Chevato: The Story of the Apache Warrior Who Captured Herman Lehmann, and: Making Indian Law: The Hualapai Land Case and the Birth of Ethnohistory (review)

The history of Native Americans is both a long neglected subject of the traditional academy and a fascinating part of the tri-racial history of the U.S. Indeed, in these two books oral history is a valuable tool used in trying to capture the history of two significant stories in the nation's past. These monographs, both published in 2007, not only provide accurate and significant historical information about the place of Native American Studies in American history but also reveal both the tragic and the triumphant trajectory of Amerindian history from the frontier to the courtroom. Indeed, these are excellent examples of using oral narratives to confirm and often correct traditional archival accounts. Three major themes emerge in both books even though their subjects—biography and legal studies—are different. Without explicitly being so, Chevato and Making Indian Law are ethnographic depictions of various aspects of Amerindian history. Oral history both enlivens and validates the various roles of these observer/participants in their own creation of a living history. Yet the oral history narratives only supplement the codified historical documents. In submerging the oral histories to traditional printed evidence, both books fail to let the oral documentation lead the story and thus inform the trajectory of the analysis. Held hostage to the academy, the authors drown the incredible revelations of oral history in a sea of data, documentation, and explanation. Unfortunately, this technique weakens the power of the oral testimony and elevates the value of the printed word. Despite this methodological flaw, the oral histories as used provide major insight into the external and internal relationships that indigenous people created to negotiate an ever-changing America.

Although never explicitly stated, both works contain a hint of "the praying Indian" of colonial America and/or "the good scout Indian" of the American West as well as the less acceptable cultural icons of "the angry Indian" of Sitting Bull or "the drunken Indian" of American popular culture. Indeed, these authors are timid in their treatments of Native American mysticism as articulated through oral histories of peyote usage and other spiritually induced revelations. Moreover, such important and well-respected rituals as "vision quest" articulations, shamanistic prophecies, and traditional healing and medicinal practices are always substantiated with traditional references and sources. In this arena, the authors seek the validation of the printed canon to verify the usage of this ethereal material from oral history.

Although Chevato is the story of an eleven-year-old white boy, Herman Lehmann, captured and befriended by an eighteen-year-old Indian he called Billy Chiwat in 1870, it is also the collected and collective memory of three Amerindian generations. In sharing these oral histories with his son, Thomas David Chebahtah, and as told to his grandson, William Chebahtah, Chevato reinforces the Apache custom of fathers insisting that at least one male heir memorizes and remembers the family ancestry, history, knowledge, and lineage. In repeating this practice, Chevato reveals many important facts and presents a novel perspective of Amerindian life and culture as Americans, Mexicans, and Native Americans competed for cattle, horses, land, power, and wealth during the eighty years of his life. His stories explain complex issues of religion and cosmology, the range and exercise of authority, the fluidity of identity, and the nature of formal and informal relationships with their associated obligations and rules.

This work is less about Herman Lehmann's capture and experience and more about traditional Native American life "after the white man came" and how indigenous people adjusted their previous allegiances, alliances, identities, and practices as a rational tactic to circumvent white authority and prevent extermination. Indeed, this...