Happy Hunting Grounds by Stanley Vestal (review)

186 Western American Literature One aspect of that climate is a salient feature of Weigle’s and Fiore’s triptych. And that is the number of small newspapers and literary journals, presses and bookshops, and group ventures which sprang up both before and after the depression. There were things, people, and places in abundance to write about, an exciting urge to write about them, and numerous publications in which to appear. The flowering of the literary “desert” of the West — as wide and varied as that place of mind and word is— owes much to what went on during the “writer’s era” of 1916-1941 in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of Santa Fe and Taos — the same mountains which surrounding the secret of Los Alamos anticipated more ominous and profound wastelands. Thanks to Marta Weigle and Kyle Fiore and their assembled glance at one small region of America’sliterary history, that at once innocent and portentous climate can still be inhaled and relived. ROBERT GISH, University of Northern Iowa Happy Hunting Grounds. By Stanley Vestal. (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1981. 219 pages, glossary, notes, $9.95.) Stanley Vestal (Walter S. Campbell) told us that Happy Hunting Grounds was the only novel he ever wrote, and he said, “I never felt my little mind could concoct anything as interesting, exciting, or valuable as the truth itself to be found in the actual events that transpired throughout history.” He devoted the remainder of his writing to historical subjects. Nevertheless, even though Happy Hunting Grounds is classed as a novel, it is based upon facts and upon historical incidents. Vestal wrote this story largely from his boyhood and early experiences living with Cheyenne Indians of Oklahoma, coupled with his later study of them. But it was written before some of his most important and later intimate contacts with the real old-timers who had actually lived the life he was so interested in writing about. This could account for the few discrepancies that appear in the story. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the power attributed to the chiefs. As Vestal himself wrote in his later Indian works, no chief of either Sioux or Cheyenne could order anybody to do anything. His only enforced orders were those carried out with the cooperation of warrior societies to which he personally belonged. Indians were, and are, like other peoples, and contained within each tribe good, bad, and indifferent individuals. So we should not judge the Mandan people by the antics of the villain in this piece;such an individual could exist in any tribe or society. Generally the kind, generous, and considerate treatment afforded the Mandan by the Cheyenne chief would have been reciprocated in kind, but then there would have been no story. One incident that amazed us on our first reading of this story years ago was the conversation in sign language that took place in the cave. We were assured that this was not a figment of the author’s imagination but had actu­ Reviews 187 ally happened, for he heard about it at a court trial involving Indians which he had attended as a young man. The writing of this story is superb. In perhaps no other book is there as vivid and complete a commentary on Plains Indian camp life and activity. A reader who has no idea whatever of a buffalo hunt, a war party, the interior of a tipi, a victory dance, of the deep religious convictions, or of the intensity of Indian emotions, cannot be but deeply impressed and appreciative of these aspects of Plains culture and must be moved by the clear and concise writing of this master of descriptive English. The beautiful introduction to this new printing, by Father Powell, is a further asset to the book, the glossary and notes should be helpful to those unacquainted with Indian ways, and the illustrations by Frederick Weygold are by one of the few artists who knew intimately the details of Indian dress and accoutrements and was able to portray them accurately. They are a real boon to the student who would like to know what things really looked like in those early...