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by Suzanne Buchert
The Painted Drum and One Thousand White Women “Leaving the child cemetery with its plain hand-lettered sign and stones carved into the weathered shapes of lambs and angels, I am lost in my thoughts and pause too long where the cemetery road meets the two-lane highway.” From “The Painted Drum” by Louise Erdrich.
“23 March, 1875. Today is my birthday, and I have received the sweetest gift of all—freedom!” From “One Thousand White Women, The Journals of May Dodd” by Jim Fergus
During the last couple of months I read these two books, both dealing with the subject of Native Americans. One, “The Painted Drum” has a mostly contemporary setting. The other, “One Thousand White Women” is set in the past. One of my enduring interests in selecting books to read is the Native American stories, possibly due to my mother’s belief that her maternal grandmother was a Native American woman. She found it something to be accepted as a fact, but not necessarily something to be proud of. I, on the other hand, thought it to be romantic beyond belief. It made my family just a little unique. I was not just another German-Irish, French-Polish kid growing up in a family where we were American and any ethnic connection was irrelevant. I know people who think of themselves as Norwegian or German, but we were not introduced to that concept. Italian spaghetti was the most ethnic food we ate and national holidays from the old world were unknown to us. We did know St. Patrick’s Day, but everyone knew you didn’t have to be Irish to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. “The Painted Drum” is the latest book by an author whose books I look forward to. I have reviewed a number of them and my favorite is still “Last Report of the Miracle at Little No Horse”. Louise Erdrich is a Native American author who writes about her people, both past and present. This book is a beautifully written, delicate story of a ceremonial drum and its effect on those who hear its beat. There are many such books telling the story of an instrument and its owners. John Hersey, winner of the Pulitzer for “Hiroshima” wrote “The Violin” around the middle of the last century and E. Annie Proulx, author of “Brokeback Mountain”, wrote “The Accordian” more recently. Both use the same premise to tell their stories. I wondered if Erdrich’s Drum would measure up to those fine books. It certainly does. Once again, Erdrich enlists the Nanapush family, North Dakota Ojibwa’s, to take part in her story. They are old favorites, returning again and again throughout Erdrich’s books. There is something not quite normal about the Nanapush family. Some of their members and some of their adventures are downright otherworldly. Erdrich accepts their eccentricities as a normal part of Native American lives. She matter of factly reports on what happens to them throughout the decades and generations. I reviewed Erdrich’s last book, “Four Souls” within the last year. I found myself rather disappointed by that book and at that time I hoped she would produce another book that I would love. She has. “One Thousand White Women” is not the equal of “The Painted Drum”. However, it is a very readable book with well written characters and an interesting premise. It seems that Little Wolf, a Cheyenne chief, met with President U.S. Grant, in Washington, D.C. and requested one thousand white women be sent out west to become wives to members of his tribe. Their mission was to marry and bear children in order to help assimilate the Cheyenne into the world of the whites. In this book, May Dodd was a member of the first and only shipment of women sent to the Cheyenne in the spring of 1875. Of course, the story is something out of a romance novel, but it has several redeeming features. The realistic portrayal of the Cheyenne life, both the good and the bad, is very appealing. The year, 1875, was the last year the Cheyenne roamed free in the country, following the buffalo, living a life they had lived for hundreds of years. Those days were to come to a shattering halt with the discovery of gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota and the invasion of that sacred country, promised to belong forever to the tribes, by the gold hungry white men and then the sod busters of the prairie. Mari Sandoz’ book, “Cheyenne Autumn”, covers the same period without the intrusion of the fantastical one thousand white women. Although written in the form of journals kept by May Dodd, the author is careful to point out that this is a work of fiction. Some of the characters, such as Chief Little Wolf, are real persons. May’s life among the Cheyenne ends, predictably, with the betrayal of the tribe by the government. It is a story that has been told many times, with many different circumstances. The outcome is always the same. The Indians lose. I hope you had a wonderful holiday, and received many great books to fill your shelves in anticipation of 2007. Keep reading……..
Suzanne Buchert and her husband, Keith, own several restaurants.
sbuchert@hotmail.com
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