Hold High Your Heads (History of the Métis Nation in Western Canada) by A.-H. de Tremaudan, and The Ballad of Alice Moonchild — and Others by Aleata E. Blythe, and The Overlanders by Florence McNeil, and The Seventh Day by Lewis Horne (review)

Reviews 271 swiftly pursue its prey by transforming itself into a self-propelled hoop, various sea and lake monsters, and the ubiquitous Bigfoot. In the book’s second portion, in some ways the more thorough and satis­ fying of the two, Dorson launches into a close examination of the careers, techniques, and repertoires of eight celebrated American “Munchausens,” tall tale spinners cut in the mold of the preeminent German raconteur, Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Baron von Munchausen (1720-1797). The dominant characteristic of the Munchausen, that which sets him aside from other purveyors of windies, is the fact that he is always featured as the principal character in the narratives he relates, which in turn often center upon fantastic feats of strength, agility, cunning, or endurance. Most generally associated with frontier settings, Munchausens tend to develop into authentic folk heroes whose exploits continue to be celebrated in oral tradition and are often adapted to treatment in literature and popular culture. In turn, Dorson presents a chapter each on Jim Bridger, Abraham “Oregon” Smith, John Darling, Gib Morgan, Len Henry, Jones Tracy, Daniel Stamps, and Hathaway Jones. What we have then, in essence, is two separate works tenuously connected by the theme of comic exaggeration. Despite an excellent Introduction by folklorist Alan Dundes, as well as a short and moving Afterword by Dorson’s son, Jeff, we can only speculate as to the manner in which the author would have successfully integrated his two subject matters had he time to do so. In spite of this, Man and Beast in American Comic Legend represents a major contribution to our understanding of American folk humor. RICHARD E. MEYER Western Oregon State College Hold High Your Heads (History of the Métis Nation in Western Canada). By A.-H. de Tremaudan, translated by Elizabeth Maguet. (Winnipeg, Mani­ toba: Pemmican Publications, 1982. xxix + 210 pages, paperback: $12.95.) The Ballad of Alice Moonchild — and Others. By Aleata E. Blythe. (Winni­ peg, Manitoba: Pemmican Publications, 1981. 57 pages, paperback: $6.95.) The Overlanders. By Florence McNeil. (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan: Thistle­ down Press, 1982. Unpaged, hardcover: $16.00, paperback: $7.95.) The Seventh Day. By Lewis Horne. (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan : Thistledown Press, 1982. 71 pages, hardcover: $16.00, paperback $7.95.) Hold High Your Heads is an English translation of L’Histoire de la Nation Métisse, written mostly in 1927-1928, and published in 1936. It is a passionate attempt to still claims that Louis Riel, Gabriel Dumont, and the other Métis involved in the successful Red River Rising of 1869-70 and the 272 Western American Literature less successful Northwest Rebellion of 1885 were savages or even rebels. They were patriots, says de Tremaudan, and deserve to be venerated as such by all western Canadians. The Metis, a Catholic, French-speaking, mixed-blood people, overwhelmed by Protestant, English-speaking, white Canadians had and have reason to be defensive about their history and about their language and cultural rights within the present prairie provinces, but Hold High Your Heads is largely an historiographical curiosity, partly an anachronism even when first published. George G. F. Stanley’s The Birth of Western Canada: A History of the Riel Rebellions, still a major scholarly source, was also pub­ lished in 1936. Stanley, like de Tremaudan, established that the uprisings had been brought about by the stupid mismanagement of the Ottawa government, and that they had laid the basis for the transformation of the prairie west into coequal provinces. However, Stanley saw the Metis nation as an inferior native culture, doomed to disappear before the superior Anglo civilization. De Tremaudan’s book is a corrective not to the account of what happened, but to the naive racism that colored Stanley’s narrative and weighed heavily on the society from which it sprung. Today the book serves a different pur­ pose. Contemporary English-speaking writers, particularly George Woodcock and Rudy Wiebe, have given Dumont and Riel the full hero status for which de Tremaudan argued so passionately. Despite disagreements over language and culture which continue to split the dominion, Canadians are finding in Dumont and Riel national heroes who differentiate Canadian culture from the engulfing American monolith. Hold High Your Heads reacts...