Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction)

Product Details

• ISBN13: 9780140089370
• Term: NEW
• Notes: Characterize New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Description

The year is 1870, and Fool's Crow, so called after he killed the chief of the Crows during a raid, has a vision at the annual Sun Dance ceremony. The young warrior sees the end of the Indian way of life and the choice that must be made: resistance or humiliating accommodation. "A major contibution to Native American literature."--Wallace Stegner.

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Customer Reviews

Must-read list
This is a must-read book for anyone interested in the history of America. Although centered on the Blackfeet culture and clash with the westward settlement, other Indian tribes where going through similar or had gone through similar issues of dealing with other tribes and the white immigration. I read this book because it was on the list of the nine favorite books of Sherman Alexie's main character in The Absolutely True Biography of a Part-time Indian. On the list were The Grapes of Wrath, Invisible Man, and Catcher in the Rye. It deserves to be in such company. More than a description of the Blackfeet lifestyle, mythology, and relations to other tribes such as the Crow during the time of pioneers and settlers grabbing land and homesteading, it is a well-written book by an obviously talented observer and story-teller. This is a fascinating book and a timeless book. It is a topical story about managing insurgencies in an indigenous population and the failure to understand the implications of people trying to deal with survival threats. How did the US government deal with a people who have their own religion, mythology and lifestyle for survival? What are the similarities to the Vietnam war, the Iraqi War, and the Afghan War when working with an indigenous population some of which may be hostile, some not. This book is much more than these topics. It does not take sides and does not glamorize either culture, the european settlers or the Indians. It is a rich detailing of a snapshot in time, eloquently capturing the universe of the Blackfeet, transporting you to a place, time, and culture and then immersing you into it until you almost feel you have lived it. This is a grand well-written adventure into the mindset and life of the 1870 Blackfeet for which it cost you the price of the book and your time to read.

2009-11-30 | bookhead (Fort Collins, CO USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Awesome and Fluid - What Historical Fiction SHOULD Be!
This is a remarkable book. The prose flows beautifully (mostly), and captures the people, time place of the Blackfeet's tragic last period of freedom on the northern plains wonderfully.

I read this book while traveling through the modern Blackfeet reservation and Glacier National Park. I met with traditional Blackfeet, and what's in this book is really their culture, stories, way of life, and wisdom. What is special about this work is that it is BOTH an authentic historical fiction, and yet ISN'T wooden or 1-dimensional in its characters. ALL of the characters are "real" - the Blackfeet are human with flaws and all; with the whites (settlers and soldiers) you also get "real" people struggling with their situations as they experience them from their own perspective. I would contrast James Welch's fully developed characters with the more wooden, 1-dimensional style of Joseph Marshall. Marshall is often marketed as bringing forth a new type of western with his "Lakota Western" series. James Welch beats him in maturity of writing. This book was also published 20 years ahead of Marshall's Lakota Westerns.

On a critical note - there are times (though not often) where the writing is interrupted with interspersed vulgar words (i.e. "piss") that jarr or contrast too sharply with the overall writing style. Not sure why this was done - maybe for effect? Though not explicit, issue of rape are also included. This is not overdone, but merely reflects the realities of the time.

Good fiction, and esp. good historical fiction is hard to find. I'm sorry it took me so long to find this gem. If you like the west and Native American history, you will love this book.

2009-06-23 (Stow, Ohio United States) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Fools Crow
I am having to read this book in my english class, and I do not like it. The book was in okay condition, would have been better without all of the writing in it.

2009-06-13 | Teresa (North Carolina) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Snooze Fest
I was forced to read this book for a college history class. This book is the exact reason I hate to read. It is long, boring, drawn out way too far, skips randomly from one situation to another, and never gets to a point. This book could have been 1/3 the length and delivered the same message. Indians struggle, cheating wives.. blah blah blah. Too many "dream sequences." Often the book would switch in and out of dreams, often making me wonder which was which. This is the second worst book I've ever read, only behind, "The Woman Warrior."

2009-05-11 | ReadingIsObsolete (California) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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Happiness walks with sadness
Fools' Crow

The Pikunis must deal with the coming of the Napikwans (the whites). At first things go fairly well, a bit exciting for the bands as trade picks up at the forts, they live by treaty and live in relative peace for many years, but the Napikwans gradually move their whitehorns (cattle) into all of what is now Montana stretched up to the Back bone of the World (the Rocky Mountains) and eventually trickle north of the Medicine Line (Canada and U.S. Border).

Fools Crow is preparing for the greatest task of his life, that is to help prepare his people for the Napikwan takeover and the removal of his people from their lands. Should he and his band move north and live with those relatives that are still free from government control, but who are limited to the fishing they survive on. The other choice is to submit and learn to survive within the confines of the Napikwan agency, getting used to guns, whiskey, abuse and starvation to name a few of its attributes. What will Fool Crows do to help his people?

In this book we learn of a whole new descriptive way of looking at the world through the mind of the Plains Indians; the great buffalo hunters for which there is no possible equal. This is one of few potent portrayals of a history that we have had but a glimmer of, and thanks to the talent of James Welch who was born on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana, we are treated to a spectacular voice for the vision of that not so long ago world.

There are times in this life when we must prepare for something that may seem impossible to deal with, and the choices become absurd. This is the book to read then to take heart and be of courage. As Welch points out, there is a type of happiness that walks with sadness.

2008-12-29 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Winter in the Blood (Penguin Classics)

Product Details

• Notes: Manufacturer New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• <a title='Condition Guide' href='/content/Condition_and_S hipping_Guide.htm' target='_blank'>Click here to position our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices</a>
• ISBN13: 9780143105220
• Prepare: NEW

Description

Two contemporary classics from a major writer of the Native American renaissance

During his life, James Welch came to be regarded as a master of American prose, and his first novel, Winter in the Blood, is one of his most enduring works. The narrator of this beautiful, often disquieting novel is a young Native American man living on the Fort Belknap Reservation in Montana. Sensitive and self-destructive, he searches for something that will bind him to the lands of his ancestors but is haunted by personal tragedy, the dissolution of his once proud heritage, and Montana's vast emptiness. Winter in the Blood is an evocative and unforgettable work of literature that will continue to move and inspire anyone who encounters it.

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Customer Reviews

Excellent Novel...
It's been several years since I've read this book, but what I remember is walking away from it very satisfied and impressed. Enjoy.

2009-05-12 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Wisdom and Beauty Among the Ruins
This is one of the most moving, one of the most touching books about the American West that I know. From the incredible first paragraph right to the last sentence, this is an important story of a young man living somewhere between the world of his Native American ancestors and the mean streets of the modern American West. I've read and read the book many times, yet several scenes always catch me off guard with their beauty and emotional power. And as I read those sections, I still discover tears running down my cheeks. Jim Welch was a friend of mine. He was a beautiful and very kind man who always had time for young writers who were trying to learn their craft. I can still hear his voice, and I miss him all the time.

2009-04-27 | Jackson Creek (Grand Junction, Colorado United States) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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An eye-catching portrait of modern American Indian life
Written by American-Indian author James Welch, Winter in the Blood portrays a thirty two year old American-Indian man who lives on a reservation in Montana with his mother. He engages in no activities that you could term truly heroic -- he works on his family farm, gets into a bar fight in town, has one-night stands, becomes a partner with strangers in crime. What distinguishes this novel is how it gives us a view of the `American Experience' through non-white eyes. It is meant to be an authentic portrait of American Indian life in the late twentieth century; it is like a painting of the American West that is evocative of certain mood and of a certain time and place, but which does not convey anything very profound.

The prose is earthy, gritty in style. I found it to be the best, most enjoyable part of the novel. The style is simple in a very matter-of-fact way -- it can be funny, crude, or emotionally stirring, but it is like this simply as a matter of relating things as they strike the protagonist (for instance, there is a part where he says that once he shot his neighbor's dog solely because he "was drunk and it was moving.") The prose manages to be evocative without demonstrating that the author knows how to use a thesaurus, exhibiting a skillful expressiveness executed with an economy of means. What's appealing about this novel is no so much what the protagonist does as it is the gripping means with which the scenes are conveyed.

The main character, however, is not well developed; most of the secondary characters are more fleshed out and more compelling than the protagonist himself. (True enough, though, this novel is more about the environment the central character is in than about the protagonist himself.) The dialogue can be confusing, at times you can lose track of which lines of dialogue belong to which character. It is difficult to say exactly what this novel is about; the protagonist makes a few cracks about being in a white man's world and about this "greedy stupid country", but none of this forms into any coherent political diatribe, nor do the actions the protagonist takes or the events that occur to him gain any significance in this light. He merely does stuff, which can be either funny or picturesque, but which has little meaning apart from the actions themselves.

This is not to say that Winter in the Blood is not on the whole enjoyable, for I found it so. It has enough virtues to make it a worthy read. It paints an eye-catching snap-shot of modern American Indian life.

2004-05-02 (NJ, USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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A book of sorrows, comedy, and joy
James Welch is probably Montana's foremost Native American writer, and this wonderful novella is evidence of considerable talent. Published 30 years ago (1974), it takes place in the shadow that was cast by the nation's approaching bicentennial. While neither bitter nor angry, it manages anyway to portray a country that has little to show for itself but "greed and stupidity." The values it embraces are finally those available to every American, native or otherwise - compassion and respect for life and the living.

The story concerns a few days in the life of a 32-year-old man, descendant of Indians and living in two worlds, his mother's home on the reservation and the dreary bars and hotels of nearby Havre and Malta, Montana. His days and nights blending together in an alcoholic haze, he meets a deranged white man, picks up women and gets punched in the nose. Meanwhile, he is haunted by a past that includes the death of an older brother and an injury to his knee that multiple operations have not remedied. Out of these unpromising circumstances, Welch finds the beginnings of a kind of personal salvation. By reaching back through the memory of a blind old man's act of charity, he restores the younger man's vision of himself.

Among the ranks of modern Native American writers, such as Louise Erdrich, Welch opens up a world for non-Indian readers that goes well beyond the usual stereotypes. His Indians are strikingly individual, absorbed in the everyday, motivated as much by self-interest and cock-eyed notions as their white counterparts. In Welch's hands, a conversation among five of them can be as comic and absurd as Ionesco. Meanwhile, the Native American past is there to ground a person with a sense of purpose and identity. For all its sorrows, Welch's story is finally a joy to read.

2004-01-17 | rockysquirrel (Los Angeles) | Helpful Votes: 21 | Rating: 5

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Winter in the Blood
Winter in the Blood was a good piece of Montana literature. It told a believable story of the life of a man living on the Blackfoot Reservation. It was interesting to read about how his brother and father died and how he ended up living there. The things that happened to him were interesting too. Like how he could go all the way to Havre just to find a woman who stole a couple things of his. The downside of the book was that it's kind of slow in some spots but not so much spots that the book just makes you want to stop reading it.

2003-11-04 (ronan montana) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Riding the Earthboy 40 (Poets, Penguin)

Description

Now with an introduction from celebrated poet James Tate, Riding the Earthboy 40 is the only volume of poetry written by acclaimed Native American novelist James Welch. The title of the book refers to the forty acres of Montana land Welch’s father once leased from a Blackfeet family called Earthboy. This land and its surroundings shaped the writer’s worldview as a youth, its rawness resonates in the vitality of his elegant poetry, and his verse shows a great awareness of a moment in time, of a place in nature, and of the human being in context. Deeply evoking the specific Native American experience in Montana, Welch’s poems nonetheless speak profoundly to all readers. With its new introduction, this vital work that has influenced so many American writers is certain to capture a new generation of readers.

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The Death of Jim Loney (Penguin Classics)

Product Details

• Notes: Name brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Environment: NEW
• ISBN13: 9780143105183
• <a title='Condition Guide' href='/content/Condition_and_S hipping_Guide.htm' target='_blank'>Click here to scene our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices</a>

Description

James Welch never shied away from depicting the lives of Native Americans damned by destiny and temperament to the margins of society. The Death of Jim Loney is no exception. Jim Loney is a mixed-blood, of white and Indian parentage. Estranged from both communities, he lives a solitary, brooding existence in a small Montana town. His nights are filled with disturbing dreams that haunt his waking hours. Rhea, his lover, cannot console him; Kate, his sister, cannot penetrate his world. In sparse, moving prose, Welch has crafted a riveting tale of disenfranchisement and self-destruction.

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Customer Reviews

Lost . . .
While the central character of this short novel, Jim Loney, is stricken with a loss of direction and purpose that suggests a death of the soul itself, the characters surrounding him are themselves unmoored and drifting in their own ways. Jim, cast adrift early in life as a throw-away child of an Indian mother and white father, believes that his life would take on meaning if only he knew more about his background. But being a "half-breed" merely deepens the confusion about his identity. His older sister, Kate, with a beltway job in Washington DC tries unsuccessfully to jump start his life, and partly as a result, begins to doubt that most Indians can be rescued from what amounts to a debilitating inertia.

Meanwhile, Jim's sometime girlfriend, Rhea, on the lam from an upper middle-class family in Dallas, has taken a teaching job in the northern Montana town of Harlem, where the story takes place, and abruptly quits in the middle of the school year to go back to Texas or to Seattle, she doesn't know where, and to do what, she isn't sure either. And a town cop, recently relocated from the Bay Area of California, decides after a bedding a few of the local women that small town life in the back of beyond is not to his liking. It is the late 1970s, in that period of post-Vietnam, pre-Reagan vagueness about national purpose and identity, and Jim Loney's lonely 35-year-old life settles sadly into an alcohol-soaked oblivion that drifts finally into an inevitable and violent ending.

Clearly and beautifully written, but without the humor in Welch's previous "Winter in the Blood," this novel is a melanchly portrayal of isolation and loss. And identifying with the central character, readers are likely to feel that they are watching a loved but frustratingly detached friend gradually slipping away.

2009-08-13 | rockysquirrel (Los Angeles) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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M.F.A. Program Reading
Basically, the book tells the story of how Jim Loney drinks himself into oblivion and then gets killed by the police. There were few interesting points in the book, but maybe the author was trying to show through the reading how uninteresting Jim Loney's life was. I thought the sister and Jim's girlfriend were strong characters, but since Jim wanted to drink himself to death, I don't think they played much in the book. I read this book because I saw the title on an M.F.A. reading list. Technically, the book was well written, but in terms of subject and plot, it was kind of a bore.

2009-06-28 | j11111 (Hannibal, MO) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Heart-achingly gorgeous
This is such a heart-aching book. It's gorgeous and simple and so sad. I read it for a course at University and am so glad to have encountered this treasure. I've marked the hell out of its few pages. My professor highly encouraged us to write all over our books, as a way of CLAIMING the books and the reading process as MINE. (Something I've always been a fan of, anyways). Concise and so powerful. Each word is perfectly chosen. Everyone should read this novel.

2005-09-21 (Seattle, WA USA) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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personal Armageddon
Nihilistic and lonely, Welch offers a vision of Manifest Destiny in reverse, and an exploration of, amongst other things, the Anglo desire to Cowboy and Indian, though in the context of that novel there is nothing romantic about these romanticized ideals; there is the wind and there are the ghosts and bottles line up in front of the middle and the final solution is personal Armageddon.

2004-08-16 | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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pretty good book
The Death of Jim Loney is a story about Jim Loney, a poor drunk, half-breed, of white and Indian parentage, who is trying to find where his life went wrong. Was it his mother that left him and his sister when they were children, or their father who disowned them nine years later? Or is it the gradual decay of his reason to exist? Nobody can penetrate his world, not his girlfriend Rhea or his sister Kate. This story goes through his troubles and struggles everyday, fighting off thoughts of death and despair. I liked this book, although its not a book you want to read to feel good about yoursef, it will get you depressed!

2003-10-29 (Ronan, MT USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 4

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James Welch: A Critical Companion (Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers)

Description

Through both his fiction and non-fiction writing, James Welch gives voice to the history, heritage, and cultural identity of the American Indian. This companion provides a fascinating exploration of the man, his writing, and the impact and influence of his literary output. With information based on a series of personal interviews conducted for this book, the biographical chapter offers an insightful account of Welch's life as a Blackfoot Indian, and as a poet and novelist.

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Killing Custer: The Battle of Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians

Product Details

• <a title='Condition Guide' href='/content/Condition_and_S hipping_Guide.htm' target='_blank'>Click here to position our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices</a>
• Notes: Kind New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Persuade: NEW
• ISBN13: 9780393329391

Description

The classic account of Custer's Last Stand that shattered the myth of the Little Bighorn and rewrote history books. This historic and personal work tells the Native American side of Custer's fabled attack, poignantly revealing how disastrous the encounter was for the "victors," the last great gathering of Plains Indians under the leadership of Sitting Bull. .

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Customer Reviews

A very balanced book on a tough subject
I really enjoyed James Welch's book for a number of reasons. Most importantly, though, is its objectivity. I had some stereotypes and biases going in (probably still have some coming out, just different) on what a Native American writer would write about this conflict. I think I expected a straight-forward story with different good guys and bad guys than the history I had read in the past. What I found instead was a book where there really are no good guys.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone exploring this portion of history and especially for those who will be visiting the memorials and battlefields associated with it. It will tend to lend an air of objectivity and context to the slanted views at the museums throughout the West. This was a tough time in the history of both nations, the United States and the various Native Tribes. James Welch understands this and lays out the stories and facts to help us understand.

2010-02-14 | author of &#34;The Middle Fork: finding significance in a forested valley&#34; (Redmond, WA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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Gifted artistry and perception
Let's get something straight. Nothing new can possibly be written on Custer and the Battle of Little Big Horn. Every shadow, contemporary account and hidden ridge have been combed over. The truth is there and the mystery is solved. So it was with great surprise while reading James Welch's "Killing Custer" I discovered a few interesting perspectives not yet studied, and what a refreshing contemplation this is.

Welch, an accomplished Native American writer of the Blackfeet tribe in Montana, was initially a reluctant participant in the superb documentary American Experience: Last Stand at Little Big Horn directed by Paul Stekler. He became a dedicated activist in the film's cause and this book is a result of his own spiritual examination. The documentary, first broadcast on PBS in 1992, recounts the battle and aggressive eastern encroachment through the eyes of Native American descendants of the Lakota, Cheyenne and Crow. The film was an earnest attempt to emphasize stories of the people attacked by Custer and the 7th Cavalry, who essentially made a last stand for their culture.

Welch accurately notes how most Native Americans roll their eyes at America's obsession with this battle. He cuts through the mythology and tells his version without military glorification. As Welch states, Custer's plan was to kill Indians, and when he rode down into that valley in 1876, he planned to kill as many as quickly as possible. Welch's version of the battle is largely inspired by Native American accounts handed down through generations. It's a harsh rendition, having little to do with Errol Flynn or Hollywood (They Died with Their Boots On), owing much to the brutal realities of prehistoric battle and human flight. Men panicked, men retreated, men ran for their lives.

One of Welch's great contributions to history is his investigation and discovery of a forgotten episode, also noted in his brilliant work Fools Crow (Contemporary American Fiction). He recounts a massacre in 1870 on the Marias River where more than 170 Native American women, children and old men were mistakenly slaughtered by the military, a heinous act having much in common with the now infamous Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado (Finding Sand Creek: History, Archeology, And the 1864 Massacre Site). In "Killing Custer," he goes so far as to track down the forgotten location of the battle, asking a local rancher for directions. Today, people now regularly visit the Marias Massacre site, leaving gifts and contemplating the treatment of Native American people during these killing wars of the 19th century. If Welch had one great achievement during his life (much to my sadness when writing this post, I discovered he passed away in 2003), in addition to his extraordinary body of writing (Winter in the Blood (Penguin Classics), Heartsong), it was his refusal to allow these victims to be forgotten. This senseless massacre was swept under the rug by the U.S. government. Welch rips up the carpet for all to see.

The strength of "Killing Custer" is not necessarily his own portrayal of the Battle of Little Big Horn, which is interesting. It's his modern day account of his travels with Stekler in an old station wagon as they drive from location to location, conducting often times difficult interviews with ancestors of battle participants. Welch is essentially Stekler's guide, and they visit Lodge Grass, Lame Deer, Hardin and numerous other towns and historic locales dotting the husky Montana landscape. They stay in motels having not seen the slightest renovation since the 1950s and find pockets of unique souls little changed since the early 20th century - elder cowboys watching black and white TV, seathing tribal elders with boxes of historical artifacts, Crow farmers weary of tourists and endless flows of documentary filmmakers. This is a land rarely explored, revealing modern-day Native Americans having suffered lives of alcoholism, U.S. military duty and eventual redemption to preserve their culture.

Welch's considerable observations, in many ways a journal, are poetic and insightful. He recounts Sitting Bull's famous sundance (Sitting Bull: His Life and Legacy), where on the banks of the Rosebud he danced two days before having visions of soldiers falling into camp. Custer, en route to his Little Big Horn destruction, came across the site and the signs terrified his Crow scouts. A huge tree trunk used in the ceremony, painted multiple colors, remained many years after the battle, eventually paved over when a highway was constructed. Other anecdotes, including Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West was not one of the many books sold at the battlefield gift shop, are enlightening.

Welch's "Killing Custer" is not particularly interested in the legend of of the golden haired general who loved to charge, but in the stories of the Native Americans he rode down into the valley to kill. He recounts their agony and the lives of their descendants living near the battlefield to this day. It is Welch's inspiring vision, told with gifted artistry and perception. One of my favorite books written about the battle, and I have read many of them.

2010-01-29 | Chris Kent (Dallas, TX) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Fascinating Read
This book provides a non-mainstream perspective on the Battle of Little Bighorn. It is well written and easy to read.

2009-11-02 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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I wish I didn't pay full price for this
The author should have stuck with writing novels. Too much purple prose and overblown emotion. He should have stuck more to the facts, done better research, and wrote to an adult audience. I feel cheated.

2009-04-27 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 1

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a lot of army vs indians history
James Welch, a Blackfeet/Gros Ventre novelist, turns his hand to history after writing a screen play on the same topic, The Battle of the Little Bighorn.
The book is very smoothly written and easy to read and follow; there are maps and photos to augment the text.
For anyone interested in the events which led up to "Custer's Last Stand" and more importantly to the effect it had on Native Americans this book provides a great deal of understanding.
Welch has the wisdom to write for his readers, some white, some not and maintains a clear eye throughout without devolving into blame or distortion.
The book is particularly interesting if you have been to or plan to go to the National Monument in southeastern Montana , an hour north of Sheridan , WY and the Bighorn Mountains.
The site has a moving quality to it, bare hills with white markers for fallen soldiers flanked by steep gullies leading down to the valley floor where a three mile long village of Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho gathered in late June 1876.

2008-04-19 | Helpful Votes: 9 | Rating: 5

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