The Spirit of the "Yellow Woman"
             Spirits and the supernatural have always intrigued people. Some people can feel a spirit's presence; some people can see a spirit as if it was a normal person or as a transparent person; and yet others cannot even see the spirit at all. Spirits do not normally interact with humans, but sometimes it does happen. One example of this is the urban myth of the ghost taxi rider. In that myth a taxi driver will see a man or woman on the side of the road and pick him or her up. When the taxi driver arrives at the rider's desired destination, the rider will be gone. Stories of ghosts and supernatural events are also common in many other cultures throughout the world. The Native Americans believed that mountain spirits existed and would come down to earth and take human form. They also believed that sometimes the mountain spirits would seduce women and take them away. The woman would return home later, but she would be changed in some way. In the short story "Yellow Woman" Leslie Mormon Silko uses literary devices and setting to prove that the man, Silva, is actually a mountain spirit.
             Silko hints at Silva's true identity when she writes about the morning after the Yellow Woman sleeps with Silva and wakes up alone. The Yellow Woman thinks ,"He was gone . . . I wandered along the trail to the pine trees. When I saw the stone house I remembered I meant to go home. It wasn't important anymore. He must have heard me coming because he spoke to me without turning his face" (824-825). When she woke up the Yellow Woman temporarily forgot what was happening and where she was. All she remembered after she awoke was that she was with Silva and that he was gone. Some clues to Silva's identity are pointed out when the Yellow Woman wakes up and he is gone. One clue is that he knew she would come to him, even though he was in the middle of the woods. The fact that he ...