1. Who are the dancing native women who appear several times in this novel?

Are they real, or does Omishto hallucinate them? What do they symbolize for Omishto?

2. Omishto thinks the panther skin is in the possession of the tribal elders at Kili Swamp. If she has given them the skin, she has fulfilled native custom. If this is so, then why do the elders banish Ama?

3. Ama's name reads the same way whether it is read beginning to end or end to beginning. How is this appropriate to her role in the story?

4. Omishto and others believe that the elders killed Abraham Swallow through supernatural means. Why are people willing to believe this of the Taiga elders, who seem so few in number and so frail?

5. Ama's house is ramshackle and being eaten away by termites. What might this house symbolize in the novel...