In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTER EIGHT “He Never Wanted to Forget It”: Contesting the Idea of History in D’Arcy McNickle’s The Surrounded JIM RAINS Early in The Surrounded, D’Arcy McNickle’s first novel,Archilde Leon pauses to reflect on his home on the Flathead Reservation in Montana:“Nowhere in the world,he imagined,was there a sky of such depth and freshness.He wanted never to forget it,wherever he might be in times to come.Yes,wherever he might be!” (5). Like other Montana writers, McNickle emphasizes the importance of the western landscape and its centrality in establishing the identity of his characters. This sense of place, one of the defining characteristics of western literature,acquires added significance in McNickle’s fiction,however.McNickle’s fiction naturally reflects his dual cultural identity as a member of an American Indian tribe and a westerner; and as a Native American writer and a resident of the American West he writes purposefully to resist the marginalization of his home and his people. Through his fiction he endeavors to shatter the mythic, romantic historical narrative of the West. In its place he offers a more accurate account of its people and events as well as the impact of national expansion and its devastation on indigenous cultures.1 In a letter to anthropologist William Gates, McNickle states,“I am writing of the West, not of Indians primarily, and certainly not of the romantic West which best-selling authors have exploited to the understanding of the meaning of the West, the Frontier, in American life.”2 In an effort to explain Native American cultures to non-Indian America and in attempt to achieve understanding among cultures, McNickle chose to focus on the one crucial aspect of the American Indian experience that he believed had been most neglected and had accounted not only for conflicts in the past but also for unresolved issues in the present: Native American history. “It is asking too much when a man is required to close the book of the past, 142 Native Revisions/The Problems of History to forget that it had ever been” (108). The narrator is referring to Max Leon, a white character, Archilde’s father, but in a larger sense McNickle is making a statement about the Native American subjects within his novel who, by the beginning of the twentieth century, have been pressured to abandon their traditional cultural beliefs and practices in favor of Euro-American culture. McNickle’s Native American characters are trapped between two cultures (EuroAmerican and Salish), and they are entangled in the agonizing stages of a culture in transition. Life for many Native Americans residing on reservations in the early decades of the twentieth century, like the Flatheads in this novel, reflected the confusion and instability caused by such a transition. Poverty, illiteracy, disease, and despair were typical problems endured by many tribal communities.As Native American people struggled to negotiate the effects of sudden and profound cultural change, their efforts to act were impeded by the marginalized identity that had been conferred on them by Euro-American historical discourse. For example, it was futile for American Indians to resist assimilation because, many in white America assumed, it was the inevitable outcome of American progress. American Indians were regarded as people without a history of their own; each tribe and its history was subsumed by the broader category and narratives of American history. McNickle was among the first Native American writers to reject this condition , and in his first work he challenged the appropriateness of conventional history for American Indians. The Surrounded,published in 1936,was,upon its publication,heralded as a“new Indian literature.”3 Critics seized on the novel’s “authenticity,”its“Indianness”; but the most noteworthy aspect of this earlytwentieth -century novel is the emphasis the author placed on history and its vital,ongoing importance to the future of Native American cultures.McNickle wrestled with the problem of history throughout his life:“If Indians are to write their own histories, and if history is a reflection of the people about whom it is written, I would expect and would hope for some of these qualities to show up in the writing.I don’t see how it is possible for an Indian (or any native person) to write about his people if he is required to use the model designed by and for a different set of cultural imperatives.”4 This statement evidences...

Share