Searching for Chipeta: The Story of a Ute and Her People by Vickie Leigh Krudwig (review)

B o o k R e v ie w s 2 1 7 If immediacy and intimacy distinguish the human relations portrayed in Babb’s novels, then her extraordinary openness and sensitivity toward her sur­ roundings is representative of all her writing. In her novel newly implemented soil conservation practices are anticipated as well as questions linked to land owner­ ship and economic class differences. The sparsely separated families reflect the penury of the landscape, treeless and semi-arid, better fit for grazing. Babb’s writing is attuned to the natural worldwhose subtleties are violated byhuman exploitation. The tragic struggle of her people who refuse defeat in the disastrous economic and ecological cycles of the 1930s appears as fresh and timely as her novel’s conception in the migrant camps of California. The practice of what Collins in a letter to Babb called “democracy functioning,” the organizational principle of the FSA camps, proceeded from traditions of cooperative arrangements, discussion, and dialogue the displaced farmers knew at home. By the traditions of 1930s radical literature, to which Babb’s early writing belonged, these rudimentary democratic practices seem far afield of revolutionary action. Yet the drama of the circumstances—impover­ ishment, humiliation, death—moves toward a spirited conclusion in Babb’s tale, one that issues from the development of events rather than following some imposed logic. The refugees get back on their feet, forming committees, undertaking initiatives such as health clinics, education, and birth control. The alarm of the growers toward “red” insurgency prompts vigilante actions and violence. In the conclusion, however, the farmer-refugees are not intimidated. “It was better to starve than to become a shadow of a man on this earth that could give him a full, whole life” (175). Whose Names Are Unknown makes an important contribution to our understanding of the Dust Bowl era, but of more significance, it gives human dimension to the calamity of dispossession—all too tragically present. Searching for Chipeta: The Story of a Ute and Her People. By Vickie Leigh Krudwig. Golden, Colo.: Fulcrum Publishing, 2004- 128 pages, $12.95. Reviewed by Jennifer Eastman Attebery Idaho State University, Pocatello The Tabeguache band of Utes, originally occupying central Colorado, is best known through its negotiator Ouray. In Vickie Krudwig’s young adult book we have the story of Ouray’s second wife, Chipeta, with whom he shared his political as well as his personal life. Krudwig’s biography of Chipeta is immedi­ ately engaging for readers of middle-school age upward. Krudwig begins Chipeta’s story as the Tabeguache move from the Arkansas River Valley, where they winter, to summering grounds in the central Rockies. She uses the seasonal shift to weave into the narrative information about extended-family social relationships and Ute worldview, represented in 2 1 8 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n l it e r a t u r e S u m m e r 2 0 0 5 Chipeta’s thoughts about the natural world and some of its peoples: Magpie, Grandfather Sky, Sinawaf the Creator, Mother Earth, and Coyote. Typical of biographical writing for children, Krudwig fictionalizes parts of Chipeta’s experience, allowing her to report Chipeta’s purported feelings. These reconstructions ring true. Reading about Chipeta digging cattail bulbs along the Arkansas, one suspects that Krudwig’s research included more than interviews with descendants and descriptions of Ute customs and material cul­ ture, that she also waded through cattails serenaded by red-winged blackbirds and tried a Ute digging stick. Krudwig uses narrative reconstruction cautiously by limiting dialogue. Her characters speak only in a few carefully chosen passages, for example when Chipeta’s grandfather tells a Coyote story (perhaps out ofseason, as such stories are restricted to wintertime in many American Indian groups). On the other hand, Chipeta’s reconstructed thoughts occasionally reflect a non-Native point of view. Would Chipeta muse, for example, that the Ute “had survived in the wilderness for as long as they could remember,” when the concept of wilderness would be meaningless except to those with a contrasting concept of civilization (25)? The biography follows Chipeta from age nine through her death...