the sooner magazine r pettee's belles lettres and bell

1933

rBelles lettres and bell ringers

John Joseph Mathews. Wah'Kon-Tah .The Osage and the White Man's Road,Norman . University of Oklahoma Press,1932, $2.50.

FOR three hundred yearsAnglo-Americans and Indians have livedside by side on the American continentwithout in the least understanding eachother. To the American the Indian hasbeen, according to circumstances, a fero-cious, blood-thirsty savage, an opportun-ity for getting rich quick, a hopeless de-generate or a noble, though untutoredchild of nature . Many of these miscon-ceptions developed as a result of the cir-culation of popular literature, which maybe divided into three groups : to the firstgroup belong books of the FenimoreCooper-Longfellow school, whose Indiansare possessed of super-human physicalprowess and nobility of soul ; to the sec-ond, the wild-west classics of the stripeof Colonel Prentiss Ingram (the Colonelwill be remembered for having immortal-ized that noble sentiment "Bang, bang,another pesky redskin bit the dust") ; tothe third belong the realists who see orprofess to see in the Indian of the pres-ent day a hopeless misfit, doomed to ex-tinction by a civilization which he can-not understand and of which he is cap-able of absorbing only the vices. It issafe to say that even the Santa Fe group,who write with both intelligence andsympathy, have generally fallen into oneor the other of these errors .There are, however, four men in the

United States who are engaged in givingto the world a new conception of theIndian, a conception which takes him athis own valuation, that is, as a man, anormal human being living, not only anormal life, but the only normal lifepossible in his peculiar environment, ahuman being no better and no worsethan his white brother, but different .Three of these four men live in Okla-homa and it is due to their efforts thatOklahoma is rapidly becoming recog-nized as the center of the most interest-ing phase of the flourishing regional de-velopment of literature . The most re-cent of these additions to the list of au-thorities on the Indian is John JosephMathews, '20, whose book Wah'Kon-Tah, published in November by the Uni-versity of Oklahoma Press, was chosen

The Sooner Magazine

as the Book-of-the-Month Club offeringfor that month.Mr Mathews, whose career in the Uni-

versity of Oklahoma was interrupted bythe World war, training for which earnedhim a lieutenant's commission in the airservice (without however gaining himthe longed for over-seas service) gradu-ated from the university in 1920 . Aftergraduation he spent three years in Ox-ford, taking a degree from Merton col-lege, and rounded out his education byconsiderable travel in Europe and NorthAfrica .He is himself, descended from the fa-

mous old trapper-mountain man, Wil-liam Shirley Williams, better known asOld Bill Williams, a compadre of KitCarson and Jim Bridger, who about 1820married a member of the Osage tribe.On his mother's side his blood is Nor-man French . Thus he has behind himthe tradition of the American frontier,of the haughty Osage and of the sturdyyet dreamy French . But he is also ascholar and a thinker, steeped in the cul-ture of two continents, and he is in hisown right a poet and an artist in the useof words.From his boyhood he was imbued with

a love for the greatness of his Indiankinsmen; it was their stories that heloved to hear by the campfire, it wastheir games that he preferred to play onthe hills and prairies of the Osage nation .When Major Laban J. Miles, the gentle,fearless, capable agent of the Osages,died in 1930 he left his diary and notes,the result of fifty years of service to hisIndian wards, to young Mathews, whoproceeded to shut himself up in his ranchhome and devote a year to developingthem into this book . It will be remem-bered that Major Miles was an uncle ofPresident Hoover and that Hoover spentsome time as an orphan boy on the Osagereservation .

Here, then, is a book about Indianswhich is absolutely different from theordinary impressionistic account, writtenby an Indian who is separated from hispeople far enough to have a sane per-spective, yet who is near enough to main-tain his perfect sympathy and under-standing ; a man who is, moreover, notmerely educated but cultured . It has lit-tle to do with the spectacular phases ofIndian life, it does not deal in battles,wild rides, or ferocity but in Osage re-ligion, states of mind, spiritual greatness ;

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PRAISE

OLIVER LA FARGE (author ofLaughing Boy)-"As a story ofIndians it is in a class by itself . . .a delight to read ."

HENRY SEIDEL CANBY-"Arare achievement-the capture inwords of a vanished life ."

THE NEW REPUBLIC - "In-fused with life and beauty ."

TIME-"A first book, Mathews'work reads like the matured wis-dom of a man civilized but un-spoiled."

LEWIS GANNETT-"A bookwith a flavor all its own."

H. E. WI LDES (Phila . Ledger)-"Human and deeply understand-ing."

STANLEY VESTAL-"His In-dians are genuine, his scenes ex-citing, his descriptions sheerpoetry."

360 pages, illustrated-a de-lightful story to read- acharming book to give. Print-ings have reached 50,000 cop-ies . At all bookstores. ,2.50

?WAN'KON-TAHby JOHN JOSEPH MATHEWS,'20

University of Oklahoma Press, Norman

The Sooner Magazine

in one word it is the soul of the Indianwhich appears in these pages. It is theinward being of a proud and essentiallynoble race of human beings who sud-denly find their culture destroyed, theirroots torn out, who were faced by anoutlandish civilization which they couldnot understand and which they feltwith all the patient scorn of their race, tobe in many respects inferior to their own.And yet, it is neither a document of

protest against the abuses of the whiteman nor a plea for sympathy . It haspathos but it is not pathetic . For theseIndians, as Mr Mathews shows them tous, while they may be said to be un-civilized, had yet achieved the ultimatedesideratum of all civilization-theyknew how to live . Differing from thewhite man who is never content to ac-cept his environment without changingit and thereby destroying in large meas-ure not only its beauty but its utility,they had succeeded in living themselvesinto their environment so that they be-came a constituent part of it ; they metlife unafraid because they were a partof the universe ; they met death unafraidbecause they were the children of Wah'Kon-Tah-the Great Mysteries-God .

All of this richness, this spiritual self-sufficiency which lifts itself so far abovethe pettiness which mars so much of ourAmerican civilization is brought to afocus in the life of Major Miles. Hedevoted his life to the problem of con-serving what was best in the Osage char-acter and culture, at the same time striv-ing to impart to his proteges what isbest in American civilization . But thegreat charm of the book lies in its ap-proach to the character of the Indiansthemselves, a full and lucid interpreta-tion of their mysticism, their uprightness,their essential manliness . Add to this,that the book is written in prose poetry,a style which is fresh, vigorous, capableof the utmost emotional stress, of ma-jestic dignity and of an ethereal beauty .As Wah'Kon-Tah is a document whoseauthenticity cannot be impeached, it isalso a literary monument which deservcsa very high, if not the highest place, inthe literature of the Indian.-KENNETHC. KAUFMAN.

Trend of business

Arthur B. Adams. Trend of Business,1922-1932 : Causes of the Depression andEconomic Reforms Necessary to Estab-lish a Business Equilibrium . Harperand Brothers . New York . 1932 . $1.75and 75 cents .

The effects of the industrial revolutionfirst attracted attention to the businesscycle, and various explanations have beengiven of this ever recurring and chang-ing phenomenon. There are those whohave sought an explanation in a preced-

Shorter mention

January

ing series of causes, invariably the same,which result in certain effects ; depression,recovery, prosperity, a crisis, and againdepression . In his disagreement withthis explanation of the business cycle,Dean Adams is a pathfinder .

In the first place, he emphasizes theever changing nature of our economiclife . Each business cycle is entirely dis-tinct in its fundamentals from all pre-ceding cycles . After World war effectsare reflected strongly in the economicconditions of 1922-1932 .

In the second place, in his explanationof the business cycle, Dean Adams em-phasizes a balance of production andpurchasing power. A lack of balance,which results necessarily in business de-pression, may arise in two ways . Whenthe part of the national money incomegoing to workers is not large enough toenable them to buy at prevailing prices,the consumers' goods which are unsoldtend to pile up in the market . Whenthe part of the national money incomegoing to the property owners is too large,these owners overexpand and over cap-italize their industries .

Recovery necessitates a return to a bal-anced economic life . Increased realwages, reduction of profits, restrictionson corporate activities and changes infinancial and other economic institutionsin prosperity and in depression, are eval-uated in the light of their effects uponrecovery. The author sees the necessityfor many governmental restrictions andregulations .The study of business cycles is a high-

ly technical one. All too frequently thereader is discouraged by finely drawnand usually meaningless distinctions .Dean Adams, however. has successfullyavoided these pitfalls . The book is writ-ten in a simple style, but excellent fac-tual material and logical statementcrowd its pages. One student of thesubject has said : "It is the best expla-nation of the cause of the depressionthat I have seen ." The proposals foreconomic recovery, also, are of import-ance in the formulation of governmentalpolicy .-FREDERICK L. RYAN, Universityof Oklahoma .

That the second Mrs Wilson was theprincipal reason for the break betweenPresident Wilson and Colonel House isthe theory advanced by George SylvesterViereck in The Strangest Friendship inHistory, published by Liveright, Inc., at$3 .

Medics may be interested in the eighty-page pamphlet of the New York CityCancer Committee called Cancer : Thenand Now. It is free and may be had ofthe Chemical Foundation, New YorkCity .