The Red Man’s West ed. by Michael S. Kennedy, and: Indian Legends from the Northern Rockies by Ella E. Clark (review)

316 Western American Literature wrote himself. And in 1908 he published his first little volume of fifty pages and twenty-three songs. Later, professionals like Lomax and Sandburg (and even Thorp himself in 1921) drew from this first well spring, found other tributaries, and started the stream that has grown to the proportions of a full river, with all the debris, contamination, and commercial traffic that characterize our present era. Now the Austin Fifes of Utah State University have gone back to the source. They have reissued in facsimile Thorp’s original 1908 volume, to which they have applied the appropriate scholarly apparatus. They have provided for each song a commentary and music, traced sources whenever possible, noted variations in texts, listed bibliographies, and referred to field recording and manuscripts. Their purpose has been to present these earliest published cowboy songs in cultural and historical perspective and to throw light on significant aspects of cowboy life as revealed by them. They have done more than this; they have also collated the current scholarship on each song. The result is a kind of variorum of Thorp. It is high time this job was done, and the Fifes, with the collaboration of Naunie Gardner as music editor, have done it well. Too much already has been lost. Their chapters on Little Joe, the Wrangler, The Tenderfoot, Grand Roundup’ Buffalo Range, and Cow Boy’s Lament are full and satisfying; but we regret — as do the Fifes — that the chapters on such songs as Top Hand, Chase of the O.L.C. Steer, or The Cow Boy’s New Year’s Dance are necessarily skimpy. The facts have already gone out of memory. The book also contains the music (when available), a lexicon of cow­ boy words and phrases, a general bibliography, and an analytical index. All these features, together with a generous chapter from the writing of Jack Thorp himself, Banjo in the Cow Camps, add up to an attractive, usable book. It will provide an excellent starting place for anyone beginning a study of cowboy songs, and a good reference point for the more case-hardened scholars. H e c t o r H . L e e , Sonoma State College The Red Man’s West. Edited by Michael S. Kennedy (New York: Hastings House, Publishers, 1965. x + 342 pages, $10.00.) Indian Legends from the Northern Rockies. By Ella E. Clark. (The Civiliza­ tion of the American Indian Series, Number 82.) (University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 1966. xxv + 350 pages, $6.95.) The Montana Magazine of Western History has for many years published significant articles on the frontier of the High Plains and the Northern Reviews 317 Rockies. This companion volume to Cowboys and Cattlemen brings together true stories of frontier Indians as noted by early travelers, historians and students of the western traditon. Editor Michael S. Kennedy has been suc­ cessful in selecting from a large collection a set of stories which present the Indians as neither villainous nor always noble but as people caught in the tragic circumstance of having to meet civilization head on. As might be expected, the articles are uneven in quality and literary style but present with interest and accuracy the unfolding tale of Indian and White from Lewis and Clark to the Ghost Dance religion which promised to give back to the Red Man his country, free of the white interlopers. Few readers can remain unmoved as they hear the words of the great Crow Chief, Arapoosh: “The Crow country is a good country. The Great Spirit has put it exactly in the right place; when you are in it, you fare well; whenever you go out of it, whichever way you travel, you fare worse. . . . The Crow country is exactly in the right place. . . . Everything good is to be found there. There is no country like the Crow country.” The historical articles are grouped in a series of from two to five under the following headings: Children of Nature; People of the Mountains and Plains; Intruders From the East; Red Gods and White; Characters, White and Red; Conflict and Accommodation; and Dream’s End. Almost as interest­ ing as the text are fifty...