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170 Western American Literature frontier’s end, sometimes regretting it. Gish concludes by saying that some readers consider Fergusson “‘progressive,’ iconoclastic, liberal” but now “he seems somehow conservative if not reactionary.” But Gish believes that simple either/or answers will not do, for Fergusson “passed through phases,” attempt­ ing to adjust to changing times. He says that Fergusson was part optimist and part pessimist, but “ultimately perhaps more a meliorist.” He also asserts and supports with his entire book that the main way Fergusson adjusted to the changes he faced was by writing highly autobiographical fiction, to be foot­ loose with McGarnigal, to suffer the loss of a wife with Robert Jayton in In Those Days. Gish succeeds, though he has to cross some rather dry deserts to arrive at his destination safely. DICK HEABERLIN Southwest Texas State University The Witch of Goingsnake and Other Stories. By Robert J. Conley. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. 165 pages, $17.95.) Conley is an author of Native American literature rather than a narrator in the Cherokee oral tradition, but like Momaday, Silko, and Welch he draws on tribal myth, legend, and history in order to adapt and renew it. Yellow Bird, first-person narrator of the opening story, is nearing death as he writes in 1867, but before he leaves he assumes the common responsibility for tribal perpetua­ tion by passing on not only his memories of the removal from Georgia in the 1830s, but the Cherokee stories of Creation and the early days of the world, within which historical events become inevitable rather than overwhelming. Man’s world lies between the “calm, orderly, and predictable” Sky-vault and the chaotic underworld, and humanity’s purpose is to “maintain a constant and precarious balance between these opposing forces” (5). The world’s first hero, Lightning, must discover and prove himself to be worthy of Thunder, his father, thereby purifying himself of ugly sores. Then he must defeat, expose, and submerge Brass, the Gambler. Conley and his characters adhere to this model in adapting Cherokee meaning and consciousness to traumatic changes, cleansingeruptions of self-destructive rage, and freeing themselvesof the sterile diversions within which the dominant society holds its unforewarned captives. Yellow Bird abandons the blood feud of recrimination between his own Ridge, Boudinot faction and the John Ross followers, and quells the divisive voices of hatred at the end by discarding his rifle and removing his bow from a cere­ monial bundle. With it he silences the rattlesnake that has made the Cherokees their own enemies: “I let fly the arrow straight into his gaping maw” (37). Reviews 171 Conley’s words of celebration replace the history of Cherokee defeat and division throughout the volume. Cherokee ghosts rise from their mounds to deter a Yankee invading force in the Civil War; a Cherokee medicine man kills in self defense, then becomes invisible to foil the U.S. marshals; hours before he is to be hanged, a Cherokee outlaw smokes a special medicine which transfers his soul to a hawk at the moment of death; another outlaw earns his name in traditional warrior fashion through a tour de force facing down of a bigot, and though he is a 19th-century cowboy, he recovers his tribal as well as his individual self: “I’m right proud to meet you. Just call me—well, what you called me. I’m Cherokee Bill” (113). Conley includes trickster stories, authen­ tic in their tone and outrageousness though they are his own inventions. Calf Roper is a tribal policeman who devises a devilish scheme to scare off a naive but offensive “anthro,” though in another story he is almost done in by a trickster shadow when he tries to imitate the driving he admires in Smokey and the Bandit. While the white culture is a spiritual trickster in many stories, its threat is minimized in relation to the supernatural power of Cherokee witches. Satis­ faction for historical revenge palls in the face of an ancient power which can kill virtually anyone, especially those who do not respect it, but it is not synony­ mous with evil here as it is in House Made of Dawn or...

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