Abstract
T HE RENAISSANCE in Indian writing in the past fifteen years has produced some fine fiction, but raised some disturbing questions. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, and James Welch's Winter in the Blood and The Death of Jim Loney,' are impressive novels, but what is the picture they paint of Indians? At first glance the protagonists appear to be a sorry lot: they are alienated, not only from white society, but even from their own tribe. They are incapable of attachments to lovers, friends or relatives-their closest ties are to those in the grave. They are passive, drifting without job or goal, drinking heavily. When they snap out of their torpor they commit acts of violence. They are loners without wife or family, and although they have relationships with women, they cannot seem to make these last, or do not want to. And, they are losers, very maladroit at surviving in either white or tribal society. Welch's description of his narrator could be extended to all three protagonists:
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