Literary Fools Crow by James Welch

[issybird]

Originally Posted by sun surfer

I almost didn't vote for this book in this initial poll until I read more about it. Finding that the author not only wrote from a Native American perspective but also wrote in the style of Native American speech intrigued me, and I was not disappointed. I also enjoyed the historical information in the book and the imagining of what normal non-idealised day-to-day life might've been like for the Lone Eaters and others of the area just before the encroachment of the white man.

Including the fantastical elements was an interesting decision and I liked how that gave me not only a glimpse of their religion but helped me to better understand their view of the world.

It's not relevant to the book, but one issue for me is the tendency to refer to an idealized time which didn't really exist. This is not limited to American Indians of course. This is touched on in the book in Fools Crow's last mystical quest; in real time, time doesn't stop.

The Pikuni culture as it had evolved had them hunting buffalo on horseback, and yet horses are not native to America and had only been introduced with the Spanish invaders. I read somewhere that before that, buffalo hunting involved herding buffalo over a cliff. (I can't vouch for the accuracy of my recollection; I have an embarrassing lack of knowledge about Native Americans.) Generally speaking, there's also the significant issue of to what extent the Native Americans lived in harmony with nature and to what extent their lives reflected a sparse population in a rich land. One theory for the disappearance of the Anasazi in the Southwest suggests that they despoiled the land and resources and had to move on.

I'm not excusing or even rationalizing the cruelty of the white men to the natives. Welch doesn't pull his punches on this one, either. The internecine warfare of the Pikunis and the Crows was as savage in its particulars as anything the white men practiced; unfortunately for both, the white men had better toys and it wasn't an equal fight.

I'm not a huge fan of magical realism in story telling. Very effective at evoking a people and their beliefs, it tends to beg a lot of questions.

Originally Posted by issybird

The Pikuni culture as it had evolved had them hunting buffalo on horseback, and yet horses are not native to America and had only been introduced with the Spanish invaders. I read somewhere that before that, buffalo hunting involved herding buffalo over a cliff. (I can't vouch for the accuracy of my recollection; I have an embarrassing lack of knowledge about Native Americans.) Generally speaking, there's also the significant issue of to what extent the Native Americans lived in harmony with nature and to what extent their lives reflected a sparse population in a rich land. One theory for the disappearance of the Anasazi in the Southwest suggests that they despoiled the land and resources and had to move on.

I have read that this method of hunting was practiced prior to introduction of the horse, at times fires were set to drive the buffalo over cliffs. This was practiced by older Native American cultures that inhabited the Great Plains area prior to the arrival of the Spanish in North America and the introduction of the horse. Most of the various tribes described in the book migrated into the area in the 1600s and 1700s. These various tribes were already practicing a nomadic lifestyle prior to obtaining horses, dogs were commonly used as pack animals.

I posted this link in an earlier thread. Great Plains Culture l Note that the Pikuni is just another name for the Piegan.

[BelleZora]

Less than a month ago the Indian Country Today Media Network had a story about the Marias Massacre or Baker's Massacre with photos of its location and the Montana Historical Marker at the site.

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwor...nt-care-153211

[Bookworm_Girl]

Thanks for sharing that article. I just started Part 2 and so far am enjoying the book a lot. It really helped that I read the Wikipedia entries on the Blackfoot Confederacy before I started (as others recommended earlier in this thread - thank you!). They provided background on the culture and history and made it easier to get absorbed into the story. The photos and artwork also help to visualize the events.

[BelleZora]

Originally Posted by issybird

Generally speaking, there's also the significant issue of to what extent the Native Americans lived in harmony with nature and to what extent their lives reflected a sparse population in a rich land. One theory for the disappearance of the Anasazi in the Southwest suggests that they despoiled the land and resources and had to move on.

Today my exploratory hike revealed an interesting perspective to this question. The Murray Springs Clovis Site in Cochise County, Arizona features 10 exhibits on an interpretive trail.

The Bureau of Land Management says this:

The Murray Springs Site was created between 12,000 and 13,000 years ago, in the late Pleistocene era, by a small group of Clovis people, who camped nearby, and who probably hunted large animals as they came down to water in the arroyo.

One of the exhibits speculates:

Clovis hunters may have been the last straw for the large ice age animals.

Under those words is a painting of hunters attacking a mammoth with spears.

Then this quote:

Dr. Paul S. Martin of the University of Arizona has put forth a theory that humans contributed to the demise of the megafauna by overhunting. The environment was rapidly changing, causing strain on these animals, who were already struggling to survive. These skilled hunters arrived on the scene and may have taken advantage of the situation.

Did the Clovis people "finish them off"?

Have humans continued this trend since Clovis times?

In front of a deep arroyo was this sign:

Across the wash, archeologists discovered the remains of at least 12 bison. Probably all were brought down in a single hunting event. Hunters may have constructed a semi-circle structure of brush across the creek to trap the animals, once the ambush began. They would have attacked from the stream bank with their spears and atlatls when the thirsty animals arrived.

It is believed that the Clovis people died out when the ice age animals became extinct.

But the early people had no monopoly on contributing to extinctions. Another exhibit at the site says that recent studies are indicating that if species continue to disappear from the Earth at the rate of the last hundred years or so, the current extinction will have to be considered "mass" such as ended the dinosaurs and many other species 65 million years ago.

I hope that this is not really off-topic since it is relevant to Issybird's questions. It was an interesting day for me with those questions in mind.

[Bookpossum]

Thanks for all these various comments and links. There are just so many resonances for me with our history of massacres of Aboriginals by settlers (including the mass slaughter of old men, women and children while the men were away hunting), the cover-ups about these events, the spreading of disease, and so on.

In connection with your information on megafauna Belle, there was speculation here that it was the Aboriginal peoples who exterminated the megafauna in Australia. However more recent studies now suggest that they died out during a 10,000 year drought here. They couldn't survive it, but the humans managed to do so as they had learned to dig for access to underground aquifers.

I have just got into Part 3 and am enjoying the book very much, so thank you again Belle!

[fantasyfan]

My copy arrived today! I look forward to this book.

[Bookpossum]

I have just finished it and thought it was very good. I wasn't put off by the visionary section towards the end - after all, most religious beliefs can look a bit odd to those who don't share them. I also thought that Welch avoided the "noble savage" portrayal of Fools Crow and his people that a non Native American could easily have fallen for.

An interesting experience and a good choice. Thanks, Belle!

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

I have just finished it and thought it was very good. I wasn't put off by the visionary section towards the end - after all, most religious beliefs can look a bit odd to those who don't share them.

The visionary section at the end was perhaps a little too accurate for my tastes, but my major issue with it was that Fools Crow was passive, just a seer of visions. His earlier quests involved him taking action, forging a path. With this one, he was just a witness. I thought it was rushed and perhaps just a means to wrap up the story and not as organic as his other quests.

For the secular reader, I think the dreams and visions related in this style are justifiable. Some can be seen as a goad. It doesn't matter whether Fools Crow truly freed the wolverine; he thinks he did and acts accordingly. There's also a significant element where the dreams can be evoked in light of events. Did Raven tell the Napikwan about Red Paint and set up the justifiable murder? Or was this just how Fools Crow reconciled his killing of him?

If Fast Horse had had a successful raid and not caused the capture of Yellow Kidney, would his dream have been tweaked so that he did as Cold Maker said? Almost certainly. The title of the book tells us so. White Man's Dog didn't actively fool Bull Shield; there was a huge element of luck involved, but the story evolves so that it was all a cunning plan, Fools Crow gets his name, and even he comes to believe in the story, more or less. It takes Raven, his inner voice, to recall him to the facts.

Stylistically, I wish Welch had stayed out of the Napikwans' heads altogether. The former Confederate's (I can't remember his name) backstory was irrelevant to this tale of the Blackfeet and their fate. We can take it as a given that some people are good, some evil, and some just hard luck cases who are in the wrong place at the wrong time. As with the last vision quest, this felt forced to me.

For all that, this was a great, stirring, evocative and sobering tale.

I really liked this book for informing me a lot about the experience of the Blackfoot in the period following the expansion of whites into their traditional lands. To me it struck a vary good balance between actual history and using the fantasy aspects of it to give insight into who the Blackfoot were and their culture & beliefs.

I had never before heard anything about the Marias River massacre, though I was familiar with the better known massacres at Sand Creek & Wounded Knee. In all of these events the perpetrators were not charged with any crimes, nor did they even suffer any real negative consequences. Gulp, 20 Medals of Honor were awarded to soldiers who participated in the killings at Wounded Knee. At the time these events occurred though such actions just reflected the will of the local white populations that just wanted the Native Americans gone, and by any means necessary.

Spoiler:

From the meeting of some of the Blackfoot leaders with General Scully:

Already the wheels were in motion for an action to punish the Blackfeet severely. This meeting could have made the action unnecessary and, an added benefit, would have enhanced Sully's reputation as a man who brought peace to the northern plains. But now he realized that that was not even true—the people of Montana Territory wanted not peace but punishment. They wanted to run these red Indians fight off the face of the map, push them into Canada or, failing that kill them like wild animals. It was an emotional issue for the people, a practical one for the politicians and bankers.

Later in that same meeting Sully expresses surprise that small pox has broken out among the Blackfoot, but only holds out the possibility of providing medicine [small pox vaccination] if the Blackfoot acquiesce to the impossible demands placed on them Sort of a passive biological warfare. Then there is the mention of in the book of the never named white man who is killing off all the wild animals not for meat or any other uses, but just to kill them. A representation of the real history where the buffalo were driven to near extinction to force the Plains Indians to give up their lifestyle of buffalo hunting and confine them to reservations?

Looking back it is difficult to sympathize with the sense of entitlement the Americans felt at the time for the lands that had been inhabited by the Blackfoot and other tribes.

I agree with some of Issybird's criticisms about the long vision quest of Fools Crow at the end. However, the way I looked at it was that the purpose was to tell the subsequent history of the Blackfoot people in the generations to come. When they would be forced onto reservations, completely deprived of their traditional means of livelihood, and pressured to give up their culture entirely and assimilate into the American culture. What I thought was out of place was the relatively happy ending of the last two paragraphs.

I found this link that provides a short history of the Blackfoot, including where they stand today;

The Blackfoot Indians - "Real" People of Montana

[Bookpossum]

Great critique issybird, and I can't disagree with anything you say. You are always right, dammit!

Thanks for the two really interesting websites Hamlet. I have had a quick look and will spend more time on them in another day or so, as we are down at our beach house at the moment and I don't like to chew up too much internet time here, as it's much more limited than at home.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

You are always right, dammit!

I wish!

This won't be a revelation to anyone here, but still I'm struck that in the last year, fully one-fourth of our selections have dealt with the suppression of native peoples by white oppressors. There's a somewhat different perspective each time, that of: the dispassionate historian (Conquest of the Incas), the colonized (Things Fall Apart), the white usurper/exterminator (The Secret River), and the exterminated (Fools Crow). All of them, though, convey the essential message of the wrongness and evil at play.

Belle's link to the historical marker at the site of the Marias Massacre, with its aware and sensitive description of events, is another example of how our thinking has evolved. Or has it?

I'm going way O/T here in terms of the book, but I thought some might interested. Belle's link for me evoked the massacre marker in my own town, in an area that was first settled by whites nearly 400 years ago. See the first thumbnail* below.

It's factual, but perhaps a tad one-sided? Couldn't the eventual victors have recognized the various forces at play when it comes to historic markers? So for a fuller understading, let's move on to the post office, where we have a series of murals relating to the history of the town. There's the advances in civilized forces: the first church, the first school, the first building at the university. There are pictures related to economic progress: the falls at the mill pond, the unique flat-bottomed sailboats that allowed trade among the settlements as far as the tide reached, the first train. And the second thumbnail.*

Among other offenses, you'll note that despite snow on the ground, the Native American is wearing only a loincloth. The picture dates back only to 1959 and, for the non-Americans, the post office is a federal building. I'll add that the local tribe, the Abenaki, is not federally recognized. In fairness, I don't think the two are related and the lack of federal recognition relates only to the tiny number of Abenaki left and the difficulty in establishing geneology.

*I'm not much of a photographer; my apologies.

[BelleZora]

Thanks for your interesting post, issybird. Although this may be off-topic as far as Fools Crow, it is surely not off-topic concerning the theme of the suppression and suffering of native peoples.

This article about the extermination of the Abenaki was just featured on the Indian Country Today Media Network.

The historical marker in your town describes (one-sidedly) the Oyster River Massacre of July 18, 1694, which took place during King William's War. Here is a quote concerning a bounty offered at the beginning of that war:

In July 1689, at the start of King William’s War, the state of Massachusetts declared that each soldier would receive eight pounds out of the public treasury for each Indian scalp and that “whatever Indian plunder falls into their hands shall be their own.”
Read more at http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwor...t-begin-153651

I have been in Cochise County in southeastern Arizona all month exploring museums and places rich in history. No matter where I go I am struck by the sensitivity of historical markers and museum displays to the condition of all the earlier people. At the Fort Huachuca museum a display featuring a late 1800's white army wife with a recording telling her story has her speaking in an Irish accent. It brought to mind an unspoken back story of the suffering she probably endured in arriving at this corner of the frontier. The Apaches trying to survive and the Buffalo soldiers once stationed here are all treated with compassion, respect, and sensitivity. It gives me hope for us all.

Originally Posted by issybird

I wish!

This won't be a revelation to anyone here, but still I'm struck that in the last year, fully one-fourth of our selections have dealt with the suppression of native peoples by white oppressors. There's a somewhat different perspective each time, that of: the dispassionate historian (Conquest of the Incas), the colonized (Things Fall Apart), the white usurper/exterminator (The Secret River), and the exterminated (Fools Crow). All of them, though, convey the essential message of the wrongness and evil at play.

Belle's link to the historical marker at the site of the Marias Massacre, with its aware and sensitive description of events, is another example of how our thinking has evolved. Or has it?

I'm going way O/T here in terms of the book, but I thought some might interested. Belle's link for me evoked the massacre marker in my own town, in an area that was first settled by whites nearly 400 years ago. See the first thumbnail* below.

It's factual, but perhaps a tad one-sided? Couldn't the eventual victors have recognized the various forces at play when it comes to historic markers? So for a fuller understading, let's move on to the post office, where we have a series of murals relating to the history of the town. There's the advances in civilized forces: the first church, the first school, the first building at the university. There are pictures related to economic progress: the falls at the mill pond, the unique flat-bottomed sailboats that allowed trade among the settlements as far as the tide reached, the first train. And the second thumbnail.*

Among other offenses, you'll note that despite snow on the ground, the Native American is wearing only a loincloth. The picture dates back only to 1959 and, for the non-Americans, the post office is a federal building. I'll add that the local tribe, the Abenaki, is not federally recognized. In fairness, I don't think the two are related and the lack of federal recognition relates only to the tiny number of Abenaki left and the difficulty in establishing geneology.

*I'm not much of a photographer; my apologies.

Great post Issybirdy! When I finished reading it I immediately thought of a quote (unknown first source) that I recalled reading in which Native Americans commented on whites use of the terms battle or massacre:

‘When the whites win, it’s a “battle,” when the Indians win, it’s a “massacre.”‘

Coincidentally in search for that quote this is the top link that came up and in a way illustrates that point.

Revising the “Fort Dearborn Massacre”



Of course it has always been the victors that get to write the history, something that has not completely disappeared yet. Nor has the desire to renege on treaty terms even when those treaties were largely forced on unwilling tribes. Locally the Oneida people as part of being forced to relocate from New York were granted special hunting and fishing rights. I can't tell you how many complaints I've heard from the local general population over the years about those rights now being respected. Coincidentally the Oneida were loyal allies to the Americans during the War for Independence. Did them no good once the wars were over and the whites wanted them out of the way.

That mural of the (supposed) Abenaki is humorous. Not only is he dressed totally unrealistically for winter, but his dress is more influenced by what has come to symbolize an Indian (a Plains tribe) due to American portrayals in books, films, etc. than a historical Abenaki. And what's he doing skulking around that house with a torch?

[issybird]

Originally Posted by BelleZora

This article about the extermination of the Abenaki was just featured on the Indian Country Today Media Network.

Thank you for the link, Belle. Most interesting.

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

And what's he doing skulking around that house with a torch?

It always seemed to me, as I looked at it as I stood and stood and stood in line at the post office, as if it implied that he planned to fire the house. Another instance of that "cruel adversity" over which the noble colonials triumphed. And didn't inflict, oh, no.

The pictures in the mural are dreadful and look dated even for their own time. Unfortunately, the attitude seems to be that after 50 years, the picture itself has the heft of history, so there it will remain, along with the marker at the town landing.

I love the quote about how when the Indians win, it's a massacre. Spot-on, here in the northeast.