Woman of the People

Afterword

AFTERWORD THE FIRST TURNING POINT in Helen Morrison's life in captivity comes when she runs ahead of the other women to touch the downed buffalo and cries, ':Ah-heh!" For the first time since her capture, she forgets her past and becomes a Comanche. Then she remembers her past and says, "What am I doing? Why did I run? Why did I strike the buffalo. and cry out?" (p. 65). Up to this point in the narrative, she has always thought of herself as a white girl, and she has always meant to escape from the Comanches at the first opportunity. It distresses her greatly to see her little sister, Katy, become a Comanche so quickly and begin to run and play with the other children of the Mutsani band. Her dream has been to take Katy and run; the dream persists for a while even after she forgets herself and runs to touch the freshly killed buffalo. But then, almost without her knowing it, she begins slowly to do what Katy did so quickly: she starts thinking of herself as a member of the band. Those who were once savages become her family. Helen's shock at seeing herself become excited over the death of the buffalo is only one of many turning points in the novel. In fact, A Woman ofthe People is structured around a series of turning points, both in the life of the captured girl 243 A WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE 244 who becomes a Comanche woman - "a woman of the People" -and in the life of the Mutsani band of Comanches. Among the more obvious turning points are the capture of Helen and Katy, Katy's quick assimilation into the tribe, Helen's new name (Tehanita), the buffalo episode, Helen's adoption by Lance Returner's family, Helen's inheritance of the mantle of Story Teller, the courtship and marriage of Helen and Burning Hand, the Palo Duro Canyon massacre, Helen's giving birth to "a new Mutsani warrior," and, finally, the submission of the Comanches to the whites at the end of the novel. There is a great deal more, however, in this novel than a series of reversals. Part of what can be seen in A Woman ofthe People is a brief fictional presentation of the problems inherent in settling the West. As all historians have noted-both the Turnerians and the New Western Historians-the most serious problem with settlement of the western United States was resolution of the "Indian question." A vast amount ofland was occupied by a relatively small number of Native American peoples who constituted a barrier to Anglo American settlement. The government could either kill the Indians, put them on reservations as wards of the nation or find a way to assimilate them into the mainstream culture. Each solution was tried in one way or another, but the "disposal" of the native peoples remains partly unsettled even today. In A Woman ofthe People, we see two "solutions" in play: the killings (the Palo Duro Canyon massacre) and the establishment of a reservation for the Comanches at the end of the novel. Benjamin Capps, who has written six books on Indian life, is not a propagandist for either the Native Americans or the Anglo Americans who displaced them. He recognizes that what took place in the western United States in the nineteenth century was the clashing of two cultures, one stone-age and the other modern and technologically advanced. The Comanches were less than a generation removed from fighting with lances and arrows; the post-Civil War Americans who finally subdued the Mutsanis were well into the age of gunpowder and repeat- 245 AFTERWORD ing rifles. It was evident who would win such a war. But Capps takes great pains to show that neither culture is superior except in terms of equipment. Much of the novel, then, explores the psychology of the stone-age band attempting to live the life they have always known even in the face of massive change. Helenrrehanita slowly learns that her new family is not all that different from the family from whom she was taken at the age of ten. Lance Returner is a kind father; Story Teller is a wise mentor; Burning Hand is as good a husband as she could have found had she remained among the whites. What Capps wants us to see is that people...