Into the Wardrobe

I just had an Indian Taco for lunch.

Native American Taco doesn't sound quite right.

(it was really good, by the way. frybread was light and fluffy, beans were home-made)

Another interesting thing I remember is that Lewis referred to Puddleglum's house in The Silver Chair as resembling an Indian wagwam. I wonder if Lewis had actually seen a tepee or lodge on a trip to the United States. Or did he get the description of the dwelling from a book about Indians? The Indians who lived in the forests of my area of Michigan resided in birchbark houses instead of tepees, which were homes for the plains tribes. My dictionary says that a wigwam, which is similar to a birchbark house, is "a hut of the Indians of the Great Lakes region and eastward having typicaly an arched framework of poles overlaid with bark, rush mats, or hides." So maybe the picture below is what Puddleglum's house in the marshes of Narnia looked like!



Larry W.

I agree, Larry - it is interesting. In Russian, what we call a tepee was translates as "vigvam" and this stuck. It seems like a similar kind of confusion of descriptive terms.

In this picture Puddleglum's wigwam (shown in the background) looks much like a tepee.




Larry W.

I wouldn't be able to sleep a wink in that thing... I shouldn't wonder...

There is also a good illustration of Pauline Baynes in the book (The Silver Chair), showing Puddleglum and his house. But unfortunately it is not available on the Internet. You can find it in chapter five of The Silver Chair. Baynes also made the wigwam look like a tepee. Sleeping for a night in a marsh seems a bit damp and not too cozy. You might feel like a wet blanket the next morning!

Larry W.