Cogewea The Half Blood

One of the first known novels by a Native American woman, Cogewea (1927) is the story of a half-blood girl caught between the worlds of Anglo ranchers and full-blood reservation Indians; between the craven and false-hearted easterner Alfred Densmore and James LaGrinder, a half-blood cowboy and the best rider on the Flathead; between book learning and the folk wisdom of her full-blood grandmother. The book combines authentic Indian lore with the circumstance and dialogue of a popular romance; in its language, it shows a self-taught writer attempting to come to terms with the rift between formal written style and the comfort-able rhythms and slang of familiar speech.

Co-ge-we-a, The Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range is a 1927 Western romance novel by Mourning Dove, also known as Hum-Ishu-Ma, or Christine Quintasket (Okanogan and Arrow Lakes). It is one of the earliest novels written by an indigenous woman from the Plateau region. The novel includes the first example of Native American literary criticism. Cogewea, the eponymous protagonist, is a woman of mixed-race ancestry, both Indigenous and Euro-American, who feels caught between her two worlds. She works on the ranch of her sister and white brother-in-law in Montana, where she is respected for her talents and skills. A European American from the East, Alfred Densmore, joins the ranch as an inexperienced ranch-hand. Cogewea is torn between the world of her white father and that of her Okanagan (spelled "Okanogan" in the novel) grandmother, Stemteema. Her work was supported by editor Lucullus Virgil McWhorter, an American anthropologist and activist for Native Americans. He threatened the publishing company, Four Seas Press, in order to get the novel published. Controversy has developed over McWhorter's influence over and changes in the novel. While some scholars believe his edits were typical for the genre and his time, others consider McWhorter to be a second author of the novel. McWhorter denied having that large a role. When the book was first published, audiences found the novel's style awkward. Mourning Dove was accused by one US Indian agent of falsely claiming that she written the novel. After receiving McWhorter wrote to him strongly supporting Mourning Dove's authorship, the agent recanted his statements. Over her lifetime, Mourning Dove gained both notoriety and respect as an author. It was not until the late 20th century that Cogewea gained scholarly attention, following a revival of interest in women's and indigenous people's works. Since that time, scholarship has focused on the infusion in Cogewea of Western tropes with Native American storytelling. In the novel, Alfred Densmore attempts to steal land and money he believes Cogewea possesses (she doesn't), and ends up abusing her when he finds out she is poor. Scholars agree that this plot line is a re-writing of the Silyx Okanagan oral story of Chipmunk and Owl Woman, where Owl Woman is the devourer and Chipmunk barely survives her encounter. Chipmunk is the meaning of Cogewea's name (Okanagan). Jeannette Armstrong, a First Nations woman who claims to be a grand-niece of Mourning Dove, says that the author had a "masterful knowledge of what Okanagan oral story is and how it works". Recent scholarship has also recognized the novel as a work of Indigenous empowerment. (wikipedia.org)

Mourning Dove was the pen name of Christine Quintasket, a member of the Colville Federated Tribes of eastern Washington State. She was the author of Cogewea, The Half-Blood (one of the first novels to be published by a Native American woman) and Coyote Stories, both reprinted as Bison Books. Jay Miller, formerly assistant director and editor at the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian, Newberry Library, Chicago, now is an independent scholar and writer in Seattle. He is the compiler of Earthmaker: Tribal Stories from Native North America.

These tales feature Mole, Coyote's wife, Chipmunk, Owl-Woman, Fox, and others

Strong, sassy women and hard-luck, hard-headed men, all searching for the middle ground between Native American tradition and the modern world, perform an elaborate dance of approach and avoidance in this magical, rollicking tale by award-winning author Thomas King. Alberta, Eli, Lionel and others are coming to the Blackfoot reservation for the Sun Dance. There they will encounter four Indian elders and their companion, the trickster Coyote—and nothing in the small town of Blossom will be the same again. . . .

Arnold Krupat, one of the most original and respected critics working in Native American studies today, offers a clear and compelling set of reasons why red—Native American culture, history, and literature—should matter to Americans more than it has to date. Although there exists a growing body of criticism demonstrating the importance of Native American literature in its own right and in relation to other ethnic and minority literatures, Native materials still have not been accorded the full attention they require. Krupat argues that it is simply not possible to understand the ethical and intellectual heritage of the West without engaging America's treatment of its indigenous peoples and their extraordinary and resilient responses. Criticism of Native literature in its current development, Krupat suggests, operates from one of three critical perspectives against colonialism that he calls nationalism, indigenism, and cosmopolitanism. Nationalist critics are foremost concerned with tribal sovereignty, indigenist critics focus on non-Western modes of knowledge, and cosmopolitan critics wish to look elsewhere for comparative possibilities. Krupat persuasively contends that all three critical perspectives can work in a complementary rather than an oppositional fashion. A work marked by theoretical sophistication, wide learning, and social passion, Red Matters is a major contribution to the imperative effort of understanding the indigenous presence on the American continents.

I Tell You Now is an anthology of autobiographical accounts by eighteen notable Native writers of different ages, tribes, and areas. This second edition features a new introduction by the editors and updated biographical sketches for each writer.

"One of the first known novels by a Native American woman. Cogewea (1927) is the story of a half-blood girl caught between the worlds of Anglo ranchers and full-blood reservation Indians; between the craven and false-hearted easterner Alfred Densmore and James LaGrinder, a half-blood cowboy and the best rider on the Flathead; between book learning and the folk wisdom of her full-blood grandmother. The book combines authentic Indian lore with the circumstance and dialogue of a popular romance; in its language, it shows a self-taught writer attempting to come to terms with the rift between formal written style and the comfort-able rhythms and slang of familiar speech."--Amazon.