The American Indian in Short Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography by Peter G. Beidler and Marion F. Egge, and: American Lan Poetry by Helen Addison Howard, and: American Indian Literature: An Anthology ed. by Alan R. Velie (review)

Reviews 235 tions. The London Revival will continue; that seems certain. Such persons as Sisson and Martens can support the Revival by continuing to turn up new information about London, but their contributions will be even more important if they turn their abundant energies, enthusiasm, and talents to more significant projects concerning Jack London and his times. RICHARD W. ETULAIN, University of New Mexico The American Indian in Short Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography. By Peter G. Beidler and Marion F. Egge. (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1979. 215 pages, $10.00.) American Indian Poetry. By Helen Addison Howard. (Boston: Twayne, 1979. 191 pages.) American Indian Literature: An Anthology. Edited and with an introduc­ tion by Alan R. Velie. (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1979. 356 pages, $15.95 cloth, $6.95 paper.) Of these three books — each full of promise at first glance — only The American Indian in Short Fiction lives up to its promise. That is so in part because the authors’ preface does not promise a comprehensive bibliography of all American short stories about American Indians, but only a bibliography which has located “a sufficiently large number of stories to enable scholars to identify characteristic trends.” They have done so: 900 stories are listed alphabetically by author’s name, with plot summaries for each. Two indexes are provided: one by Indian Tribes (150 are listed), the other by “Subject Key Words” (50 are listed. Examples: Drunken Indian, Cultural Misunderstanding, Educational Disorientation/IndianNon -Indian Inner Conflict, Humor, Reservation, Romance, Science Fiction/ Fantasy). For the scholar wishing to research American attitudes toward the Indian as revealed in short fiction beginning in the late 19th century and continuing up to the present, this book will be valuable as a starting point. Those wishing to look further back in American history will have to search elsewhere, as will those interested in the considerable number of short stories by and about Indians currently being published in little magazines and small presses (some from each are included in this bibliography, but the listing is by no means inclusive). Nonetheless, The American Indian in Short Fiction is what the authors claim it to be, a good and highly useful beginning. American Indian Poetry is a disappointment. After an interesting preface and first chapter in which Indian traditional poetry is itself the center of attention, the book devotes each of its remaining eight chapters 236 Western American Literature to a discussion of the career of an individual non-Indian translator. Inci­ dental comments about Indian poetry are to be found in each of those chapters, but each chapter focuses on the translator and the act of transla­ tion instead of on the poetry being translated. That is of some use; but it is not all that a book of this sort should accomplish. One must also question the selection of translators discussed: while Alice Fletcher, Frances Densmore , Mary Austin and Natalie Curtis call for no apologies, such writers as Alice Corbin Henderson (who wrote “interpretations” of Indian poetry, and apparently only nine of those), Constance Lindsay Skinner (who wrote “a few poetic interpretations” using Northwest Indian themes), Lew Sarett (whose output was greater but heavily anglicized), and Eda Lou Walton (who also sought to “interpret” rather than translate, but who does perhaps the best work of any of these last four) would not seem to have produced work as valuable as have many not included in this book: for example, Franz Boas, Ruth Bunzel, James Mooney, Herbert Spinden, and Ruth Underhill. But even a better selection of translators would not have lessened this book’s central and glaring fault, its focus on the problems of translation in place of a thorough discussion of American Indian poetry. Our third book, American Indian Literature: An Anthology, also promises more than it can deliver. The book is divided into six sections: Tales, Songs, Memoirs, Oratory, Poetry, and Fiction — the last two con­ taining contemporary work. But only the Tales and the Memoirs are particularly strong sections (Tales included are from the Acoma, Sioux, Menomini, Kickapoo, and Winnebago, and most are longer tales or cycles of tales; Memoirs are from Black Elk, John Joseph Matthews, Lame Deer, and Scott...