Modoc Sundance by Sean Belanger (review)

4 6 4 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n l it e r a t u r e W i n t e r 2 0 0 5 that American settlers were irrevocably entrenched in the area. In her travel essays on southern California, as Phillips notes, “she therefore made it her ambition not to protest the American presence in California per se, but to advocate for a gentler, more sensitive sort of presence” (241). While Phillips judiciously limits her discussion of Jackson’s advocacy for Native American rights—perhaps because so much has been written recently about this aspect of Jackson’s career—her biography still holds much in store for those interested in western American literature. Jackson’s influence can still be seen in both the literature and landscape of southern California: not only, as Phillips notes, did Ramona feature “the first figures in the long line of disappointed, deracinated heroes who populate ... later Southern California fiction,” but Jackson’s beloved novel also inspired architectural movements and the renaming of whole towns after the main character (3). And Phillips, herself a talented novelist (White Rabbit [1996]), tells the fascinating story of the woman whose work left such an indelible mark. Modoc Sundance. By Sean Belanger. New York: U SA Books, 2002. 217 pages, $13.00. Reviewed by Dale Metcalfe American River College, Sacramento, California This fictionalized account of the events surrounding the Modoc War of 1872-1873 and of the fate of Modoc subchief Keintpoos, known to nonNatives as Captain Jack, successfully captures the U.S. Army’s inept attempts to subdue Jack’s small band of cornered Modocs near Tule Lake on the border of California and Oregon. The novel’s pace is brisk as it moves us through the sad events leading up to the hanging of the reluctant Modoc warrior. Belanger sticks to important moments in the conflict and its aftermath, with some inter­ esting additions and subtractions. The would-be protagonist, Jim Wallace, is a fictional confabulation of Quebequois and Tennessean whose father was white and whose mother was Indian. He is a man who fought for the Confederacy against the Seminoles, married an Indian woman, and fathered three sons, now grown. His sympa­ thies clearly lie with Captain Jack, who might have been a friend in other circumstances. But what jars here, as elsewhere throughout this book, is a narrative voice that leaps from character to character while remaining largely unchanged in tone. Suddenly we find ourselves in the head of U.S. General Edward R. S. Canby, a man of much learning, according to Belanger’s quotes from President Grant, but who sounds as crude and uneducated as Wallace or as the unlettered ranchers who want the Modocs’ land. The creative inten­ tion—to connect us directly to characters’ psyches—is sound, but the effect is more confusing than edifying or moving. Had Wallace been the true center of the narrative, the story would have been easier to follow. B o o k R e v ie w s 4 6 5 Broken into three “books” with epigraphs from the Iliad, Modoc Sundance suggests correlations between the Trojan War and the U.S. Army’s engagement with the renegade band following Captain Jack. And the analogy works, if only superficially. Equating Achilles’ rage with the Modocs’ growing anger at injustices on the reservation they “share” with long-time enemies, the Klamath, the book ends by equating Captain Jack, goaded into insurrection by his own warriors and ultimately hanged by an army tribunal, to Hector, whose head was “dishonored in the dust” (174). The Modoc woman Queen Moon, a translator for the army, is a rather underplayed characterization of Toby Riddle, Modoc wife of white man Frank Riddle; her role in the real-life conflict was more profound. Belanger is more interested in the dual betrayals that put Jack at rope’s end—the conniving of the ranchers who want Modoc land at Lost River and the rebellion of Jack’s own men against him and his subsequent desire to work out an agreement with the U.S. government. Aficionados of Modoc lore and Indian...