FEAR=DESTRUCTION"They fear They fear the world. They destroy what they fear. They fear themselves.""They will kill what they fear, all the animals, people will starve.""They will fear what they fear they will find They will fear the people will 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 main factor contributing to their 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 and everything in it. When the wind pushed the whites across the ocean, thousands of them in giant boats (Silko 136), they were faced with the unknown culture of the Indian people. Besides the fact that the Indians were on the path to expansion and development, the white man feared what they found. They feared an unknown language that they had never heard before and could not understand. They feared rituals and ceremonies that seemed strange and suspicious. They feared a social unit of sharing and togetherness that they found alarming and intimidating. The Indians woke up one morning to find that the lands they once belonged to were no longer theirs. The deeds and documents said the land now belonged to the whites. It was taken from them by sheer physical force, stolen, and they were sent away to live on reservations. Tayo was part of the Laguna Pueblo Reservation. As a young boy on the Laguna Pueblo reservation, Tayo and the other children were sent to white schools, and were required not to speak their native tongue or take part in any of their old ways. The teachers told them to forget what they had learned on the reservation, that they no longer had reason to believe superstitious stories. Now they should believe in books and science because they explain causes and effects (Silko 94). The white man feared the different culture of the Indians, and they wanted the Indians to forget their past so they could easily influence them and conform to... paper interests... and defend themselves. They have beefed up their arsenal with guns, bombs and missiles. They eventually developed what would be the most dangerous and devastating weapon on the face of the earth, the atomic bomb. The best scientists and experts in the field of nuclear fusion met in top-secret laboratories deep in the Jemez Mountains, on land that the government took from the Cochiti Pueblo, and created the highly sophisticated nuclear weapon (Silko 246). they will find rocks, Rocks with green, yellow and black veins. They will place the final design with these rocks. They will spread it all over the world and blow everything up" (Silko 137). In order for Tayo to complete his ceremony, he ironically had to use a mineral rock, streaked with dusty 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 to ensure that there is no more life. If the Indian story is true, a nuclear war will be the human event that will end to all human events. Works Cited Silko, Leslie Marmon. New York: Penguin Books, 1986.