| Title | : | Fools Crow |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0140089373 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780140089370 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 400 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1986 |
| Awards | : | American Book Award (1987), Los Angeles Times Book Prize Fiction (1987) |
The story is a powerful portrait of a fading way of life. The story culminates with the historic Marias Massacre of 1870, in which the U.S. Cavalry mistakenly killed a friendly band of Blackfeet, consisting mostly of non-combatants.
"A major contribution to Native American literature." -- Wallace Stegner.
Fools Crow Reviews
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Welch is a fantastic writer with a unique voice who has perfectly captured the feeling of the lives of a band of Native Americans during the late 1800s. There is comfort and brutality in this novel, heartache and heartbreak. A monumental feat.
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Introduction
--Fools Crow
Map -
I found this a very powerful novel dramatising the cultural clash between the Pikuni Blackfeet Native Americans and the more powerful and advanced American settlers called "Napikwans" by the Blackfeet.
I found the detailed description of the vanished life style of the tribe immensely interesting. I would tend to agree with the introduction by Thomas Mcguane when he makes the point that “Tribalism is now accepted as a societal model best left to history. . . .” But he also states that “. . . it helps to see what is lost when cultures evolve and our relationships to one another are blurred.” And James Welch very movingly does let us see the losses that come with the destruction of a way of life that allows a people to live in a more profound relationship with Nature than we seem unable to emulate.
The novel deals with profound issues and the central character, Fools Crow, is very vividly realised. He starts as an uncertain young man, becomes a warrior and finally a mystic. Other characters are equally convincing. In fact, probably the great central cry of the novel is in the following passage. Fools Crow's father is speaking to another chief, Three Bears.
“We will lose our grandchildren, Three Bears. They will be wiped out or they will turn into Napikwans. Already some of our children attend their school at the agency. Our men wear trousers and the women prefer the trade-cloth to skins. We wear their blankets, cook in their kettles, and kill the blackhorns with their bullets. Soon our young women will marry them. . . .
And the reply he gets from Three Bears offers no consolation.
“I am an old man and I see things I do not like. . . I see the signs all around me. Many of you young men go off on their own. They do not listen to their chiefs. They drink the white man’s water and kill each other. Some of the our young women already stand around the forts, waiting to fornicate with the seizers for a drink of this water. They become ugly before their time, and then they are turned out like old cows to forage for themselves. . . We live many sleeps from these places of ruin. But the day will come when our people will decide that they would rather consort with the Napikwans than live in the ways our long-ago fathers thought appropriate. But I, Three Bears, will not see this day. I will die first.” -
A wonderful, compelling story of change and misunderstandings.
The arrival of the White Man to the Plains of America brought changes to the Pikuni Natives in ways that they could not understand or were given the time to adapt to. The results, as we know, were disastrous (to all Native Americans).
The story of Fools Crow shows the desire to live in peace, with all people, and their confusion at the worsening of their situation through no fault of their own.
This is a well told and thoughtful story of a time of change and instability. -
The last several weeks I’ve spent picking up various books that have been forgotten on my bookshelf for some time now, only to put them down one after another having read only a few pages and becoming distracted. My life has felt so out of control lately that it’s been hard for me to even concentrate on my beloved stories. Until I picked up Fools Crow, that is, and I couldn’t put it down.
I’m a believer in the notion that we usually get what we need when we need it; and that it stays until we’ve learned all that we’re intended to learn (pleasant or otherwise). It’s no secret that I have been learning some unpleasant lessons lately, so I am thankful for this dark but heartening book with a message that I’ve so needed to hear.
As a side note, it’s no wonder to me that the books that have the most relevant message for me at any particular time in my life are the books that captivate my attention where others fail. There are no bad books; timing is the key.
Anyhow, the story of Fools Crow reminds me that our lives are, by nature, incredibly messy and uncertain. We are all prone to lose track of ourselves and our purpose every now and then; even to question the meaning of life itself when we are presented with obstacles that seem insurmountable and unreal in their cruelty.
But there is meaning. There is hope. And part of the beauty of it all is the relationship of lightness and dark; suffering and joy; pain and growth; life and death. Our choice is to adapt to the bad and wait for the good, or give in and let the world overwhelm us. -
If you are interested in reading this book -- or might be interested -- or have no interest -- you should read J.K.'s outstanding review. It may lead you to tracking down a copy to see for yourself just how good it is.
J.K.'s review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... -
I loved this book. It is Native American history from a Native American viewpoint. Knowing what is going to happen, reading about this part of the Blackfeet tribe was bitter sweet. At the beginning, we get to see what day to day life was like before the settlers came in large numbers to take the land and make the buffalo extinct. It wasn't romanticized. We see violence between tribes, the possibility of starvation, the physical pain involved in certain rituals. But we also feel the deep connection between human beings, the earth, the animals. By the end, we see what is coming: the death of so many people, whether through small pax, forced marches, direct murder, etc.
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A very interesting book for me, and one I am very glad to have read. The "native-indian" style of writing (in which days are counted in terms of sleeps, months in terms of moons, seasons in terms of the expected arrival of Cold Maker, and so on) plunges the reader immediately inside the Lone Eaters camps, and there are so many little details that provide a very vivid picture of what life was like for the Indian Blackfoot Tribes at the end of the 19th century, how they felt, what made their society click and turn.
For this alone I think Welch well deserved all the praise he got for this novel. But in terms of narrative, to me it felt perhaps too preoccupied with using the characters to provide the information, and in this way they come around somewhat flat. Many of the characters are wisdom and patience personified, and in this the novel seems to perpetuate the mith of the "good savage" which I find hard to swallow especially as what is portraied is a society in which superstition is so engrained. In many ways this novel reminds me of Achebe's
Things Fall Apart, which is however much more edgy and convincing. -
A very valuable read. Written in 1986 by a Blackfoot author, it seems to be an authentic portrayal of life among what we Canadians would label the Piikani First Nation (although the book is set in Montana around 1870), in their dying days of living independently upon the bison that were shortly to be eradicated. More than showing their lives though, it shows a worldview in marked constrast to that of the white traders/soldiers and settlers, then and now. It particularly resonated with me because I recently saw the powerful play ‘Okotoks’ performed by the Treaty Seven Society, and learned about the Baker Massacre of a group of these people, one sad part of the future that the protagonist Fools Crow sees drawn-out before him in a vision in the later part of the book.
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Exceptional writing. The story of a Blackfoot warrior from the days and years farther back. Realistically told and mystically told by Welch who himself is Blackfoot on the Montana side.
The Blackfoot reside principally in Montana and Alberta. They live close to Glacier Park on the US side and Waterton Lakes Park on the CAN side. Their sacred height is Chief Mountain which dominates the landscape in southwestern Alberta and northwestern Montana. -
LOVE THIS BOOK! James Welch has left me speechless once again. It's hard to say all that I liked about this novel. Not only did it show you the lives of the Blackfeet, it sucked you in and made you feel like you were there. It's make you feel like your catching all this on camera. It was wonderfully written. In some twisted way it was like a soap opera, but more realistic. I'm not sure if that's a compliment or not...
The book is mostly about Fools Crow and his tribe. It starts off when Fools Crow was just named White Man's Dog and he's pretty much the tribe "loser", because he has no luck or anything. It starts off a little slow, but it picks up after a couple chapters. The story is wonderfully written. There are no words to describe it.
There were only two things I didn't like about this book. One, they killed my favorite character off...I can't say who it was, but I was VERY upset. It happens a lot though, my favorite character usually dies if it isn't the main character. If its a side character, the writer loves to kill him/her off. And two, I hate how Mr. Welch jumps the narration around in the middle of a chapter, it bugs me. I tend to get confused on who's thinking what for a moment. But that's it.
All-in-all, I was not let down. These type of stories tend to be very hard to write. You need a level of understanding of the culture and of the people who lived in those times. James Welch did a fantastic job! I think everyone should read this book. It shows more than one viewpoint of the issues in those days and it shows a different culture many people haven't been introduced to. Now I'm just waiting for a novel like this to be about my Creek people. I haven't found one that really makes me speechless like this novel did. I grant this book 5 stars! WOOT WOOT! -
James Welch was a gifted American writer and one of the best to realistically depict the culture of the modern-day Plains Indians. After reading one of James Welch's earlier books, I put off reading any other books for years. They are hard to read in that they are excellently written but give such a sense of despair. Fool's Crow is not quite the same as the others - more of a look back at the Blackfeet before the white man entered the scene ... but towards the end the foreboding and sense of loss are there as well.
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Beautifully written, culturally immersive, powerful, and devastatingly heartbreaking. It felt like a hundred different stories in one. Really loved this book. Wow.
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This is the book you need to read if you want to come at me asking about books that sum up Montana, or the West, America, or any of that garbage lit people like to hump each others' legs over.
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It's always interesting to go back and re-read a book that piqued your interest in something. I read Fools Crow in 2012 for a Non-Western Literature course during my undergraduate study as an English Literature student and it was this book that set me on the course I am following today as a first year PhD student in English Literature. It was Fools Crow that woke me up, that made me question everything I knew and set me out on a journey where the questions far out-numbered the answers.
This time, I'm reading the book in preparation for a class in Great Plains literature - and this book (along with Charcoal's World and Waterlily) are the introductory texts for the first week in class. Already, after just reading 2 of the 3, I can see the connections and the timeline and the ways through which our discussion will be framed. Still, I couldn't help but notice the power of dreams throughout Fool's Crow and, after reading Waterlily, their significance stuck out even more.
For all the tragedy in Fool's Crow, there is also beauty - beauty in the way the Pikuni people perform their kinship and loyalty, beauty in the rituals (medicine, marriage, sacred), and beauty in their names. I mean, I cannot get over how perfectly the names fit with who they were in their lives.
Fools Crow also hints at, although it does not fully explore, the budding residential school system. It interacts directly with the forming treaties, and also points out just how futile those flimsy pieces of written word are when put up against a regiment or group of "Napikwans" who are fully armed and out for blood.
Welch does not write for an audience who needs their hand held while reading. He writes in a way that demands you step into his arena and you listen to the stories of the Pikuni people on the pages.
-------------- 2012 review ----------------------
Fools Crow by James Welch is an historical novel which culminates in the Baker (or Marias) Massacre of 1870. For those who are unfamiliar with this massacre it was the end result of a series of events involving the Pikuni Owl Child and Major Eugene Baker. The slaughter covered 217 of the Pikuni, most of whom were women and children.
In Fools Crow, we're introduced to White Man's Dog, a young Pikuni man who has yet to distinguish himself within the tribe. Through a series of events, the major characters of the book are introduced to White Man's Dog, and in a sort of coming-of-age story, we follow the progress not only of White Man's Dog, but also the Pikuni tribe as they struggle against the changes being brought by the United States Government.
Fools Crow provides eye-opening examples of the importance of dreams to the Pikuni culture, the horrors of assimilation of one culture into another, and the injustice of the actions against the Native Americans during the building of the United States as we know it.
Reading this book should be done slowly and thoughtfully, as the story itself (while interesting) holds so many meanings revealed through careful inspection of the dreams and connections drawn from them to the narrative. -
3.5 stars. This is an older book, first published in 1986, and it was good but felt like a familiar story. It is about a young Blackfeet Indian named Fools Crow. It is set in the late 1800’s as the way of life of the Blackfeet was coming to an end. The story follows Fools Crow from a young man to early adulthood. As a Native American, I find these books hard to read because they make me sad.
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This is the troublesome three-star review that is so hard to write. I enjoyed the book, but it didn't inspire any tremendous feelings in me. I feel bad about that, because it deals with some really weighty topics that are very important to my country's history, and I wish this book affected me more.
Unfortunately, I think if the same book had been written by a different author, it could have been great. The pacing was strange and dragged from time to time, drifting into dream territory. And the characterization could have been turned up a few notches, because I didn't get to know anybody in a truly intimate way.
There wasn't anything terribly wrong with this book; but there wasn't anything terribly great about it either. -
*4.25
This is really an amazing story! -
The end really hit me 😭
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I liked some things about this book but disliked others. It is a historical fiction novel set in the 1870s, and the title character's clan belongs to the Blackfeet tribe. His name is White Man's Dog in the first part of the book but gains a new name later with his changing reputation. The author grew up as a member of the Blackfeet and so can be considered an authority on that culture. The book is beautifully written, and social mores and customs vividly rendered.
Within the story, there are women are generally disrespected even if the male characters express affection for particular women. Women are expected to get married very young, fifteen or sixteen, after very little interaction with their future husband. Men take three or four wives, and can marry again without the support of existing wives. Rape is normalized, as is cutting off the nose or ears of wives who offend their husbands. About 90% of the conversations in the book are between men, and most of the rest are between a man and a woman. I can think of only one conversation that was between two women. In that conversation and in the internal dialogue of the few female characters the focus is on the men in their life or on their children. Self-sacrifice in service of male honor (self-mutilation, fasting, physical labor while pregnant) is enthusiastically embraced by women. I don't know enough about any Native American cultures to say whether or not this authentically depicts gender relations. It did occur to me that since this book was written in the 1980s, some conservative ideas of gender from that era may have colored how characters are portrayed in the book. At any rate, misogyny is not challenged at all in the book. No characters push back against the system or express any discomfort with it.
The central focus of the story is on Fools Crow as he grows to manhood. He is 17 or so at the beginning of the story, which covers a few years. He worries a lot about maintaining personal integrity and living the right kind of life. This goal is complicated by the encroachment of whites, which has some of the younger men insisting on violent resistance. There are several incidents of violence against white women, while only at the end of the book is there a massacre of a Blackfeet village. This incident is based on a historic event, but the way it is rendered in the book it seems to be a natural consequence of the young Blackfeet rampages. Throughout the story people are also seeking out white trade goods more and more. Older members of the tribe lament that people now want flashy fabrics and steel implements as opposed to ones they make themselves. I remember hearing this explanation previously, blaming lack of willpower for Native American dependence on white materials. More recent histories however argue that it is more accurate to describe this dependence as a result of reduced numbers in the face of epidemics. Many Native American groups just didn't have the manpower to create as many artifacts as before, and instead had to focus on acquiring enough food and shelter. In a few places the author also mentions Blackfeet children who are attending mission schools. The European haircut and clothing of the children is commented on as is some mild sadness at their disconnection with their own culture. These were local Jesuit day schools - the book doesn't cover the period within a decade or two when children started being kidnapped and taken to far-off boarding schools.
I hoped to find some articles about changing views of this novel, but I haven't found much yet. It was a groundbreaking novel for its time, but prefer more recent Native American literature. -
Depressing as fuck but really interesting
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I found this book very frustrating. There's a great deal of wonderful material in it. Poignant. Funny. Deep. But, ultimately, it feels to me like a rock-solid first draft, not a cohesive whole.
Dramatic, important storylines vanish without a trace for chapters upon chapters, only to re-appear and be brushed aside as an afterthought. Major characters fade away without adequate resolution. Exposition comes far too late, as if a friend of Welch commented that something wasn't clear in the beginning, so he inserted it into the chapter he happened to be writing. For that matter, Welch does a very poor job of orienting the reader to the world he's writing in, frequently refusing to use the plain English word for something when an awkward and crude pidgin will do instead, despite the fact that the book is written in English. 400 pages of novel later, I still don't know what member of the animal kingdom is a "bighead" and which canid is the "wags-his-tail." Add into that the generally weak characterization for the majority of the dramatis personae, and you've got a recipe for a hopelessly confused and dissatisfied reader.
But you can't just dismiss this novel. Ultimately, the portrayal of the last gasp of Plains Indian culture is deeply moving. We do care about these characters, for all their strengths and weaknesses, and we feel their outrage as their world collapses around them.
If this book were published today, we would no doubt classify it as a fantasy, as we do with all books -- regardless of their actual genre -- that portray a non-Christian religion as real (e.g.
Jo Walton's coming-of-age novel
Among Others). These are some of the most moving parts of the novel, as White Man's Dog / Fools Crow delves deeper and deeper into the world of the supernatural to come to grips with what is happening around him. The imagery is strong, and the portrayal of Raven is especially engaging.
And yet, the novel wanders, with interminable passages describing minutia that have little bearing on the story (and do nothing to orient the reader to the world) bogging down the parts where it really soars.
I know many consider this a classic as-is, but to me it feels like it desperately needs a revision and trimming to bring out its full potential. -
This bildungsroman and historical novel focuses on the life of Fools Crow, formerly known as White Man’s Dog, as he grows into manhood and learns the spiritual knowledge of his tribe of Blackfeet, the Pikunis. The novel’s time period starts sometime after the Civil War and culminates in the Marias Massacre of 1870. Fools Crow’s task is to preserve his native culture’s ways from the coming holocaust of white invasion. The novel includes real-life characters such as Mountain Chief, Owl Child, Malcolm Clarke and Joe Kipp. While the novel centers on Fools Crow’s personal quest, the story offers a sweeping panoramic vision of the tribe and its customs. It charts the visions, dreams, and even petty jealousies of members of the tribe as they try to make sense of coming destruction of their way of life through warfare and crippling diseases. Some members, mostly the young, want to fight the whites. Others, mostly the elders, want as much as possible to make peace. Fools Crow’s task is to makes sense of the ensuing tragedy and out of the ashes of destruction offer a vision for the future that will restore the tribe to their former way of life, and once again find favor with their gods. He must guide his tribe through these trials while at the same time raise his own family and keep to his spiritual quest.
While the pace of the book can go a bit slowly at times, the scope and grandeur of the novel sweep you along. And while there is much to despair and find anger about, the book does offers a sense of possible re-birth in the vision that Fools Crow has of the post-future. Welch has written a great novel. -
I'll be writing more about this tonight in preparation for tomorrow's test over the book, but off the top of my head, the first words to come to mind about it are "illuminating" and "crushing."
The novel follows the trajectory of Fools Crow, a young Pikuni warrior whose band belongs to the greater Blackfoot Confederacy in the state of Montana shortly after the American Civil War. The narration mainly stays within the world of the Pikunis and as a result, the reader gets a sense of their way of life.
This book captures the uncertainty, anxiety and turmoil that white settlers introduced into the lives of the Blackfeet with their concept of Manifest Destiny and with increased white settlement on Blackfoot lands.
The most fascinating aspect of the novel for me was its depiction of the cosmology and traditions of the Blackfeet people. Every facet of life had a place in their cosmology, and at the time of the novel's setting, this worldview even came to accommodate the catastrophic entrance of whites into the Blackfoot world.
It would be impossible to read this novel and not seriously question the legitimacy of the United States of America as a nation. -
The setting of this novel is the hard times just before the plains tribes fought the Battle of the Greasy Grass with Custer. Welch tells the story of the gradual loss of their hunting lands, the disappearance of the "black-horns" (buffalo), and the death of the Dakota people to the "white scabs disease." "Their time on the plains was numbered." The book really needed an introduction to help readers know that "White Man's Dog" becomes Fools Crow. Is this the same person who's Black Elk's cousin, Frank Fools Crow? Most white people will have trouble reading this book; there are perhaps more characters than a reader can manage. I thought Welch's "The Heart Song of Charging Elk" was a better written novel; I loved it. I enjoyed this one too; it was hard to put down, but I am very interested in the story of the American Indian's loss of their culture. This book nails it as far as Plains Indian culture is concerned.
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The strength of this book is the picture the author is able to draw of what life was like for the Blackfeet Tribe at the end of the 19th century. He vividly portrays their traditional way of living and their dilemma in the face of the incursions being made by white settlers. There is poignancy here and realism and very little romanticizing. We all know the story generally so there is little suspense about what is going to happen; for me it was more a feeling of dread. My interest was in details with which I was unfamiliar. I was particularly interested in the very thin border between our consentual reality and the vision world of the Indians. Their consentual reality included both. Despite the prominent role of history, I found this story to be less dry than much historical fiction, perhaps because we get the everyday events of the characters' lives along with the history.
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When the novel you're reading concerns a band of Blackfoot Indians just after the U.S. Civil War, you know the story isn't going to end well. What astonished me about this book, however, is how captivating its story becomes. The fact that it's packed with wall to wall action, sex and violence doesn't hurt. Nor does its remarkable ability to convey the mystical beliefs of its characters in a manner that is neither condescending nor precious. I came away feeling not that I had experienced a portrait of the Montana Territory in 1850, but that I had lived in it -- and that made the inevitable sense of loss all the more devastating.
