FEAR=DESTRUCTION"They are afraidThey fear the world. They destroy what they fear.They are afraid of themselves.""They will kill the things they fear, all animals , people will die of hunger. "They will fear what they fear." They will fear people. They kill what they fear" (Silko 136). Leslie Marmon Silko uses these three short passages from an ancient Indian story included in the novel Ceremony to express and convey the idea that the fear of the white man was the The main contributing factor to his negative actions towards the Indian people The ancient Indian history from which the passages are taken also explains how Indian witchcraft led to the invention of white people and all the evil within them, causing them to destroy the world. world and all that inhabits it. When the wind blew the white people across the ocean, thousands of them in giant boats (Silko 136), they were confronted with the unknown culture of the Indian people. the fact that the Indians were on the path of expansion and development, the white man feared what they were discovering. They were afraid of an unknown language that they had never heard before and that they did not. They could not understand. They feared the rituals and ceremonies which seemed strange and suspicious to them. They feared a social unity of sharing and conviviality which they found alarming and intimidating. The Indians woke up one morning and discovered that the land they once belonged to was no longer theirs. The deeds and papers indicated that the land now belonged to whites. It was taken from them by physical force, stolen, and they were sent to live on reservations. Tayo was part of the Laguna Pueblo reservation. As a young child on the Laguna Pueblo reservation, Tayo and the other children were sent to white schools, and it was mandatory that they neither speak their native language nor participate in their old ways. The teachers told them to forget what they had learned on the reservation, that they no longer had any reason to believe the superstitious stories. Now they should believe in books and science because they explain cause and effect (Silko 94). The white man feared the different culture of the Indians and wanted the Indians to forget their past so that he could easily influence them and get them to conform to and defend the interests of the Indians. themselves. They built up their arsenal with guns, bombs and missiles. Eventually, they developed what would be the world's most dangerous and devastating weapon, the atomic bomb. Top scientists and experts in the field of nuclear fusion gathered in top-secret laboratories deep in the Jemez Mountains, on land the government took from the Pueblo of Cochiti, and created the highly sophisticated nuclear weapon (Silko 246). They will find the rocks, rocks with green, yellow and black veins. They will trace the final pattern with these rocks. They'll lay it across the world and blow it all up" (Silko 137). In order for Tayo to complete his ceremony, he ironically had to use a mineral rock streaked with powdery yellow uranium (Silko 246). Uranium was one of the main components used to make the atomic bomb When the atomic bomb explodes, it kills all life forms in its path, leaving radioactive waste ensuring that there will be no more life If the Indian story is true. , a nuclear war will be the human event that ends all human events. Silko, Leslie Marmon New York: Penguin Books., 1986.