With the Ears of Strangers: The Mexican in American Literature by Cecil Robinson (review)

66 Western American Literature obvious, the portrayal of the captive girl’s shifting attitude toward Indian life is convincing and represents a fresh and effective use of the initiation theme which runs through much Western fiction. Ultimately the girl defines her allegiance by marrying an able but introverted young Comanche named Burning Hand, becoming a teller of tribal stories, and remaining with “the People” when Burning Hand is chosen as their leader and, under threat of annihilation by the soldiers, leads the Mutsani onto a reservation. Two aspects of A Woman of the People are especially interesting, since they indicate Mr. Capps’ break with Western formula and myth. First is the low-keyed approach evident throughout the novel. Day-to-day activities rather then exaggerated action dominate the book’s development — family relationships, customs, hunting, and the patterns of nomadic life. When action is violent, as in the descriptions of army attacks on the Indian camps, the scenes are skillfully handled and moving, as is the concluding chapter in which Tehanita returns to the whites . . . but as a Comanche woman head­ ing knowingly for an ironic reversal of the concept of captivity. The second aspect concerns the treatment of Indian character, and here Capps sides with those who feel the implacable, cruel savage is an inaccurate stereotype. His Comanches are capable of cruelty to the whites, Mexicans, and rival tribes — that human quirk being apparently universal — but they are also people endowed with varying degrees of pride, humor, ambition, affection, and vanity. A Woman of the People is not a flawless piece of fiction —Helen-Tehanita remains somewhat one-dimensional, while the Comanche characters, unlike Frank Waters’ Pueblos, for example, seem to have been created from the outside without being made fully convincing as far as their inner development and individuality are concerned. But the novel is exceedingly honest, lowkeyed but moving, and refreshing in its portrayal of the century-back world of the Plains Indian. A Woman of the People deserves attention, and hope­ fully it, like Mr. Capp’s two earlier novels, may reinforce the current un­ certain trend toward higher literary standards in regional historical fiction. R o b e r t A. R o r ip a u g h , University of Wyoming With the Ears of Strangers: The Mexican in American Literature. By Cecil Robinson. (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1963. $7.50.) This is a book to leave the reviewer thoughtful before the dichotomies it assumes, and hesitant before the ethnic generalities it makes. For, though the author tries at times to judge dispassionately, he has not succeeded in keeping his sympathies from coloring his account. Writers of fiction may, for the sake of focus or thesis, make strong general statements. The literary Reviews 67 historian should record these. To suggest, however, that the Mexican’s tem­ per is so monolithic and so fixed that his whole make-up is attuned only to the fatalistic attitude of “Lo que puede” (whatever one can) is as sweeping as to suggest that the whole of the North American temper is summed up in the statement that “the impossible takes a little longer.” Mr. Robinson does both. A Mexican, in Mr. Robinson’s view, is any person who has been bom in or near Mexico and who shares the composite heritage of Aztec-cum-Spanish temperament and tradition. Similarly, a North American is Anglo-Saxon un­ defiled. To go further than this, we are asked to accept implications of su­ periority and inferiority in entire civilizations; to assume that the Mexican is irretrievably committed to indifference or incomprehension before technology and that some dark heritage makes him apathetic to progress; to assume also that the North American’s commitment to technology has made him spiritually, intellectually, and aesthetically barren. This is too much. It is too simple. Moreover, to state, as Mr. Robinson does in his introduction, that the impact of Mexico is a storm front is to assume that there is no power of reconciliation, adaptation, or give and take in either people. The text itself is presented in two parts: The first is the earliest contact between the two cultures on the Mexican border...