Yellow Woman

Silva personifies Indigenous American purity. It is suggested several times that he is like Coyote, the trickster character from much of Indigenous American myth. He is connected directly to the nature imagery used throughout the narrative. He is also an embodiment of male sexual power as he overpowers the narrator physically and intellectually, regardless of her consent—which is ambiguous throughout. Like the narrator, though, his identity is in question throughout the narrative. Fundamentally Silva’s identity, like the narrator’s, is in question. He could be simply Silva the Navajo who steals from ranchers and lives a hermetic life in the mountains. He could be ka’tsina, the mountain spirit who kidnaps Yellow Woman and impregnates her with twins. He could be Coyote, who is enamored with and seduced by Yellow Woman and tricks Beaver to take Yellow Woman first.

The ambiguity of Silva’s identity is a foil to the narrator’s conflict of identity. Every time the narrator asks for clarification about who he is, he turns the question back on her, saying she knows. When she says he is a stranger named Silva, he laughs and says that yesterday is immaterial to today, and when she asks about his tricks—connecting him to Coyote—he talks about how stories are made. This pattern continues as the story progresses. Later, when she insists he is Navajo, he says, “[Y]ou never give up do you? I have told you who I am” (Paragraph 48), thus making her responsible for naming and remembering his identity while she struggles to navigate her own.

In essence, Silva’s identity is determined by the scenery and by the narrator’s choices—that is, who she chooses and wishes to be, and how she chooses to perceive him. He becomes the personification of her struggle to determine and embrace a cultural identity, because she can choose who he is to her, but then she must also choose who she is to herself.

The white man that Silva and the narrator meet on the way to Marquez is a flat, one-dimensional character. Unlike the other characters, he has no arc and does not change. He disrupts the story the narrator is telling herself, shocking her out of her drowsy, dreamlike indecision, and—since Silva brings along a gun with the intention of shooting him—he serves as the catalyst for violence. He is the personification of white racism toward Indigenous Americans as he immediately assumes Silva is a criminal and is simultaneously cruel and fearful.

Unlike the narrator and Silva, the white man is described in significant detail. The white man is fat and sweaty; he wears a cowboy shirt, has a “young fat face,” has “small, pale eyes” (Paragraph 66), and “smelled rancid” (Paragraph 70) with fear when facing Silva. He is described as fat three times in short order—his appearance is important, as the narrator finds it grotesque. In contrast to this description, the only visual details provided about Silva are that he is tall and has a dark chest and belly.

The white man personifies the fear and suspicion that white culture embodies when interacting with Indigenous American culture. The man is in direct opposition to Silva in appearance, attitude, and actual position—they are squared off against each other on horseback. Silva’s identity, origin, and intentions are ambiguous, but the white man is clear in his feelings, intentions, and identity, with no room for interpretation or challenge. He is also weak where Silva is strong—while the white man exudes the smell of fear, Silva is confident, and the narrator sees “something ancient and dark” (Paragraph 73) in Silva’s eyes before she rides away. While the white man personifies white culture, the description of his appearance and his overall inferiority to Silva makes it clear that the narrator is not choosing white culture over Indigenous culture when she rides back home.