James Welch (1) (1940–2003)

A teacher recommended this book and I dutifully picked it up and inhabited another world, a Montana reservation where members of the Gros Ventre and Blackfeet tribes live outside of towns such as Harlem, Dodson, Havre, where they grow grain and run cattle. James Welch writes with humor and truth. His dialogue skills are rich and authentic: "Why don't you settle down?" I said to my hands. "Pay up," said the bartender. When he left, I said, "If you settled down you'd be a lot better off; you'd be happier, believe me, Agnes." "You bore me," she said. "You should learn a trade, shorthand," I said. "There's a crying demand for secretaries." She looked at me as if she didn't recognize me. "Shorthand?" she squealed.
His images of nature and characters put you right out on that flat grazing land of the West. "Evening now and the sky had changed to pink reflected off the high western clouds. A pheasant gabbled from a field to the south. A lone cock, he would be stepping from the wild rose along an irrigation ditch to the sweet alfalfa field, perhaps to graze with other cocks and hens, perhaps alone. It is difficult to tell what cocks will do when they grow old. They are like men, full to twists." Welch started as a poet and is quoted in Louise Erdrich's introduction: "we are storytellers from a long way back. And we will be heard for generations to come." The book was published fifty years ago and I am as excited about reading it as if it were just out, a new discovery. And his storyteller credentials are evident in the braided tale describing a cattle drive perfectly paced with a bar spree. The narrator describes his mother, "she had always had a clear bitter look, not without humor, that made the others of us seem excessive, too eager to talk too much, drink too much, breathe too fast...I saw...how much she had come to resemble the old lady." Highly recommended.… (altro)

Considered a founding text in the Native American Renaissance, James Welch’s 1974 debut novel (he was already a poet) received a 2021 Penguin Classics reissue with new remarks from Joy Harjo and Louise Erdrich giving it context. The unnamed narrator is a 32 year old member of the Blackfeet tribe in Montana. While his mother owns a successful ranch on the reservation, it’s fair to say he is somewhat lost and weighed down with grief, personal but also, surely, historical. Welch explores this grief with a taut poetic prose that is at turns realist and slightly surreal, grim and humorous, in a series of structured scenes over a short period of time that lead to new understanding.

In one such scene, the narrator visits a native elder, now blind, who lives alone in a crude cabin on the grassland. The elder claims he does not feel alone as he has the animals to talk to. Mockingly asked if the deer talk to him about the weather, he dismisses the jibe, but replies that the deer are not happy. The conversation continues:

“Not happy? But surely to a deer one year is as good as the next. How do you mean?”
“They are not happy with the way things are. They know what a bad time it is. They can tell by the moon when the world is cockeyed.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“They understand the signs. This earth is cockeyed.”

One thing I think I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is that this earth is always cockeyed. It’s always a bad time. People are always seeing the end. That’s not wrong; the world as we know it does and always will end, though it’s also only a part of our story here and should not exclude awareness of the rest of that story. I think from reading this book that Welch would agree. Erdrich writes in her introduction, “I think it annoyed Welch that this book was called bleak. That world of bones and wind may be stark but it is filled with life, and life is stories.” Life, stories, spirit: these things endure and always will.… (altro)

General George Custer’s 1876 attack on a huge camp of Plains Indians has gone down as the most disastrous defeat in American history and yet for many years Custer was portrayed as heroic and the Indians as merciless savages. The placing of Custer on a pedestal has definitely faded in recent years as much like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” historians and history buffs alike have spoken out about what lead up to the Battle of the Little Bighorn and it’s after effects.

Killing Custer by James Welch is an insightful book that deals with the above issues, as well as the personalities of those involved. Custer, Reno, Benteen, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall, and many others played a part that is detailed in this book. The indigenous author presents a fair account of what happened and why and explains how the politics of the day ensured that Custer became the doomed hero of the event.

I have long been interested in the Battle of Little Bighorn and have visited the site three or four times over the years. While Killing Custer doesn’t add anything new to the mix, I did appreciate that Welch represented both sides in a realistic and thoughtful manner.… (altro)

Unusual story about a Oglala Indian, Charging Elk, who as a very young man refused to be put on the reservation and spent three years with a friend out on the frontier basically by themselves. Returning to the reservation, he somehow was selected by Buffalo Bill to join his touring company and go to France. While in France, he enjoyed participating in the show but was accidentally thrown from his horse and wound up in a French hospital unable to speak the language. Buffalo Bill's group had left him.

The story actually begins at this point with his confusion and fear at the "sickhouse". He manages to escape and lives on the street but is found and turned over to the American embassy. One bureaucratic bumble after another prevents his return to America. He is eventually placed into the home of a fishmonger who treated him well and he learned some French and learned to love the family. After a while, however, he moves to his own place and yearning for a wife and family begins to visit a whorehouse. He falls in loves with a woman who isn't quite sure what to think of him. Earlier at the fish market a well known homosexual chef had eyed Charging Elk and he forces the whore to give him a drug so that the chef can molest him CE wakes up during the encounter and stabs the man to death. A very unfair trial follows and CE winds up in a remote prison where he becomes a model prisoner and learns to garden. He is eventually released again to a home of a farmer who treats him well. Natalie, the daughter falls in love with CK and they sort of "live happily ever after." Many more complications although the ending might be a bit too pat. Still a very good read and interesting look at the European fascination with the American West and the sad story of a man forced to leave everything behind and forced into a totally new culture.… (altro)