Hanta Yo by Ruth Beebe Hill (review)

238 Western American Literature Canada. But even for Dumont this was finally a spiritual war, and he failed to lead, subordinating himself to the spiritual Riel. Wiebe has chosen a unique narrator, a soldier old by the time of the first uprising, the balladeer of the group and thus qualified to be the singing chronicler of the years of violence. Even more important for the omniscient viewpoint, the narrator asks “how can I sing this sad last act of our people when I found my greatest strength at the altar of our merci­ ful Lord in Saint Xavier and when I died was buried with the full bless­ ing of Holy Mother Church and every priest within two days’ travel?” There is something of the flavor of original language in Wiebe’s style for this novel. At times, he has a tendency to confuse like an early Faulkner, but once the reader captures the rhythms the sentences begin to sing on their own. This is, I believe, an important historical novel of the Canadian West. Wiebe has been able to blend both the earthiness and the spirituality of the Metis way of life into a powerful human document. DELBERT E. WYLDER, Murray State University Hanta Yo. By Ruth Beebe Hill. (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1979. 834 pages, $14.95.) As a massive novel of Indian life, a Book-of-the-Month Club Featured Alternate, and a forthcoming mini-series on ABC television — not to men­ tion foreign translations or eventual paperback sales — Hanta Yo is a major event in the literary history of American Indians. Ruth Hill’s book may have a greater influence on the way people think about Indians than any other single work of literature since The Song of Hiawatha. The novel tells of the rise and fall of the Mahto (Grizzly Bear) band of Titonwan (Teton) Sioux between 1794 and 1834. Although her plot is largely fictitious, Mrs. Hill claims that her historical, cultural, and lin­ guistic details are based on thirty years of diligent if not obsessive research among books, Indians, and nature. She refers to her work as “documented fiction.” The central design in the fabric of Hanta Yo is the relationship of two friends, Ahbleza and Tonweya, a “dreaming-pair” of Mahtos who share a vision in their youth. Ahbleza, the Mahto Shirtman and the son of the previous leader, Olepi, is the chief embodiment of the values that Ruth Hill would have us recognize in pre-reservation Sioux life. It is Ahbleza who best understands what it means to “own the earth,” who eventually Reviews 239 becomes a person of spiritual vitality, and who three times sings “Hanta Yo!” — “Clear the way!” — as he charges forth in full possession of himself. The novel contains a great deal more, including a hellish climax of alcohol and bloodletting, but the concept of spiritual vitality (skan) rep­ resented by Ahbleza is Mrs. Hill’s most emphatic theme. The concept is developed not only through individual characters but also in a larger story of cultural development involving three generations of Mahto life. In Hanta Yo the invention of new rituals and the resurrection of old ones, the patterns of Sioux social life, and the internal politics of band and tribe serve far larger purposes than local color. Mrs. Hill and her publisher have taken considerable pains to stress the authentic and somewhat peculiar linguistic features of the novel. After completing a second draft of her manuscript in 1963, Mrs. Hill appar­ ently sought the aid of a Santee Sioux music historian named Chunksa Yuha and spent six years learning Dakotah by studying songs and other traditional materials. Then she and Chunksa Yuha spent seven more years translating her story first into Dakotah and then back into English — all to insure that Hanta Yo would express Indian rather than white concepts. Perhaps it does. At the very least, Mrs. Hill’s Dakotah-flavored English uses simple, clear phrasing in a manner which seems natural, unobtrusive, and yet Indian-like. These results are no small accomplishment. In short, Hanta Yo is a big, popular novel (and a first one, too) that readers and teachers of...