Western American Indian Writers, 1854–1960
THE LITERARY HISTORY
of western American Indian writers
begins in the 1850s with the publication of the works of John
Rollin Ridge, the first significant Indian man of letters and
the first to make the Far West the major subject of his writing. Encompassing articles,
fiction, and poetry, the range of Ridge's literary achievements
exceeds those of his eastern and midwestern predecessors, who
wrote primarily autobiographies, histories, and interpretations
of oral literature. The grandson of the highly respected Cherokee
leader Major Ridge and the son of John and his white wife Sara
Northrup, John Rollin (1827–67) accompanied his family on
the Cherokee Removal from their native Georgia in 1837. Two years
later, both Major and John Ridge were assassinated for their
roles in bringing about the sale of tribal lands. Twelve-year-old
John Rollin witnessed the murder of his father. Shortly thereafter,
the family moved from Indian Territory to Arkansas. At age fourteen,
Ridge was sent to Great Barrington School in New England, remaining
in the East for four years until illness forced him to return
home. Late in his teens, Ridge shot a man, presumably in self-defense,
and fled in 1850 from Arkansas to the California gold fields.
There he began to contribute regularly to such San Francisco
periodicals and journals as Golden Era, Hesperian, and
Pioneer, writing under the name of "Yellow Bird,"
the literary translation of his Cherokee name Cheesquatalawny.
Ridge's most famous work is The Life and Adventures of Joaquin
Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit (1854), the first
novel published by an American Indian. This fictionalized biography
established Murieta's image as a folk hero and precipitated the
flood of stories, dramas, and films that have kept him such a
popular figure in the folklore of California and Mexico. Ridge's
portrayal of Murieta as a social outcast hero who defeats his
enemies by using both his keen mind and blazing pistols links
the book both to Gothic romances and Byron's narrative poems
in English literature and to the frontier romances and dime-novel
Westerns of American literature. Murieta is characterized as
a handsome gallant who only became an outlaw to revenge himself
against the Anglos who beat him, raped his mistress before his
eyes, hanged his brother, and stole his land. Though fearless
in killing his enemies, Murieta is gentle with fair maidens in
distress. The novel vividly portrays the anti-Mexican prejudices
of gold-hungry Anglos eager to dispossess Mexicans of their land–a
situation all too familiar to Ridge, whose Cherokee people were
similarly dispossessed. His half-Indian hero achieved the revenge for the outrages
against his family and people that Ridge often plotted but never
executed. The novel is a forerunner of the western local color
movement, which in the coming decades was to bring acclaim to
such writers as Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, Ambrose Bierce, and
Samuel Clemens. In addition to basing his plot on the recent
California manhunts for bandits known only as "Joaquin,"
Ridge also filled his novel with descriptions of local places
and landscapes, such as those portrayed in his Shelleyan poem
"Mount Shasta."
That Ridge chose to deal indirectly with the injustices experienced
by Indians reflects the literary taste of the period. As whites'
determination to occupy Indian land in the West increased, their
interest in Indians as subjects for serious literature decreased.
By the 1850s, the reading public's fascination with the Noble
Savage had faded. Even a revered figure like King Philip (Pequot)
was satirized in John Brougham's Metamora; or the Last of
the Pollywogs (1847). Although Longfellow's Hiawatha (1855)
achieved great popularity, it also became a favorite subject
for parody. The Indian became a staple of popular rather than
of serious literature. This shift in popular taste undoubtedly
explains the lack of emphasis on Indian subjects in Ridge's works,
for his letters reveal his commitment to the cause of the Cherokee
people. Though Ridge never published another novel, he continued
to write for journals and, during the fifties and sixties, remained
a minor member of the San Francisco literary circle. His collected
Poems (1868), published after his death, reveal his interest
in the local color movement. "Rainy Season in California,"
though strongly influenced by James Thomson's Seasons, colorfully
describes the impact of a rainstorm on the hills and valleys.
His "Humboldt River" is a powerful description of this Nevada
river, whose banks were strewn with the bones of dead pioneers.
One of his best poems is the "Arkansas Root Doctor,"a colorful
character sketch, using dialect. The only poems in this collection
to reflect his Indian background are the sentimental "Cherokee
Love Song" and "Stolen White Girl." Included in Ridge's
Poems is an autobiographical account of his life to age
twenty-three.
From the 1850s to the 1890s, most of the works written by Indian
authors were histories of woodland tribes from the East and Midwest.
The history of literature written by American Indians parallels
the history of white migration across the country, which resulted
in policies that forced Indians onto reservations and sent their
children to white-run schools. Not until the 1880s and 1890s
did Indian authors from western tribes begin to publish their
recollections of these experiences.
The last half of the nineteenth century saw the end of the nomadic
life that had been followed by some of the Indians of the West.
As public demand for Indian land increased, the government abandoned
its policy of separatism that had led to the removal of eastern
and midwestern tribes to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) and
to other locations in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska.
Instead, the government adopted the policy of pacifying Indians
and placing them on reservations. To protect the hordes of settlers
migrating to the California gold fields, the government built
new forts to guard the Platte River route in the northern Plains.
As a result, new western routes were opened that brought whites
into conflict with Plains Indians determined to defend their
territories. Weakened by four epidemics of smallpox between 1835
and 1860 and a cholera outbreak in 1849, the western Indians
stood little chance of permanently holding back the waves of
white migration. The end of the Civil War in 1865 enabled the
government to devote greater attention to the final pacification
of the western tribes. The 1870s saw one tribe after another
defeated in desperate battles against white invasion. Almost
all of these tribes were subdued by the end of that decade. Settlement
on reservations and the extermination of the last buffalo herd
in 1885 ended the traditional life of these Indians.
Hostile government policies and public attitudes created a climate
generally unfavorable to the development of Indian literature
during this period. White audiences were far more interested
in reading the accounts of explorers, settlers, and gold miners
who conquered the West than they were in reading of Indian suffering
brought about by this conquest. In 1883, however, the voice of
the vanquished tribes of the far West was heard when the fiery
Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (Thocmetony; ca. 1844–91) strode
across the lecture platforms of America to castigate whites for
their unchristian treatment of her people, the Paiutes. With
the publication of Life Among the Piutes; Their Wrongs and
Claims (1883),
Winnemucca's disillusionment with federal Indian policy and with
its agents aroused her to take the Paiute cause to the public.
Encouraged by the success of her first lecture in
San Francisco in 1879, she toured the East delivering more than
three hundred lectures. Both her lectures and her book Life Among
the Piutes strongly supported the General Allotment Act,
then under consideration by Congress.
Life Among the Piutes is among the most imaginative personal
and tribal histories of the nineteenth century. Winnemucca uses
the narrative technique of mixing personal experience and tribal
ethnography and the authenticating device of including letters
from well-known whites to document her moral character and achievements,
both methods used by earlier Indian autobiographers. But whereas
these writers made conversion to Christianity and the spiritual
journey central to their narratives, Winnemucca never alludes
to these. Her central theme is Indian-white relations, a secondary
theme in the narratives of earlier writers. The impact of white
contact on Paiute life is depicted through Winnemucca's descriptions
of her experiences as a child and adult. Especially moving is
her description of her terror when as a small child she was buried
alive temporarily by her parents to hide her from whites, who
were reputed to be cannibals. Winnemucca reveals far more of
her childhood and of her adult personality than do earlier writers.
Both in her valuable Paiute ethnography and in her exciting accounts
of her service as a liaison between Paiutes and whites, Winnemucca
emphasizes the roles played by women in traditional Paiute culture
and by Winnemucca herself in achieving peace for her people.
Her own role was unusual for any woman in her day. Her daring
exploits as she raced back and forth between enemy lines, risking
rape by white males or murder by hostile whites and
Indians, rival those of the heroines of the dime Westerns of
the period.
Winnemucca's style is particularly
effective because she dramatizes important episodes. Margot Liberty
suggests that Winnemucca's recreation of dialogue derives from
the quotative style of Northern Paiute narratives.
3
The technique enables Winnemucca
to dramatize scenes in which she successfully confronts government
officials about their unjust treatment of her people. She displays
considerable narrative skill in her dramatization of her grandfather
Truckee's death in 1859, in which she weaves together the threads
of autobiography, ethnography, and Indian-white relations that
dominate the book. She also uses her considerable oratorical
power to arouse the sympathy of her audience, demonstrated in
her final exhortation for justice for Indian people: "For
shame! for shame! You dare to cry out Liberty, when you hold
us in places against our will, driving us from place to place
as if we were beasts. . . . Oh, my dear readers, talk for us,
and if the white people will treat us like human beings, we will
behave like a people; but if we are treated by white savages
as if we are savages, we are relentless and desperate; yet no
more so than any other badly treated people. Oh, dear friends,
I am pleading for God and for humanity."
4
Winnemucca's Life Among the
Piutes was the only book she ever published. However, in
1882, the year before this volume appeared, she published an
article on Paiute ethnography entitled "The Pah-Utes," which
appeared in The Californian.
By the time Winnemucca wrote her personal narrative,
the spiritual confession and missionary reminiscence,
which so strongly influenced the personal narratives of eastern
and midwestern Indian writers, were no longer dominant. The Plains
Indians, who were prolific writers of autobiographies, followed
Winnemucca's lead in describing life before and after the coming
of the white man and the forced settlement of Indians on reservations.
The Plains writers forcefully depict the cultural changes faced
by their people, particularly by their children sent away from
their families to distant schools run by whites who deprived
the children of their Indian names, languages, religions, and
customs. Their autobiographies and those by writers of other
western tribes, most of which appeared from the early 1900s through
the 1930s, are valuable contributions to our knowledge of the
impact on Indian people of the conquest of the West. They are
also important contributions to the literary history of the local
color movement and of regional writing.
One of the best of the autobiographies written at the turn of
the century is The Middle Five (1900) by Francis LaFlesche
(Omaha, c. 1857–1932). Describing his experiences and those
of his friends at a Presbyterian Mission School in Bellevue,
Nebraska, LaFlesche authentically portrays the nature of the
Indian boy. He movingly depicts the adjustments the boys faced
when they entered the school and their happiness when permitted
the old free life–a recurrent theme in the autobiographies
of LaFlesche's contemporaries. One of the first Indian scholars,
LaFlesche devoted most of his writing to the new field of anthropology.
Among the works he co-authored with Alice Fletcher are such important
studies as The Omaha Tribe (1911) and The Osage Tribe
(1921–30). Indians contributed significantly to the
collection, translation, and interpretation of their oral literatures
between the 1890s and 1930s. Among these anthropological writers
were William Jones (Fox), Ella Deloria (Sioux), John N. B. Hewitt
(Tuscarora), William Morgan (Navajo), Archie Phinny (Nez Perce),
and Arthur C. Parker (Seneca).
The best-known Native American
writer early in the twentieth century was Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa;
Sioux, 1858–1939). In his lifetime, Eastman moved from the
tepees of the Santee Sioux to the drawing rooms and lecture halls
of America and England. Eastman was at least one-quarter white:
his maternal grandfather was Seth Eastman, a white New Englander,
and his maternal grandmother was at least one-fourth French.
After the 1862 Minnesota Sioux Uprising, four-year-old Eastman
was taken by his grandmother and uncle into the northern Dakota
Territory and into Manitoba to avoid white reprisals. His father
Jacob Eastman (Many Lightnings) was imprisoned for his part in
the conflict. Eastman was isolated from white contact until age
fifteen, when his father returned and put him in school in Flandreau,
Dakota Territory. For the next seventeen years, Eastman attended
several schools, eventually graduating from both Dartmouth College
and Boston University Medical School.
Eastman began his career as agency physician at Pine Ridge in
November 1890, just as the Ghost Dance religion swept through
the reservation. He cared for the survivors of the Wounded Knee
Massacre, which occurred the same year. During this period, he
met and married Elaine Goodale, a Massachusetts author and teacher
on the Great Sioux Reservation. Although Eastman settled his
bride at Pine Ridge, he soon resigned his post after a policy
dispute. When he failed to establish a medical practice in St.
Paul, Eastman spent the next two decades in a variety of positions
pertaining to Indian affairs. Increasingly estranged, Elaine
and Charles separated after a beloved daughter died in 1921.
Elaine remained in the East, where the family had lived for many
years. Charles moved to Detroit to live with their only son,
eventually purchasing a small wooded property near Desbarats,
Ontario, where he built a cabin. In January 1939, after a tepee
in which he had been living caught fire, Eastman suffered smoke
inhalation and later contracted both pneumonia and a heart condition.
He died on January 8.
Eastman's literary career began in 1894, when an autobiographical
sketch was published. During their years together, Eastman and
his wife collaborated on the composition of his books, as he
acknowledged in From the Deep Woods to Civilization. After
their separation, Eastman never published again, while Elaine
continued to publish poetry, essays and fiction. Eastman's first
book, Indian Boyhood (1902), was begun for his children
for whom he wished to capture the spirit of "the freest
life in the world."
In all his works and lectures, Eastman tried to serve as a bridge
between Indian and white cultures by showing his white audience
the world views, customs, literature, and history of the Indians
so that white Americans might appreciate and emulate Native American
virtues. His most fully developed statement of his religious
philosophy is contained in The Soul of the Indian (1911),
in which he emphasizes that Indian faith needs neither creeds
nor temples and that it was never forced on the unwilling. In
The Indian Today (1915), Eastman surveys Indian history,
contributions to America, achievements, reservation life, and
problems, as well as discussing government policy towards Indians.
His most historical book is Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains
(1918), a collection of short biographies, primarily of Sioux
leaders, based on anecdotes told Eastman by these leaders or
their contemporaries. The book shows Eastman's recognition of
the importance of oral history and of the need for whites to
learn about the role played by Indians in American history.
Eastman's books for children were extremely popular. Two of these
contained traditional legends, slightly revised to suit the taste
of young readers: Red Hunters and the Animal People (1905),
which also includes stories based on the common experiences of
Indian hunters, and Wigwam Evenings: Sioux Folk Tales (1909).
The latter was issued also under the title Smoky Day's Wigwam
Evenings: Sioux Folk Tales Retold (1910). Old Indian Days
(1907), divided into stories about warriors and about women,
is more explicitly imaginative than are most of the books written
for children.
Other Sioux writers were inspired by Eastman's success. Gertrude
Bonnin (Zitkala-Sa; 1876–1938) published two collections:
Old Indian Legends
(1901), her recreation of Sioux myths, and American Indian
Stories (1921), which reprints her short stories about her
people and her autobiographical essays published in 1900 and
1902 by the Atlantic Monthly. These are the only literary
works Bonnin wrote. During most of her life, she was a tireless
worker for Indian rights. In 1916 Marie McLaughlin, also influenced
by Eastman, published Myths and Legends of the Sioux, with
a short autobiography.
Next to Eastman, the most widely read Sioux writer was Luther
Standing Bear (Ota'Kte), a member of the Teton or Western Sioux.
Though
Standing Bear claimed to be an
Oglala, he may actually have been a Brule. Standing Bear was
born in the same decade (c. 1868) and died the same year (1939)
as Eastman. Both belonged to the generation of Sioux that witnessed
the beginning of reservation life and the education of Sioux
children in white ways. Standing Bear was a member of the first
class of Carlisle Indian school, established in 1879 by Richard
Henry Pratt, an army officer, to educate and civilize young Indians.
By 1884, Standing Bear returned to the reservation to teach school
and later to marry. Frustrated by agency restriction and the
difficulties of earning a living on the reservation, he eagerly
signed up with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, which toured the
United States and England in 1902. He was badly injured in a
train wreck in 1903, which prevented his participation in a second
tour. Although selected as tribal chief in 1905, Standing Bear
found reservation living so intolerable that he left in 1907
to appear in various shows in the East. His experiences made
him determined to sell his allotment and seek citizenship, which
he did in 1907. By 1912, he had settled in California, where
he acted in
movies, lectured, and aided Indian causes.
Standing Bear did not begin his
writing career until late in life, when he was persuaded to set
down his experiences in his popular autobiography, My People
the Sioux (1928). Written with the assistance of the western
historian E. A. Brininstool, the book gives a simple but straightforward
account of the life of the Western Sioux and of their adjustments
to reservation living. Especially moving are the descriptions
of Standing Bear's early experiences at Carlisle. The impact
of the book was heightened by the fact that it was published
the same year as the Meriam Report
7
on the problems faced by reservation
Indians. In 1933, Standing Bear published Land of the Spotted
Eagle, which was written with the assistance of Melvin Gilmore,
curator of ethnology at the University of Michigan, and Warcaziwin
(or Wahcaziwin), author of several later articles on Indian affairs.
Though enlivened by personal anecdotes, this book focuses far
more on Sioux beliefs, customs, and life than on autobiography.
The impetus for the work was Standing Bear's return in 1931 to
the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, after an absence
of sixteen years. In this book, Standing Bear forcefully criticizes
federal Indian policy. He describes his Carlisle experiences
with much greater bitterness than he did in his autobiography.
In the last two chapters, "Later Days" and "What the
Indian Means to America," Standing Bear powerfully states his
feelings about the damage done to Indians by whites and about
the need for the country to recognize the contributions of Native
Americans. In addition to these two books, Standing Bear also
wrote My Indian Boyhood (1931),directed to children, and
Stories of the Sioux (1934), a collection of tales.
Writers of other tribes followed
the example set by Eastman. The most adventure-filled autobiography
to appear during World War I was Joseph Griffis's Tahan: Out
of Savagery into Civilization (1915). Griffis was born around
1854 to a white father, the famous scout California Joe, and
a halfOsage mother, Al-Zada.8 At age four, he was captured by
Kiowas, who killed his mother. Subsequently he was reared by
a Kiowa stepfather and a Cheyenne stepmother. In 1868, while
young Griffis and his stepmother visited her parents at the Washita
River, Custer attacked, massacring 103 women and children. Both
Griffis and his stepmother were taken prisoner by the troops,
for whom his own father had served as chief scout. Identified
as a white captive, Griffis was separated forever from his stepmother
and placed on a ranch. He quickly escaped and embarked on a series
of daring escapades as a member of a ragtag Indian band, an outlaw,
army scout, hobo, and petty thief. Eventually Griffis made his
way to Canada, where he converted to Christianity, joined the
Salvation Army, and then married a white woman. Griffis went
on to become a Presbyterian minister in the East. Later he moved
to Oklahoma, where he left the ministry to become a lecturer.
Aside from the description of Griffis's exploits, the autobiography
contains material on Kiowa life as well as a vivid account of
the Washita massacre. In addition to this book, Griffis also
was the author of Indian Circle Stories (1928), a collection
of tales from various Oklahoma tribes.
The only Pueblo Indian to have a book published in the first
half of the twentieth century was James Paytiamo, whose Flaming
Arrow's People: By an Acoma Indian appeared in 1932. Beautifully
illustrated by Paytiamo, the book describes his childhood as
well as Acoma culture and beliefs. It contains several myths,
including that about the kachina for whom he was named.
Few Native Americans wrote poetry at the turn of the century.
Among these was Alexander Posey (1873–1908). Posey's mother,
whose English name was Mary Phillips, was a full-blood Creek
and a member of the politically powerful Harjo family. His father
Lewis claimed to be one-sixteenth Creek. Posey, who did not learn
English until he was twelve, attended Indian University at Bacone
before becoming an educator and journalist in Indian Territory.
Highly respected for his integrity and for his knowledge of both
Creek and English, Posey served on almost every council and convention
held in the Territory. His efforts on behalf of the Creek nation
left him little time to devote to his poetry, much of which was
written between May 1896 and October 1897, shortly after his
marriage. All of his poetry printed in his lifetime appeared
under the pseudonym "Chinnubbie Harjo," the Creek trickster
hero. Two years after Posey drowned, his wife supervised the
publication of The Poems of Alexander Posey (1910), which
contained a memoir. The majority of the poems are romantic tributes
to nature. Posey's reading of Burns is reflected in his "When
Molly Blows the Dinner-Horn," which celebrates the coming of
evening in the manner of "Cotter's Saturday Night," and in "Happy Times
for Me an' Sal," which employs dialect and a variation of the
Burns stanza. The most memorable poem is "On the Capture
and Imprisonment of Crazy Snake, January 1900," an angry protest
against the treatment of Chitto Harjo, a fierce opponent of allotment.
In addition to being a poet, Posey was also an accomplished satirist.
Especially popular were his "Fus Fixico Letters," which
appeared during the early 1900s in the Indian Journal at
Eufaula. Although Posey's bent toward satire was partially inspired
by Burns, whom he greatly admired, the immediate inspiration
was probably Peter Finley Dunne, whose famous characters Mr.
Dooley and Mr. Hennessee first appeared in the late 1890s to
amuse and instruct the nation with their discussions of politics,
delivered in Irish brogue. Posey uses the names of Creek elders,
such as Hotgun, Tookpafka Micco, and Wolf Warrior, for his characters.
In Creek-style English, Fus Fixico dutifully reported their opinions
on corruption and abuses of allotment in Indian Territory. Posey's
"Fus Fixico Letters" were widely reprinted. Both in these
satires and in his witty newspaper columns, Posey established
an Indian model for humor. Some years later, a fellow Oklahoman,
Will Rogers, would receive even greater recognition as a political
satirist.
Like Posey, Rogers (Cherokee, 1879–1935)
was a member of a family prominent in Indian Territory. Young
Will, however, chose not to follow the path of his father Clement
Vann Rogers, who was a prosperous rancher and banker as well
as tribal senator. Instead Will left school in 1898 to become
a cowboy and eventually an entertainer, performing rope tricks.
By the beginning of World War I, Rogers had become a regular
on the vaudeville circuit, reaching his greatest successes as
a stage performer in the Ziegfield Follies of 1916–18 and
later in 1922 and 1924–25. Rogers's famous line, "All
I know is what I read in the papers," became the preface for
his witty commentaries on the national scene, which endeared
him to his audiences. His first two books, both published in
1919, consisted of these commentaries plus other material: Rogers-isms:
The Cowboy Philosopher on the Peace Conference and Rogers-isms:
The Cowboy Philosopher on Prohibition. The popularity of
Rogers's humor led to a weekly column, which the New York
Times began syndicating in 1922. Four years later Rogers
accidentally developed what was to be his most influential written
medium–the daily telegram. These brief reports to the nation
began with a cable to the Times during a London trip in
1926. Rogers's trenchant remarks in his short telegrams eventually
ran in 350 newspapers. During the 1920s, he published a series
of books based on these columns and on his observations during
his many trips abroad: Illiterate Digest (1924), Letters
of a Self-Made Diplomat to His President (1926), There's
Not a Bathing Suit in Russia (1927), and Ether and
Me (1929).
In his writing and in his stage and movie performances,
Rogers adopted the role of the wise innocent–a semiliterate
cowboy whose bad grammar and hyperbole gained him instant rapport
with the average American. Rogers represented to them the embodiment
of an American hero, unabashed by president or prince, always
ready to do verbal battle with the hypocrites of big business
or government in order to defend the underdog. Rogers never betrayed
their trust. In return, the American public made him the most
popular humorist of his age, a popularity that continued after
his tragic death in a plane crash during a tour of Alaska in
1935.
During the 1920s, American Indian writers turned to the novel,
which became a favorite form for later writers. In the nineteenth
century, only Simon Pokagon (Potawatomi, 1830–99) followed
the example of John Rollin Ridge by writing fiction. Pokagon's
Ogîmäwkwe Mitigwäkî, Queen of
the Woods (1899), the first novel about Indian life written
by an Indian, was published a few months after his death. The
first novel published by an Indian woman was Co-ge-we-a, the
Half-Blood (1927), written by Mourning Dove (Humishuma; Cristal
McLeod Galler; Okanogan, 1888–1936) in collaboration with
Lucullus McWhorter. Born in a canoe while her parents were crossing
the Kutenai River near Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, Mourning Dove completed
only the third grade and a brief stint at a business school,
where she learned to type. At age thirteen, she took over the
rearing of her younger siblings after their mother died. Much
of her adult life after her marriage was spent as a migrant worker
in Washington.
Her only novel, Co-ge-we-a was completed eleven years
before it was finally published. In this novel, Mourning Dove
introduces a theme that dominates American Indian fiction of
the 1930s and of the last decade. The half-Indian heroine Co-ge-we-a
is drawn away from a mixed-blood cowboy suitor by the smooth
talk and fancy ways of a crafty easterner bent on getting what
he thinks is her fortune. Though she initially rejects her mixed-blood
suitor because accepting him would mean living "Indian,"
she gradually recognizes the importance of the values both he
and her aged grandmother represent. The strongest parts of the
novel deal with the heroine's interaction with her grandmother
and her humiliations suffered as a mixed-blood. The novel is
also a Western, using such conventional devices as a ranch setting
and a cast of rough cowboys whose hijinks and colorful language
lighten the plot. The belated publication of Co-ge-we-a, which
suffers from inconsistent point of view and sometimes implausible
plot, caused little critical stir. Consequently, Mourning Dove
took the advice of McWhorter and turned to collecting the legends
of the Okanogans, which were published in Coyote Stories,
edited by Heister Dean Guie (1933), and in a revised version
called Tales of the Okanogans, edited by Donald Hines
(1976). The most controversial Indian writer of the 1920s was
Sylvester Long or Buffalo Child Long Lance (1891–1932),
whose exploits in life rivaled those in his fiction. Acclaimed
in the United States and Canada as a writer, movie actor, and
athlete, Long's reputation as an author rests today on Long
Lance: The Autobiography of a Blackfoot Indian Chief (1928).
An instant success, the book was widely accepted as an authentic
description of a Blackfeet Indian and his people at the turn
of the century. Although the book's title implies that it is
an autobiography, it is actually fiction. Long was born in North
Carolina of mixed Catawba, Lumbee, white, and black ancestry.
Although both parents were of mixed Indian ancestry, the family,
except for Sylvester, identified as black. After leaving a black
school at age twelve, young Long, who looked Indian, joined a
Wild West Show, where he met Cherokees and learned a bit of their
language. At age eighteen, he was admitted to Carlisle Indian
School as a Cherokee, changing his name there to Long Lance to
quiet some of the attacks on his ancestry. A skilled athlete
and excellent student, he graduated at the head of his class
in 1912, subsequently attending Dickinson College for a year.
He later won a scholarship to St. John's Military Academy, near
Syracuse, New York, and applied for admission to West Point.
In 1915, he enlisted in the Canadian Army, attained the rank
of staff sergeant in the overseas Expeditionary Force, and was
wounded twice. Following his release from the army, he became
a reporter for the Calgary Daily Herald, for which he
wrote many articles about the Indians of western Canada. In 1922,
he was adopted as an honorary chief of the Blood Indians, a branch
of the Blackfeet Indians (erroneously called the Blackfoot Confederacy).
His articles were so successful that he became a freelance writer
and a popular member of the American celebrity circuit. As a
result, he was asked to star in The Silent Enemy, a silent
film about Indians sponsored by the American Museum of Natural
History and released in 1930 by Paramount Pictures. His second
picture was to be a talking film about an Indian flyer during
World War I. Unfortunately, in 1932, before the film was completed,
Long was found dead of gunshot wounds in the home of a wealthy
female friend. His death was ruled a suicide.
Long Lance is a well-written, rousing adventure story
which includes not only ethnographic details about Blackfeet
childrearing customs and tribal life but also well-developed
character portraits of various tribal members. The stories about
such topics as training to become warriors, war parties, horse-breaking,
loyalty of Indian dogs, and two white boys reared by Indians
are written in a spare, fast-paced style designed to hold the
interest of both children and adults. In 1933 Long's friends
collected his journalistic pieces in Redman Echoes: Comprising
the Writings of Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance and Biographical
Sketches by His Friends.
A far more prolific writer was John Milton Oskison (1874–1947).
One-eighth Cherokee, Oskison was born in Indian Territory. After
graduation from Stanford in 1898 and postgraduate study in
literature at Harvard, Oskison worked as an editor and feature
writer for the New York Evening Post and for Collier's
Magazine. He was also a freelance writer on finance and on
Indian affairs. During World War I, Oskison served with the American
forces in France. During the twenties, he wrote the novels Wild
Harvest (1925) and Black Jack Davy (1926), as well
as the fictional biography entitled A Texas Titan: The Story
of Sam Houston (1929). Both the novels are "southwesterns,"
dealing with the surge of white settlers into Cherokee land near
a town called Big Grove in Indian Territory. Neither novel demonstrates
the ability to develop characterization and sustained plot that
Oskison reveals in his best novel, Brothers Three (1935).
Like the two previous novels, Brothers Three is set in
Indian Territory and includes Indians in minor character roles.
Here, however, the major characters are part Indian. Each of
the three parts of the novel describes the struggle by one of
the brothers to break away from the farm established by their
hardworking father Francis Odell and his quarter-Cherokee wife,
Janet, and the utter failure of each to prosper by using family
capital for investments. The prejudice against mixedbloods is
introduced in the characterization of the shiftless poor whites
who arrive to lease land from the Indians after allotment and
who look down on the Odell boys and any child slightly tainted
by Indian blood. Oskison's growing interest in his Indian heritage
is evident in the preface to Tecumseh and His Times (1938),
dedicated to "all Dreamers and Strivers for the integrity
of the Indian race, some of whose blood flows in my veins" (p.
iii).
The most accomplished Native American writers to emerge in the
1930s became known more for their historical and biographical
works than for their fiction: John Joseph Mathews and D'Arcy
McNickle. Mathews (c. 1894–1979) was one-eighth Osage, a
descendant of the union of a trader and an Osage woman. His grandmother,
born of this union, and her husband John Mathews settled in 1872
on what was then the Osage Reservation, where both Mathews's
father and he were raised. Mathews served in the American Air
Force during World War I. After graduating from the University
of Oklahoma in 1920, Mathews completed a B.A. at Oxford University
in 1923. He then returned to the Blackjacks region of his childhood,
near Pawhuska, Oklahoma, where he lived until his death. In addition
to working as a writer and rancher, Mathews served for many years
on the Osage Business Council.
Mathews's first book Wah'Kon-Tah (1932) was such a critical
and popular success that it became a Book-of-the-Month-Club selection.
Using the journal of Major Laban J. Miles, the first government
agent for the Osage, Mathews colorfully portrays Miles's struggles
to bring civilization, education, and agriculture to the Osage
and their equally frustrating struggles to retain the old ways
while adapting to the new. The concluding chapter of this book, which covers the period
1878–1931, introduces a young, jazzage Osage, ashamed of
his backward parents but dependent both on them and on the agency
for money–the prototype of the hero of Sundown (1934).
In this novel, the protagonist, Challenge Windzer, is the son
of a full-blood Osage mother, a quiet traditionalist, and a three-quarter-blood
father, a strong advocate of allotment and an avid reader of
Byron. As a passive hero who rejects his ancestral past without
feeling at home in the whitedominated present, Windzer is the
forerunner of similar heroes created by Momaday, Welch, and Silko
over thirty years later. Windzer has been cut off from his Indian
roots by white education and by Air Force service during World
War I. Returning home from the war, Windzer inherits enough money
from the family oil leases to undermine his desire for either
education or work. By the end of the novel, neither Windzer nor
his two boyhood Indian friends, who dropped out of the university
to become an alcoholic and a peyote ritualist respectively, have
bridged the gap between Indian and white cultures. Sundown
is Mathews's only novel.
Talking to the Moon (1945) is Mathews's most sophisticated
work. Clearly influenced by Thoreau, Mathews describes his return
to the Blackjacks region to build a cabin and live in harmony
with nature. He uses the Osage divisions of time by moons as
a framework for his imaginative blending of myth, history, and
personal experience. The book contains some beautiful descriptive
passages and some memorable character portraits of the Osage
people. Mathews's next book was a biography entitled Life
and Death of an Oilman: The Career of E. W. Marland (1952).
Almost a decade later, Mathews's major work was published: The
Osages: Children of the Middle Waters (1961). This lengthy
history of the Osage is a primary source of information about
the tribe.
A contemporary of Mathews, D'Arcy McNickle is a far more polished
novelist. McNickle (1904–77), who was half Flathead or Salish,
attended government boarding school in Oregon, graduated from
the University of Montana, and attended Oxford and Grenoble Universities.
His first book was The Surrounded (1936), which remains
one of the finest novels by a Native American writer. The plot
focuses on the identity crisis faced by Archilde Leon and the
violent consequences of cultural conflict. The protagonist is
the son of a Flathead woman renowned both for her Catholic piety
and for her adherence to Indian ways, and a Spanish father who,
after forty years of living among Indians, has no understanding
of their world view. When Archilde takes his mother on a last
ritual hunt, he sets in motion a chain of events which entraps
him. A shot he fires in the air brings both his brother Louis,
a horse thief who has just killed a deer out of season, and the
game warden. As Louis reaches for his gun, he is killed by the
warden, who is then struck down with a hatchet by the mother.
Later, when Archilde is persuaded by his lover
Elise LaRose to escape to the mountains, they are found by the
sheriff. As Elise shoots the sheriff, Archilde is once again
the passive onlooker–surrounded by people and events he
cannot control. This highly sophisticated novel demonstrates
McNickle's ability to develop memorable characters, write believable
dialogue, use irony, and incorporate Salish oral traditions.
Both in style and in characterization of the
hero, The Surrounded reveals the influence of Hemingway.
Chronologically, the novels written
during the thirties by Oskison, Mathews, and McNickle belong
with the regional and social novels popular then. In this age
of the "proletarian novel," writers like John Steinbeck,
James T. Farrell, and Pietro di Donato graphically described
the battle of the immigrant and migrant groups against American
big business and the class structure it supported. The novels
by Oskison, Mathews, and McNickle bear little relationship to
the proletarian novel. Oskison's Brothers Three belongs
among the social novels tracing the establishment of family farms
and the economic history of a specific region. Both Mathews's
Sundown and McNickle's The Surrounded focus on
cultural rather than on class conflict. Significantly, the two
novels were published during the time that the government enacted
and began to implement the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934,
which guaranteed Indian tribes the right to self-determination.
For Indians, the thirties represented less a period of economic
disaster than of brief security from the assimilationist policies
of the federal government.
Eighteen years after the appearance of The Surrounded, McNickle's
second novel was published. Written for young people, Runner
in the Sun: A Story of Indian Maize (1954), describes the
culture of the cliff dwellers of the pre-contact Southwest and
the adventures of Salt, a teenage boy who journeys to Mexico
to find a hardy strain of corn which his people can grow to prevent
famine. McNickle's last novel was Wind from an Enemy Sky,
which appeared posthumously in 1978. Here McNickle moves
from the clash of two cultures within the individual to that
between groups. The plot contrasts the responses of two brothers
to government pressure to alter traditional Indian life style.
Henry Jim, the elder brother, left the tribe thirty years ago
when his younger brother was selected principal chief. He also
gave the tribe's medicine bundle to a local priest, who in turn
gave it to a wealthy contractor and art collector. Subsequently
Henry Jim became a successful but lonely rancher regarded by
the government as its "masterpiece." At the end of the novel,
Henry Jim dies a natural death surrounded by family and friends
with whom he has been reunited. Bull, on the other hand, is a
fierce conservative who keeps his people as far away from white
contact as possible. He dies a violent death resulting from conflict
over a dam that has cut off the Indians' water and violated a
holy place. When the contractor of the dam offers the Indians
a nude South American statue of gold instead of the medicine bundle, Bull kills him
and the government agent. An Indian police officer then kills
Bull. McNickle's forty years of experience in Indian affairs
since the publication of The Surrounded have strengthened
his belief in the continuing inability of the representatives
of the two cultures to communicate their vastly different world
views to one another.
With the exception of his biography Indian Man: A Life of
Oliver La Farge (1971), McNickle's other books have been
histories: They Came Here First (1949); The Indian
Tribes of the United States (1962); Indians and Other
Americans, with Harold E. Fey (1970); and Native American
Tribalism (1973). In addition to being an author, McNickle
cofounded the National Congress of American Indians and served
as the first director of the Newberry Library Center for History
of the American Indian.
The only Indian dramatist to achieve critical acclaim during
the 1930s was [Rolla] Lynn Riggs (1899–1954). Descended
from Cherokees on his mother's side, Riggs was born on a farm
near Claremore, Oklahoma, which was then Indian Territory. After
graduation from Oklahoma Military Academy in 1917, Riggs entered
the University of Oklahoma in 1920, where he continued to write
poetry and began to write plays. Cuckoo, his first play,
was produced at the university in 1921. To recover from an illness,
Riggs subsequently went to New Mexico. His second play, Syrian
Knives, was produced there in 1925.
A year later Riggs moved to New York to devote himself to writing.
His first play to be produced on Broadway was Big Lake (1927),
which was not a success. Two of his best plays were folk dramas
set in Oklahoma and written during a 1928 Guggenheim Fellowship
year in Paris; Borned in Texas, produced under the title
Roadside (1930), and Green Grow the Lilacs (1931).
The comedy Roadside deals with the attempts of a high-spirited,
brawling cowboy on the run from the law to win the love of a
sharp-tongued but warmhearted Oklahoma woman. The play was a
greater critical than financial success. Green Grow the Lilacs
achieved both. Full of down-to-earth humor and lively cowboy
songs, this play has been etched into the American consciousness
through its adaptation into the hit musical Oklahoma! (1943)
by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Although the musical
plot closely follows that of the play, Riggs did not participate
in its preparation. Both plays exemplify Riggs's ability to capture
Oklahoma dialect and folk culture, which has received critical
acclaim. His ability to evoke a natural lyricism and authentic
atmosphere has also been acclaimed.
Riggs's only play to deal with an Indian subject is the tragedy
Cherokee Night (1936), which poignantly portrays the sense
of loss of tribal culture suffered by mixed-blood Cherokees who
grew up around Claremore during the period 1895–1931. His
first attempt to write a play with a contemporary setting was
Russet Mantle (1936), produced in New York. This satirical
comedy examines the dilemma faced by modern couples choosing
between financial security and romantic love. Praising the play
as a wise, fresh, and incorrigibly ridiculous human comedy, critics
acclaimed it as the best thing Riggs had written. Although Riggs
continued to write plays, he never equalled the success of these
early works.
Riggs also published a volume of poetry entitled The Iron
Dish (1930) and served as a freelance screenwriter on such
films as Garden of Allah and The Plainsman. In
1942, he enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army, and settled
in New Mexico after the war. He later served as a guest author
and as director of drama at Northwestern University and the University
of Iowa.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the few Indian authors who published
turned once more to the genres of autobiography and cultural
history used by earlier authors. In 1942, Land of Nakoda:
The Story of the Assiniboine Indians appeared, written by
James L. Long (First Boy) and illustrated by William Standing
(Fire Bear). A project of the Montana Writers Program, the book
was later published by Oklahoma University Press under the title
The Assiniboines: From the Accounts of the Old Ones Told to
First Boy (1961). Because Long gathered from Assiniboine
speakers materials on mythology, oral history, and culture, which
he translated into English, the book is an excellent source of
information on this far-western branch of the Sioux. Equally
good is Ella Deloria's study of Sioux cultural change, Speaking
of Indians (1944). Deloria (1888–1971), a Yankton Sioux
enrolled on the Standing Rock Reservation, was trained by Franz
Boas and did much of her research among the western Teton groups
on the Standing Rock, Pine Ridge, and Rosebud Reservations. Written
for study by church groups, Speaking of Indians is a highly
readable introduction to North American Indians as a whole and
to the Sioux in particular. In her analysis of traditional Sioux
culture, Deloria focuses on the roles of kinship, the social
system within the tepee and camp circle, praying for power, education
by precept and example, and the economics of "giving to
have." Though she shows how this "scheme of life that worked"
changed under the reservation system, she emphasizes that the
Sioux value system continued to be based on traditional culture.
In 1959 two autobiographies by southwestern Indians were published:
Jason Betzinez's I Fought with Geronimo and George Webb's
A Pima Remembers. Betzinez's book is a fascinating blend
of oral history and autobiography. The manuscript, which he wrote
but which historian Wilbur S. Nye edited, appeared when the author
(b. 1860) was ninety-nine. Betzinez was a Warm Springs Apache,
close kin to the Chiricahuas; Geronimo (Gayahkla) was his cousin.
His book is a valuable document of Apache oral history–especially
for its account of the wanderings of the two bands between 1876
and Geronimo's surrender in 1886. So feared were the captured
Apaches that they were held as prisoners of
war from 1886 to 1913 at various forts in Florida, Alabama, and
Oklahoma. Between 1887 and 1897, Betzinez attended Carlisle Indian
School, where he became a dedicated convert to the white man's
way. After he moved to Oklahoma to be reunited with his people,
Betzinez watched sadly as Carlisle friends returned to the old
ways, unable to withstand being branded as outcasts who no longer
loved their people. When the Apaches were permitted to move in
1913 to the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico, Betzinez chose
instead to accept an allotment of land in Oklahoma. At age fifty-nine,
he married a former missionary who was white, and lived out his
days devoted to Christianity and hard work. George Webb's book
also combines oral history and autobiography. Fearful that Pima
traditions were being forgotten, Webb (b. 1893) wrote A Pima
Remembers both to teach young Pimas about their heritage
and to educate non-Indians about the contributions of Pimas to
American life. With simple charm and good humor, Webb recounts
his boyhood experiences and discusses Pima life, history, and
tales.
American Indian authors of the forties and fifties reminded their
readers of the distinctiveness of tribal cultures; of Indians'
long, hard struggle to retain their lands and cultures; and of
the anguish caused by the conflict between Indian and non-Indian
world views. Unfortunately, these reminders went unheeded. After
World War II, the federal government abandoned the principle
of self-determination set forth in the Indian Reorganization
Act of 1934 and adopted instead the recommendation of the Hoover
Commission in 1949 that reservations be terminated to facilitate
assimilation of native people into the dominant society. During
the fifties, the government not only terminated several tribes
but also relocated large numbers of Indians from reservations
to cities. Over the next two decades Indians fought these and
other policies affecting self-determination with lawsuits and
demonstrations. Out of the turmoil of the sixties emerged a new
generation of American Indian writers, led by Vine Deloria, Jr.,
and N. Scott Momaday. The publication of their work ushered in
a renaissance of American Indian literature during which Indian
writers developed in unprecedented numbers.
A. LAVONNE BROWN RUOFF, University of Illinois at Chicago
Notes
1. The standard spelling of Paiute
is followed rather than Winnemucca's various spellings of
Piute or Pah-Ute. Research for this chapter was supported
by a research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
2. The General Allotment Act of 1887 was designed to break up Indian
reservations–a goal supported by both reformers
and opportunists. Under this act, Indians who took their land
in severalty became citizens of the United States and were subject
to all its obligations. Far from turning Indians into prosperous
owners of private land, though, the Allotment Act introduced
an era in which Indians lost their land by fraud and by force.
By 1934, 60 percent of the land owned by Indians in 1887 had
passed out of their control. See Wilcomb E. Washburn, The
Indian in America (New York: Harper and Row,
1975) pp. 242–43.
3. "Sarah Winnemucca," in American Indian
Intellectuals: 1976 Proceedings of the American Ethnological
Society, ed. Margot Liberty (St. Paul, Minnesota: West, 1978),
pp. 40–41.
4. Sarah Winnemucca, Life Among the Piutes (New
York: Putnam, 1883), pp. 243– 44. Rpt. Bishop, Calif.: Sierra
Media, 1969.
5. Charles Eastman, Indian Boyhood (rpt. Greenwich,
Conn.: Fawcett, 1972), p. 20.
6. Charles Eastman, From the Deep Woods to Civilization
(rpt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), p. 67.
7. Secretary of the Interior Herbert Work requested the private
Institute for Government Research to examine the needs of Indian
communities. Directed by Dr. Lewis Meriam and supported by funds from John D. Rockefeller,
Jr., experts in such fields as law, education, and health studied
these communities, publishing their report in 1928. Their report
not only proposed improvements in medicine and education but
it also recommended the creation of a longrange planning division
and much closer scrutiny of proposals for further land allotment.
8. Although there is some controversy over whether Griffis was actually
Indian, his family is convinced that he was. All his life he
identified as Indian. His son, Joseph K. Griffis, Jr., indicated
in a personal interview on 6 April 1982 that his father listed
him as Indian on his birth certificate.
Bibliographies
Brumble, H. David III, comp. An Annotated
Bibliography of American Indian Autobiographies. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1981. An excellent guide with suggestions
for further reading.
Littlefield, Daniel, and James
Parin, comps. A Biobibliography of Native American
Writers, 1772–1924. Native American Bibliography Series.
Metuchen, New
Jersey: Scarecrow, 1981. Comprehensive guide with brief biographies
of the authors. This series publishes bibliographies of many
Indian tribes and many topics pertaining to American Indians.
Marken, Jack, comp. The American
Indian: Language and Literature. Arlington Heights, Illinois:
AHM, 1978. Although incomplete and unannotated, this is a good
listing of traditional literatures and anthropological/linguistic
studies.
Ruoff, A. LaVonne Brown, and Karl Kroeber, comps. American
Indian Literatures in the United States: A Basic Bibliography
for Teachers. New York: Association for Study of American
Indian Literatures, 1983. Designed to introduce teachers to classroom
texts, scholarly editions, cultural backgrounds, and criticism.
General Studies
Allen, Paula Gunn, ed. Studies
in American Indian Literature. New York: MLA,
1983. Best guide to the field; emphasis on written literature.
Essays, course designs, review of scholarship, bibliography.
Chapman, Abraham,
ed. Literature of the American Indians: Views and Interpretations.
New York: New American Library, 1975. Literature and criticism;
includes essays by several Indian writers.
Larson, Charles R. American
Indian Fiction. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
1978. Only book-length study of American Indian novelists, 1899–1978;
stronger on plot summary than criticism.
Liberty, Margot, ed. American Indian Intellectuals. 1976 Proceedings of American
Ethnological Society. St. Paul, Minnesota: West, 1978. Contains
biographies of Charles Eastman, Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, Francis
LaFlesche, Sylvester Long (Long Lance), John Joseph Mathews.
Oaks, Priscilla. "The First Generation of Native American
Novelists." MELUS 5
(1978): 57–65. Surveys novelists of the 1930s.
© Texas Christian University Press, 1998. All rights reserved.