Tanaina Tales from Alaska by Bill Vaudrin (review)

Reviews 183 — are some “of the most eloquent tributes to woman that can be found in fiction” (p. 56). The myths surrounding Sacajawea are examined by David Remley; mis­ cegenation in popular western literature is the subject of an interesting study by Caren J. Deming, and Frances W. Kaye finds Hamlin Garland puzzling as an American male feminist writer, concluding he “was unable to come to terms with the question of woman’ssexuality” (p. 136). Several essays address the effect the distortion of truth has upon women: John Murphy, Wister’s Virginian and Cather’s My Antonia; Catherine D. Farmer, Rolvaag’s Giants in the Earth', Joseph J. Wydeven’s focus on Wright Morris’s Plains Song for Female Voices, and good essays on Jean Stafford, Mari Sandoz, Constance Rourke (on whom we have little good criticism), Eudora Welty, Mary Austin, and an almost unknown American Indian poet, Paula Gunn Allen. Here too is Frances M. Malpezzi’sview of Frank Waters’s The Woman at Otowi Crossing, a sympathetic portrait of Helen Chalmers based upon the life of a Baptist minister’s daughter at the beginning of the Atomic Age, and Kathleen L. Nichols’s assessment of Agnes Smedley’s autobiographical novel, Daughter of Earth. There are Sue Mathews’sinterviews with Dorothy Johnson and A. B. Guthrie, Jr., in which Guthrie poses the question, it seems to me, that is the central theme of this whole splendid volume: “I wonder how many men would have gone west had they been women?” (p. 124). It is inevitable that a collection as large as this should be somewhat uneven in quality, but there is enough real excellence to make it worth the attention of those interested in the subject. The format lends itself to easy use, and the book has good readable type. A marvelous photograph of Kitty Tatsh and friend doing the high kick on a rock over-hanging a great canyon is included, courtesy of the Yosemite National Park Collection. The photo was taken in the early 1890s or 1900s. Other good photos from the Nebraska State Historical Society add to the value of the volume. DORYS CROW GROVER East Texas StateUniversity Tanaina Tales from Alaska. By Bill Vaudrin. With an introduction by Joan B. Townsend. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981. xxxii + 127 pages, $3.95). The stories and song-texts of Alaska’s Aleuts, Eskimos and Indians have not lacked for recorders. Beginning with the Russian, Father Veniaminov, and continuing through Edward Nelson, Franz Boas, Frank Golder, Diamond Jenness, and John R. Swanton — to name only a few — the list is impressive. Bill Vaudrin, whose Tainana Tales from Alaska has recently been re-issued by the University of Oklahoma Press, was in distinguished company. 184 Western American Literature Vaudrin, himself an American Indian (a Chippewa from Minnesota), came to Alaska in the 1960s to study creative writing at Alaska Methodist University (now Alaska Pacific). He went to live among the Tanaina, Atha­ bascan Indians who had migrated from the Kenai Peninsula, at Pedro Bay and Nondalton where he began to write down the stories that some of the older Indians still remembered. He also visited Eklutna and Tyonek, villages nearer to Anchorage where the university was located. Although Vaudrin was not trained as an anthropologist and did not learn the Tanaina language, he was a good listener and a trained writer and he “tried to say what I think they were trying to say— about life and how life was.” Had Vaudrin been better trained, he might well have included the words Dena’ina Sukdu’a as part of his title, the more correct version of Tanaina Tales, as used by Joan Broom Townsend in another collection. Townsend has supplied a brief, scholarly introduction to Vaudrin’sbook. According to Townsend, the Dena’ina tell basically two different kinds of stories: historical narratives, and tales (sukdu) of a mythological time when animals and humans changed forms at will, intermarrying and having chil­ dren, a time when strange and wonderful things happened. All of Vaudrin’s tales belong to the latter classification. Vaudrin’sbook makes for lively and entertaining reading. All of the tales are concerned with animals indigenous to...