A Source for Callahan’s: Wynema, a Child of the Forest

In early 1891, S. Alice Callahan’s Wynema, a Child of the Forest appeared from the press of H. J. Smith and Co. of Chicago. While its exact moment of publication remains unknown, the novel contains a publisher’s preface dated April 1, 1891, soon after the massacre at Wounded Knee in December 1890.¹ According to Callahan’s father, the novel “had a great run for a year or so, after it was placed on the market,”² but sales declined. Though Carolyn Thomas Foreman acknowledged in a short article in 1955 that “it was a great surprise to discover” Wynema, as it had “escaped all Oklahoma bibliographers,”³ the novel was virtually lost to scholarship until A. LaVonne Ruoff edited it for publication in 1997.⁴ Though scholars have discussed a number of issues related to the text,⁵ there is general agreement that Wynema is the “first novel written in Oklahoma”⁶ and the “first known novel written by an American Indian woman.”⁷

In her 1997 introduction to it, Ruoff notes that Callahan incorporated newspaper articles in the text from the Muscogee Daily Phoenix and the Cherokee Telephone. By tracing these items, she constructs a timeline of composition that includes the events at Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee in November 1890. Callahan’s inclusion of Old Masse Hadjo’s letter, “Turmoil with the Indians,” which appeared in the Chicago Tribune for December 5, 1890, has hitherto been overlooked by scholars, but helps to pinpoint a date of authorship for chapter 18. It suggests Wynema was nearly complete when the massacre at Wounded Knee occurred. Hadjo’s letter is an outraged but eloquent argument in defense of Native Americans in general and the Ghost Dance religion in particular.

AN INDIAN ON THE MESSIAH CRAZE

John Daylight Says His Religion Is Far Better than That of the Whites

QUAPAW MISSION, I.T. Dec. 2—[Editor of the Tribune.]—You say, “If the United States army would kill a thousand or so of the dancing Indians there would be no more trouble.”⁸ I judge by the above language you are a “Christian,” and are disposed to do all in your power to advance the cause of Christ. You are doubtless a worshiper of the white man’s Savior, but are unwilling that the Indians should have a “Messiah” of their own. The Indians have never taken kindly to the Christian religion as preached and practiced by the whites. Do you know why this is the case? Because the Good Father of all has given us a better religion—a religion that is all good and no bad, a religion that is adapted to our wants. You say if we are good, obey the Ten Commandments, and never sin any more, we may be permitted eventually to sit upon a white rock and sing praises to God forevermore, and look down upon our heathen fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters who are howling in Hell. It won’t do. The code of morals as practiced by the white race will not compare with the morals of the Indians. We pay no lawyers or preachers, but we have not one-tenth part of the crime that you do. If our Messiah does come we shall not try to force you into our belief. We will never burn innocent women at the stake or pull men to pieces with horses because they refuse to join in our ghost dances. You white people had a Messiah, and if history is to be believed nearly every nation has had one. You had twelve Apostles; we have only eleven, and some of those are already in the military guard-house.⁹ We also had a Virgin Mary and she is in the guard-house.¹⁰ You are anxious to get hold of our Messiah, so you can put him in irons. This you may do—in fact, you may crucify him as you did that other one, but you cannot convert the Indians to the Christian religion until you...