A Voice of the Blackfeet

As a rule, I prefer non-fiction over historical fiction because I frequently find that historical fiction tends to romanticize its subjects. I do, however feel that there are certain subtle understandings about the characters and unspoken inner worlds of human beings that can be expressed in a uniquely personal way quite well through the medium of the historical novel. In his novel Fools Crow, author James Welch has traveled with a sure step and a deft hand the thin line that all historical writers walk between truth and fabrication. I think he has offered his readers an honest, revealing and intimate look into the lives, personalities, traditions and inner worlds of the Pikuni Blackfeet people of the mid 1800s. His fictional approach to teaching allows for a singularly personal understanding of such intangibles in Indian life and psychology as dreaming, communicating with otherworldly beings and the effects of their honor and bravery traditions. By offering his readers the insights into the feelings and motivations of created characters we are shown multidimensional portraits that are vivid and evocative and to which we, as fellow human beings, can relate. When we pair these personal insights with the factual evidence of the history of those times in which these characters lived we end up with a well rounded understanding that non-fictional accounts frequently lack.

James Welch (1940-2003)authored several novels and volumes of poetry concerning the life of western plains Indians. Born of a Blackfeet father and a Gros Ventre mother and raised primarily on Montana's Fort Belknap Reservation Welch had ample experience and access to the stories, spirituality and traditions of the Blackfeet tribe throughout his life. His style of writing is frank, thoughtful and detailed. Dee Brown, author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee had this to say about Fools Crow, "Remarkable for its beauty of language...May be the closest we will ever come in literature to an understanding of what life was like for a western Indian." While I do not think I can be as effusive as Mr. Brown in my assessment of this book I most heartily concur with his viewpoint as to the style and beauty of the writing. When Welch is in his omniscient perspective he communicates in modern English but when seeing through the eyes of a particular character he manages to convey in English the Indian way of sentence structure and idiom without making it sound like pidgin English. The results whether internal or external add a valuable layer of characterization that is revealed through the very structure of the thoughts, emotions and dialog of characters.

Fools Crow is a novel whose main character, White Man's Dog eventually earns the name of Fools Crow for his bravery in a raid upon a Crow village. The Fools Crow of this novel should not be confused in any way with the contemporary real life person of Fools Crow, a respected Ceremonial Chief of the Oglala Sioux.

The novel tells the story of the latter days of the Pikuni (aka Piegan) people, one of three branches of the Blackfeet Nation. The life of its central character, Fools Crow is traced from the young adult days of an untried hunter and warrior up through his growth as a healer, visionary, husband and father, and respected warrior of his people at the time of the disastrous Marias River Massacre in which over 200 unarmed, sleeping women, children and elderly people were slaughtered and the few survivors left to freeze and starve by the terrorist American Calvary in January of 1870.

Fools Crow is like so many other books about Indians of this time period in that it traces their frustration, confusion, fear and anger due to the incursions into their territory by white settlers, prospectors and military. It relates the same frightful racist tactics of greed and hatred that are part and parcel to any book of historical insights from this period. Open any book of this genre and you will learn the same essential facts no matter if it concerns the Blackfeet, the Lakota, the Nez Perce, the Cherokee or any other First Nation tribe. It is easy to find books that talk about Indian life with its myriad variations tribe to tribe of social traditions, spiritual and religious expression, and traditions surrounding the hunt and warfare. I've read a good many and I do appreciate any opportunity to further pierce the veil with which the years and the whitewashing of facts by white historians and educators has obscured the truth. This novel has done just that by its perceptive sensitivity of characterization.

In Fools Crow we will not find the circumstances any different than those that we have come to know about the injustice, the murder and pillage, the breaking of promises and treaty agreements, the white man disease epidemics, the wanton waste of the buffalo herds, the encroachment upon homelands, the dehumanization and racism, the forced relocations and poverty, starvation and disease of the reservation life and all the other atrocities heaped upon the First Nation people by the United States government and its people. What I found unique about this book and why it was most certainly worth my while to read it was the perspective it gave of the personalities (and I mean the use of that word in its most literal sense) of Blackfeet people of that time. Welch is the grandson of a woman who survived the tragic Marias River Massacre. He has obviously been exposed to deep personal insights into the feelings and thoughts of real people from that time.

The character Fools Crow gives us through his inner dialog of thoughts and feelings and his outer dialog of conversation with his family, friends and enemies another layer of understanding. We are given the opportunity to feel the inner person's wash of emotions as we learn the facts of acquiring skills, hunting, fighting, protecting the women, children and old ones, healing the sick, listening to the wisdom as it comes from tribal mentors and from the deities and the voices of the animals who share the world. Instead of only fact we get a multidimensional experience.

The novel examines several interpersonal relationships that Fools Crow has and it traces the events that led up to the historical Marias River Massacre. We learn many details and facts about camp life, life as it was lived on a day to day basis with its courtships, marriages, births and deaths, sickness and healing, traditions and taboos. We are treated to several Pikuni legends and spiritual stories that are offered up in a unique way that illustrates the very real impact they had on individual people. Crow and Wolverine speak with and relate to Fools Crow and others of the Pikuni in a very real, first person manner. Their wisdom is related personally in the otherworld consciousness that for the Pikuni and many First Nations tribes is very real. Usually when in the past I have read Indian legends and teaching stories they seemed like rather one dimensional tales...symbolic and contrived for a purpose. In this book the legends are conveyed in the way that a person actually would have perceived them. We see how real and how important they were to every day life and to the direction of that life. We see how much respect for the deities of the seasons, the sun and moon and stars and their fellow creatures the Blackfeet people had. When an eclipse occurs just prior to an important raid upon the Crows we see how each man takes its import very seriously indeed. Signs and portents are everywhere and are looked upon with great seriousness. We are made to understand how very connected the Blackfeet people were to their world, how every bit of it was alive and capable of speech and wisdom.

The plot or action of this book makes it a page turner but its action is not what makes it so remarkable. It is the inner worlds of its characters that offer us so much. As with all books from this time period we already know when we start reading it that it isn't going to have a "happy ending." Still, we go along with the characters and we experience life through their eyes. This drives home the depth of the tragedy of white incursion in a personal way because we see people just trying to be people, just living life, all the while knowing full well what they are up against even when they themselves do not.

Many books about Indians have a tendency to group braves, warriors, hunters in one stereotypical group, leaders, chiefs, old men in another, women in another and children in yet another. We are used to the stereotypical stoicism, bravery, physical endurance of the braves, the selfless wisdom of the chiefs, the demure, submissive role of the women. This book does a brilliant job of filling in the blanks in those stereotypes and illuminating the essential truths of them while expanding upon the psychology behind those roles with the more personal variances of individual personalities. At a time in history when the Indians were often violently punished by the United States government with bloody actions that claimed hundreds of innocent lives it is very interesting to understand the motivations and understandings and also the confusion of the Indians as they faced an atmosphere of living that was utterly foreign to their way of thinking. In a novel, more so than a work of non-fiction we have the powerful opportunity of absorbing the emotional content that most certainly would have accompanied the facts that history has taught us. We get an inside seat to the events and we gain an appreciation for the nuances of personality and situation that a backward look at history cannot provide.

For the most part, I enjoyed this book very much. I did take issue with what I perceived to be the author's own perspective on females and gender relations in general which I felt cast a somewhat misogynous and more overtly chauvinistic attitude of the Pikuni men toward women than was actually present in the factual lives of the people. It's no secret that interpersonal relations between men and women were different among Indian people of the 1800s than they are today. It is a complex subject the scope of which this review cannot contain. It is known that women most definitely had a "place" and were expected to know that place and to keep in it. The same is true for men. Social structure and taboos defined these places and behaviors and gender relationships. They can appear to be chauvinistic and misogynous on the surface when viewed in a strictly linear way but can be seen to be practical and orderly if seen in another light. My problem with Welch's portrayal of men's actions and responses to women in this book is that in his desire to be frank and honest about the sexual feelings and appetites of men he has a tendency in this book to stereotype and often makes the men seem like inappropriate sexually primitive beings. He tends to describe men's reactions to female presence in a primarily sexual way. He suggests that certain sexual responses that are completely abnormal occur to totally normal men. For example he describes the rape of a sick and feverish young woman who is happened upon by an honorable warrior in the midst of a raid gone wrong while trying to hide from his enemies. The rape happens not as an act of violence or hatred toward an enemy woman but rather as a side effect of the warrior hiding in her robes and becoming aroused when discovering her naked body to be hot and wet from her fever. I found it to be quite preposterous. He describes the erections of various men at times when they for example see a woman bathing in the river or hard at work scraping a buffalo hide. I am not saying that sexual arousal is not a part of everyday life but in this book it seems that many times Welch seems to be describing his own sexual feelings and agenda as regards women rather than relating anything meaningful about social/sexual relationships. Welch makes it seem like Indian men are horny dogs as a first response to women in general. Since I know this is not the actual case it leads me to suspect that it is actually Welch who is the horny dog in this case and not his characters.

I really loved the way this book ended because even though Fools Crow has stood in the destroyed and burned out rubble of the winter camp of Heavy Runner's people on the Marias River and witnessed the murderous mayhem and even though he has received a powerful medicine vision that has revealed the dismal and desperate future of his people and knows what is ahead, the final pages show him continuing on with his life, anticipating the coming spring hunt, the raising of his infant son, and the continuation of his people's way of life. It is a hopeful and brave heart that he maintains even in the face of such depredation. It is a well grounded urge to continue, to survive and to live a brave life, a good life. Knowing what we the readers do know about the fate of the Blackfeet people of that time we can not help but be moved by Welch's ending because we know the insurmountable wave of destruction that raced toward the shore even as Fools Crow so valiantly picks up the pieces and continues living. For me the ending spoke very poignantly and illustrated one of the most important reasons why the First Nation people and their ways are still alive today despite the holocaust they endured.

All in all, despite my objection to the sexual stereotyping I found this book to be very informative, moving and just a downright interesting read. I can easily recommend it. I don't know of a better inside look at the perceptions of the Indians of the 1800s as regards their interrelationships on a personal level with the natural world in which they lived. Their relationship to their world was so much more layered than our own and they approached it with such elevated sensitivity. This is a very hard thing to convey in writing. James Welch managed it with a high degree of artistry. I can recommend this book for the clarity and authenticity of its view into history, for its depiction of the events leading up to the Marias River Massacre and its insights into Blackfeet culture and most importantly to me, its insights into the inner world of First Nation people of that astonishingly volatile period.