle 24). This line is a quiet assertion of Indigenous values in the face of colonial scorn. Two-Sleeps suggests that even if the Little Elk’s worldly domain has been reduced–even if their reservation is but a small corner of their original land, even if their community is dwindling–that does not make them less human, less complete, or less worthy. Here, “small” is reimagined not as a symptom of inferiority but as an attribute of intimacy and wholeness within their community. The Little Elk people’s world is “small” in the sense of being localized and tightly-knit, but that has always been a source of strength and identity, not a weakness. Two-Sleeps’s perspective reclaims the narrative: smallness is not something to be ashamed of when it means knowing every river bend of your land, ancestral remembrance, and finding richness in kinship. This reframing is critical. It reminds both Antoine and the reader that the colonizer’s equation of size with value is fundamentally flawed. A community can be small in number or territory and yet enormous in spirit and knowledge. McNickle, by including Two-Sleeps’s monologue, plants a seed of resistance within the novel’s motif: the possibility that the Indigenous sense of self can survive the colonial onslaught of belittlement.
This idea of reclaiming and redefining smallness resonates strongly with the concept of survivance articulated by Anishinaabe writer Gerald Vizenor, who defines “native survivance” as “an active sense of presence over absence, deracination, and oblivion; survivance is the continuance of stories, not a mere reaction, however pertinent” (Vizenor 1). Vizenor argues that survivance is “more than survival, more than endurance or mere response; the stories are an active presence” (Vizenor 39). In other words, it’s not just about continuing to exist; it’s about retaining agency and voice–asserting being rather than non-being. Two-Sleeps’s gentle insistence that their humanity is undiminished by the smallness of their world is a beautiful example of survivance in a cultural sense. It’s a refusal to equate “small world” with “small people.”
Likewise, throughout the novel, the Little Elk’s acts of storytelling, memory, and ritual (Bull sharing the legend of Feather Boy with Antoine, the tribe’s council deliberations, the mourning ceremonies) are acts of survivance. They are the community asserting, We are still here. We still define ourselves. Even as the outside world presses in, these moments show the Indigenous characters attempting to “create a sense of presence” on their own terms. Notably, McNickle himself was part of what’s often called the “Native American Renaissance” in literature (though he predates the famous 1960s-70s bloom of Native writing). He believed in the power of stories to carry cultural survival. His depiction of Two-Sleeps and the continuation of Little Elk teachings hints that, even in tragedy, the act of telling their story (which McNickle is doing for them by writing this novel) is itself a form of resistance to being made small.
Another form of resistance depicted in the novel is the quiet subversion of colonial authority through solidarity and wit. Earlier in McNickle’s career, he wrote short stories like “Hard Riding,” in which a group of Native men outsmart an Indian Agent by following his orders in form but not in spirit. This kind of subtle defiance–adhering to the letter of colonial law while preserving one’s own communal values–is present in Wind from an Enemy Sky as well. For instance, when Bull and the others comply with meeting Pell and the agent, they do so to hear them out, but they stand firm on their demands for the bundle’s return. Even a character like Toby Rafferty, the Indian Agent, notes that the Little Elk are not as pliant or naive as some might think; they have their own form of diplomacy and understanding. In one scene, Bull and another elder pretend not to recognize the supposed importance of “Washington, D.C.,” humorously undercutting its “mythical power” by acting unaware of it. Karen Piper notes that, in U.S. national discourse, “‘Washington, D.C.’ became the allegorical center of the ‘new world’ drama,” yet in Wind from an Enemy Sky McNickle “reveal[s] Washington as an empty signifier, [so] the narrative punches out the center of the States’ colonial allegory” (Piper 85). Such moments show Bull and Pock Face slyly undermine the awe of the U.S. government; if Washington’s authority depends on everyone fearing it, what happens when the Little Elk feign ignorance of it? Such moments, though subtle, are acts of resistance that prevent the Indigenous characters from psychologically capitulating. They maintain an inner sense of superiority or at least equality by refusing to acknowledge the bigness of the colonizer’s world as inherently superior.
The concept of smallness is further reclaimed in the novel through the value placed on community and kinship. McNickle shows that within the Little Elk world, interconnectedness is paramount. Everyone has a role–elders, adults, youth–and identity is affirmed through these relationships. This stands in stark contrast to the individualistic, often alienating ethos of the settler society that encroaches on them. Bull’s stature as a “big man” comes not from wealth or title, but from the trust and respect the community places in him. When that trust is maintained, as in the early pages, smallness is simply the natural order (children are small, elders are great, each has their place in the circle). The violence of colonialism is that it breaks this circle, disempowering the elder, making the child frightened, turning natural smallness into oppressive smallness. However, as long as the Little Elk continue to practice their kinship and honor their stories, there remains a core of identity that the colonizer will never shrink. This is why the return of the Feather Boy bundle is so symbolically important in the novel (and to Henry Jim). The bundle represents the tribe’s collective heritage and spirit. Losing it contributed to their feeling of being spiritually “small,” so recovering it was seen as a way to restore fullness. Though tragically, the bundle cannot be recovered, the fact that so much of the plot revolves around it shows that the Little Elk have not truly let go of who they are. In that sense, Wind from an Enemy Sky depicts not only the making-small of a people, but also their efforts–doomed in the short term, perhaps–to remain whole. Antoine is left alive after the climactic bloodshed–he will be distraught as a result of the death of Bull–but importantly, he is alive and (likely) returning to the camp where the women and children await. This leaves open a slim possibility of continuity. Antoine, who once tried to make himself small, has now, in this case metaphorically, ”seen” the effects of white institutional power. We can imagine that in telling the story of what happened, in mourning and remembering those lost, the Little Elk will continue on.
In a broader literary context, McNickle’s work prefigures later Native American writers who more overtly centered themes of survivance and resilience. For example, N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn (1968) and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977) both deal with young Native men trying to recover a sense of identity after trauma, and they end on notes of healing through reconnecting with tradition. McNickle’s Wind is arguably more despairing than those works, but it shares the understanding that Indigenous identity endures in the face of great hardship, even if scarred. McNickle may not give us a triumphant ending–likely because he wanted to jolt readers (especially non-Native readers) into recognizing the gravity of what had been done to Native communities–but he does plant seeds of hope in how he portrays Little Elk culture. Two-Sleeps’s wisdom, Bull’s inherent leadership, the very persistence of their community up to that point, and even the compassionate though powerless figure of Rafferty (who symbolizes that at least some non-Natives wished for a better outcome) all suggest that “smallness” is not the final word. Reclamation is possible, McNickle hints, not by the Little Elk trying to become “big” in the way the colonizer understands (by wealth, or armies, or domination), but by reasserting their own beliefs. As Two-Sleeps asserts, being true to their ways–remaining communal, remembering that the world’s physical smallness does not equate to the spirit’s smallness–is the key. This aligns with what many Indigenous activists and writers since McNickle’s time have stressed: the path forward is in revitalizing language, ceremonies, and community bonds (all those “small” things the colonizer disdained) to heal and resist still ongoing oppression.
CONCLUSION
Wind from an Enemy Sky imploys “smallness” not only as a thematic motif, but as the linchpin of a profound exploration into how colonialism can distort a people’s self-perception. McNickle’s novel shows us that smallness is a symptom of colonial systems–a result of concerted efforts, from violent conquest to subtler cultural subjugation, to make Indigenous peoples feel less than human. Yet, as the narrative and its context reveal, that imposed smallness is neither total nor irreversible. Through Bull’s disillusionment, Antoine’s learned silence, and Louis’s resigned reflection, the novel paints one of the most penetrating pictures in Native American literature of the psychological toll of settler colonialism. As Louis Owens observes in his afterword, McNickle ultimately argues that “meaningful communication–communication necessary to survival–is an impossibility between [the] Indian and white world.” In reality, Wind from an Enemy Sky tragically illustrates the collapse of such communication, with misunderstanding and mistrust leading to fatal consequences. But within that bleak assessment lies a clear demand; a warning of what happens when one world insists on making another world small. McNickle forces the reader to confront the human cost of colonial arrogance–the endless struggle of the colonized to preserve a sense of self even when the dominant world insists on their insignificance.
At the same time, the novel is not merely about despair; it is also about the resilience found in Indigenous values. McNickle, writing across decades and likely responding to both personal and institutional challenges, crafted a story that is a “critical statement” on an encounter that takes place at the intersection of culture. The critical lesson is that true justice and healing cannot come from one side magnanimously “enlarging” the other or offering reparative tokens. Rather, it requires recognizing that those who were made small had in fact a vast world of their own all along, a world whose worth does not diminish just because it was disregarded. In Wind from an Enemy Sky, the Little Elk world may be encircled and pressured, but it continues to breathe through story, memory, and community. The task the novel leaves us with is to see the people of that world not as victims shrunken by history, but as survivors–full human beings who, against all odds, refuse to let their identity be defined by the oppressor. To surmise such profound feeling would be an impossible task, but at its core, McNickle’s work deepens our understanding of Native anti-colonial literature by showing both the damage done by the colonial imperative to “make small,” and the enduring possibility of resistance and reclamation. It challenges readers to never look at a phrase like “He makes us small” without hearing, beneath it, the echo of an indomitable voice saying, “We are still here.” The wind from an enemy sky may batter the people, but it will not scatter them to nothingness. As long as their story is told–as McNickle has told it–the Little Elk and those they represent will not be small; they will, in memory and in spirit, remain impossibly great.
Works Cited
Cesaire, Aimé. “Between Colonizer and Colonized.” Staff.Kings.Edu, 1955,
staff.kings.edu/sites/cristoferscarboro/HNRS%20204/Cesaire.htm.
Charles, Bonnie St. “You’re on Native Land: The Genocide Convention, Cultural Genocide, and Prevention of Indigenous Land Takings.” You’re on Native Land: The Genocide Convention, Cultural Genocide, and Prevention of Indigenous Land Takings | Chicago Journal of International Law, cjil.uchicago.edu/print-archive/youre-native-land-genocide-convention-cultural-genocide-and-prevention-indigenous. Accessed 1 Dec. 2025.
Duane, Daniel. “Mixed Intentions in D’Arcy McNickle’s Wind From an Enemy Sky.” Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 8, no. 1, 1996, pp. 25–43. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20739325. Accessed 1 Dec. 2025.
McNickle, D’Arcy. Wind from an Enemy Sky. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978.
Methot, Suzanne. Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing, ECW Press, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kentstate/detail.action?docID=7007294.
Momaday, Navarre Scott. House Made of Dawn. HarperPerennial, 2011.
Official Report of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of Charities and Correction (1892), 46–59.
Reprinted in Richard H. Pratt, “The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites, Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian” 1880–1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 260–271.
Owens, Louis. Afterword. Wind from an Enemy Sky, by D’Arcy McNickle, University of New Mexico Press, 1998.
Parker, Dorothy. Singing an Indian Song: A Biography of D’Arcy McNickle. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1992.
Piper, Karen. “Reading Whites: Allegory in D’Arcy McNickle’s Wind from an Enemy Sky.” Melus, vol. 24, no. 3, 1999, pp. 81–96, https://doi.org/10.2307/468040.
Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. Penguin Books, 1986.
Vizenor, Gerald Robert. Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence. University of Nebraska Press, 2023.
Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the Native.” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 8, no. 4, Dec. 2006, pp. 387–409, https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240.
SMALLNESS 
Leave a comment