Table Of ContentEncyclopEdia of
amErican indian
litEraturE
EncyclopEdia of
amErican indian
litEraturE
Jennifer McClinton-Temple
Alan Velie
Encyclopedia of American Indian Literature
Copyright © 2007 by Jennifer McClinton-Temple and Alan Velie
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McClinton-Temple, Jennifer
Encyclopedia of American Indian literature / Jennifer McClinton-Temple, Alan Velie.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-8160-5656-0 (acid-free paper)
1. American literature—Indian authors—Encyclopedias. 2. Indians in literature—Encyclo-
pedias. 3. Indians of North America—Intellectual life—Encyclopedias. I. McClinton-Temple,
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Introduction vi
A to Z Entries 1
Appendixes 415
Selected Bibliography of Works
by American Indian Authors 417
Bibliography of Secondary
Sources 435
Contributors 437
Index 447
I
nTroduCTIon
North American Indians had a rich literature at Few American writers of other ethnic groups have
the time of first contact with Europeans. The prin- achieved excellence in both prose and verse, but
cipal genres of traditional literature were songs, quite a few Indian writers (e.g., Scott Momaday,
the equivalent of European lyric poems, which James Welch, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alex-
were often put to music before 1700, and tales, ie) have done so.
which were very similar to European short nar- Sarah Winnemucca was a memoirist and his-
ratives. Indians continue to employ these forms torian whose Life among the Piutes is a clas-
today, especially in tribal settings, but Indians who sic. Winnemucca was the first Indian woman
are professional authors in North America utilize to achieve literary recognition. Alexander Posey
the same genres as writers of other ethnic groups, was a poet and humorist. His verse was generally
that is, fiction (the novel and short story), poetry, considered mediocre, but his “Fus Fixico Letters”
drama, and various forms of nonfiction. are appreciated as excellent examples of political
The first American Indian to publish a liter- satire. They inspired the work of a later Indian
ary work in English was Samson Occom (Mohe- satirist, Will Rogers (Cherokee, 1879–1935). Many
gan, 1723–92), who wrote A Sermon Preached at Americans familiar with Will Rogers think of him
the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian in 1772. as a cowboy rather than an Indian. He was, in fact,
Occom later published a collection of hymns that both, starting his career as an entertainer under
included several of his own works. Other early the stage name “The Cherokee Kid.”
Indian writers of note were Yellow Bird (Cherokee, In the first half of the 20th century, the major
1827–67), Sarah Winnemucca (Paiute, 1844–91), Indian writers were Charles Eastman (Sioux,
and Alexander Posey (Creek, 1873–1908). 1858–1939), John Joseph Mathews (Osage, 1894–
Yellow Bird, also known as John Rollin Ridge, 1979), and D’Arcy McNickle (Cree, Flathead,
published the first novel by an Indian, The Life and 1904–77). Eastman lived the life of a Plains Indian
Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated Cali- until age 15, when his father put him in school.
fornia Bandit, in 1854. Yellow Bird later published Eastman eventually graduated from Dartmouth
a volume of poems, establishing a precedent of and ultimately became a physician. He was active
Indian writers proficient in more than one genre. in early pan-Indian movements in the United
vi
Introduction vii
States and had a good deal of influence as a public quantity of works but in their quality. As good
intellectual, rubbing elbows with the likes of Mat- as McNickle and Mathews were, they were not
thew Arnold, Longfellow, Emerson, and Teddy among the top American novelists of their time.
Roosevelt. Eastman reworked traditional Sioux N. Scott Momaday and Louise Erdrich are in that
tales for white audiences, cleaning up the racier select circle: House Made of Dawn and Love Medi-
ones to make them appropriate for children. cine are undoubtedly among the best half-dozen
John Joseph Mathews’s writings were often novels of the second half of the 20th century.
a surprise to readers of his time, who generally The renaissance in Native American culture
viewed Indians as hapless, impoverished victims. began almost concurrently with the publication
At the turn of the 20th century the Osage had of Momaday’s House Made of Dawn and The Way
large land holdings in eastern Oklahoma, and to Rainy Mountain. Rainy Mountain is a highly
when they struck oil there, they became some of poetic memoir and brief history of the Kiowa.
the wealthiest people in the state. Mathews attend- House, a novel of an Indian veteran’s inability to
ed the University of Oklahoma, where he played adjust to life on the reservation after World War II,
football and belonged to a fraternity. After a stint won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1969. Moma-
as a pilot in World War I, Mathews turned down a day, who gained recognition as a poet before he
Rhodes Scholarship as too restrictive and paid his turned to fiction, originally planned House as a
own way at Oxford to get a second B.A. Mathews’s series of poems. Momaday’s celebrity served as a
novel Sundown (1934) tells of an Osage, Challenge spur and inspiration to other Indian writers, espe-
Windzer, who also attends Oklahoma University cially James Welch (Blackfeet, 1940–2003), Leslie
and faces many of the same situations Mathews Marmon Silko (Laguna, 1948– ), and Gerald
had, though Chal copes far less successfully. Vizenor (Chippewa, 1934– ).
D’Arcy McNickle’s work represents the high- Indian writers have a particularly strong influ-
water mark of Indian literary achievement before ence on one another. Momaday’s House Made of
the American Indian Literary Renaissance that Dawn features an Indian veteran of World War II
began in the late 1960s. His most highly regarded who has trouble readjusting to civilian life when
novel is The Surrounded (1936), a story of the he returns to his New Mexico pueblo. Silko’s
encroachment of Euro-American culture on the Ceremony also focuses on a World War II vet-
Indians living on the Flathead Reservation in eran returning to a New Mexico pueblo, but Silko
northern Montana. The novel has the mood and develops a new literary genre—Momaday calls it a
power of a Greek tragedy. “telling”—to treat the subject. Silko’s telling com-
The 1960s, a decade of dramatic cultural and bines the techniques of the modern novel with the
political upheaval in the United States, ushered subject matter of traditional Laguna legends. Her
in a renaissance in American Indian culture that characters are contemporary avatars of Laguna
embraced literature, painting, philosophy, and, to mythic figures. Momaday borrowed the form of
an extent, music. This renewal was accompanied the telling for his next novel, The Ancient Child
by the establishment of Native American studies (1989), the story of an Indian artist who turns
programs in universities around the country and, into a bear. Momaday uses a Kiowa legend as the
somewhat later, an economic renaissance for some basis of his novel, but he was also alludes to Gerald
tribes, based partly on gaming and partly on eco- Vizenor’s hero, Proude Cedarfair, who turns into
nomic development. a bear in Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart (1978),
Indian literature was affected most of all. later revised and retitled as Bearheart: The Heirship
Before 1968, Indians had published nine novels in Chronicles. Louise Erdrich pays homage to both
the United States. Today the number is approach- Vizenor and Momaday when her heroine Fleur
ing 300. This difference is reflected not only in turns into a bear in The Bingo Palace (1994).
viii Encyclopedia of American Indian Literature
James Welch wrote principally about the Black- Leslie Silko was another of the early renais-
feet of his native Montana. As did Momaday, Welch sance writers to win critical acclaim. Her book
published poetry before he turned to fiction, Ceremony led her to receive the highly prestigious
although his first collection of poems, Riding the MacArthur Award, the so-called genius grant.
Earth Boy 40 (1975), came out a year after his first Both Ceremony and The Almanac of the Dead, her
novel, Winter in the Blood. The story of a nameless second novel, excoriate Euro-American society for
Blackfeet layabout, Winter in the Blood is a comic stealing and desecrating Indian homelands and
masterpiece. Students often criticize Indian novels brutalizing their inhabitants.
for centering on characters who are footloose, The last of the major authors of the first gen-
feckless, oversexed, and underemployed—char- eration of the Native American literary renais-
acters like the hero of Winter or, for that matter, sance, Gerald Vizenor, is the most prolific. At last
House Made of Dawn, Ceremony, or other novels count he had published eight volumes of poetry
of the early years of the American Indian Literary (most of them haiku), 10 novels, and nine works
Renaissance. One reason for exploring this sort of nonfiction, and he had written and produced
of stereotypical character is that in their first few a film. Vizenor is Trickster as contemporary lit-
novels, Indian writers were concerned to show erary figure—“Coyote with a word processor”is
Indians who are authentic—that is, distinctive in the way the Cherokee novelist Tom King puts
their tribal identity, and lack of assimilation into it. Vizenor’s first work, Darkness in Saint Louis
the greater society. And, as ethnicity tends to be Bearheart, is a surrealistic look at America after
viewed stereotypically, it is those characters who it literally runs out of gas, and the government
leave the strongest impression. begins confiscating wooded land on reservations.
A second influence on characters portrayed in To escape a group of Indian tricksters and clowns
novels by American Indian writers is the archetype the hero, Proude Cedarfair, sets off on a trip across
of the trickster. The trickster is ubiquitous as an America, fighting off enemies like Cecil Staples,
archetype among Indian tribes. Taking the form of an avatar of the Evil Gambler of tribal myth, and
man, such as Sendeh among the Kiowa or Napi of the fast food fascists of the Ponca City, Oklahoma,
the Blackfeet, or an animal, such as Coyote in the Witch Hunt Restaurant. Cedarfair finally escapes
Southwest, the trickster plays tricks; is the victim the perils of this (the third) world by magically
of tricks; has insatiable appetites, especially for sex; ascending into the fourth world through a vision
and is a law unto himself. Trickster is so central a window in a New Mexican pueblo.
figure in tribal mythology that it is inevitable that Louise Erdrich begins the second generation
Indian writers would incorporate aspects of him of the American Indian literary renaissance. Like
into their fiction. And, if a protagonist is a trickster Momaday and many others, she was a poet ini-
he is far more likely to be chatting up a woman in a tially, later focusing on fiction. For the most part,
bar than working away at his desk. her novels are an extended saga of a Chippewa res-
Welch went on to write about middle-class ervation she calls Little No Horse. Loosely based
Indians, particularly in The Indian Lawyer, where on the reservation where her maternal grandfa-
the hero, Sylvester Yellow Calf, rises from pov- ther was chief, Turtle Mountain, in north-central
erty to become a successful corporate lawyer who North Dakota, Little No Horse has become like
eventually runs for a House seat. Momaday’s a character over the course of six Erdrich novels.
second novel also has a middle-class protagonist, Love Medicine, the first and best regarded of the
Locke Setman, a Kiowa painter who exhibits his series, was published in 1984. It covers a period
work in galleries in San Francisco, New York, and from the mid-1930s to the mid-1980s. Erdrich
Paris. Today middle-class Indians are common in later extends the saga backward into the 19th
fiction, but this is partially a function of the fact century and forward into the mid-1990s, detailing
that the 1990s saw considerable wealth generated the fate of scores of characters. She begins with the
in Indian country. last days of the traditional way of life (including a
Introduction ix
surrealistic account of the death of the last herd of Ortiz writes intensely political poetry, pre-
buffalo on the reservation), continues through the senting a running critique of American history,
difficult days after the Dawes Act cost the Chip- primarily focusing on Indian-white relations. His
pewa much of their land and tuberculosis almost short poems are history lessons from the underside
wiped them out, through their misery during the of the American experience, filled with references
depression, the grinding poverty that lasted until to Cotton Mather, Colonel John Chivington, Kit
the 1990s, when gaming and a measure of busi- Carson, and Black Kettle as well as faceless veter-
ness development lifted most of the survivors ans from 20th-century wars. Ortiz’s verse is sharp,
into the middle class. The Little No Horse series, but not bitter; ultimately he strikes a hopeful tone.
presumably still a work in progress, now numbers Despite the grim events of the 19th century, Ortiz
seven volumes. In addition, Erdrich has published does not think of whites as the other: He very
two other novels, two volumes of verse, and sev- much considers himself an American. As he puts it
eral children’s stories. in an epigraph to from Sand Creek (1981):
The latest of the Indian literary stars is Sher-
man Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d’Alene, 1966– ). This America
Alexie, like many writers, began as a poet but has been a burden
turned to fiction. His earlier works, The Lone of steel and mad
Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993) death,
and Reservation Blues (1995), take place on the but look now,
reservation in Welpinit, Washington, a bleak there are flowers
settlement of Housing and Urban Development and new grass
(HUD) houses where the underemployed Spo- and a spring wind
kane try to scratch out a living. In his later collec- rising
tions of short stories, The Toughest Indian in the from Sand Creek.
World (2000) and Ten Little Indians (2003), the
protagonists are computer programmers, busi- Joy Harjo studied painting and theater before
nesspeople, government officials—tribal yuppies she became a poet. Her collections of verse, espe-
from Seattle who are more at home in Starbucks cially The Woman Who Fell from the Sky and She
than on the reservation they or their parents Had Some Horses, have established her as one of
left. the leading poets in the United States. In the early
There has always been an Indian middle class 1990s, she formed the band Poetic Justice and
in America, but it was very small until the Indian began reciting her poems to a backdrop of tribal-
economic revival of the 1980s and 1990s finally jazz-reggae rhythms. Harjo also plays saxophone
drew money into Indian country. Contemporary with the sextet.
Indian fiction has chronicled the fortunes of the Harjo’s most striking poems blend crystal-clear
Indians as they trade the miseries of poverty on conversational diction with surrealistic imagery,
the reservation for the anxieties of the urban for example, in “Nautilaus”:
business world.
Indian fiction is the mainstay of the literary This is how I cut myself open—
aspect of the American Indian renaissance, but with half a pint of whiskey, then
poetry is important as well, and not only the There’s enough dream to fall through
poetry of Indian novelists. There are many impor- To pure bone and shell
tant American Indian poets who are not primar- Where ocean has carved out
ily novelists, enough so that any selection seems warm sea animals,
arbitrary, but the leading Indian poets today are and has driven the night
probably Simon Ortiz (Acoma, 1941– ) and Joy dark and in me
Harjo (Muscogee Creek, 1951– ). like a labyrinth of knives.
