National Indian Youth Council Research Articles

“You’re in apple land but you are a lemon:” Connection, Collaboration, and Division in Early ‘70s Indian Country

In the first years of the 1970s, Indian Country became paradoxically more interwoven and yet also more divided. Three case studies from Oklahoma’s Indigenous communities illustrate this transformation. Beginning in the mid-1960s, a boom in Indigenous media allowed Indigenous people to communicate far more quickly over once prohibitive distances. In western Oklahoma, Southern Cheyenne parents relied upon Navajo ideas to form their own indigenous controlled school in early 1973. As a result of these exchanges between previously removed people, new indigenous communities emerged along ideological lines rather than those of tribal citizenship or ethnic identity. A few months earlier, the National Indian Youth Council’s Oklahoma chapters, one such evolving ideological community out of many in the United States, successfully brought attention to and changed a key state policy affecting indigenous students in public schools. Even as Indigenous activists collaborated with new vigor, corresponding divisions emerged in existing Indigenous communities; Native people began to debate the meaning of the messages new communities popularized. The American Indian Movement attempted to hold its 1973 national convention at Pawnee, Oklahoma, only to find that Indigenous people in the region did not support the gathering as the movement’s leaders anticipated. Together, these three case studies present a portrait of a diverse, indigenous world that facilitated collaboration through Native media yet wrought with emerging ideological schisms.

‘Defenders and Dissidents: Cooks Landing and the Fight to Define Tribal Sovereignty in the Red Power Era’

ABSTRACTThe 'Fish Wars' in the Pacific Northwest during the 1960s and 1970s hold an important yet predictable place within the historiography of the Red Power movement. In standard works, the fish-ins and other protests serve as a prelude to the larger pan-Indian struggle that seized public attention after the occupation of Alcatraz. The fight for treaty fishing rights thus serves as a proving ground for individuals like Hank Adams and organizations like the National Indian Youth Council, thereby shifting our attention from long-running issues and local actors to the events and figures that defined Red Power nationally and internationally. Moreover, historians generally have emphasized the Salish Sea (Puget Sound) region and the conflict among state, federal, and tribal governments rather than contemporaneous debates within and between Native nations. This study highlights several significant but slighted points regarding the Northwest fishing rights controversy. Focusing on Treaty Indians of the Columbia and their resistance to tribal regulation, my analysis illustrates that treaty rights could divide as well as unite Indians on multiple levels; that specific tribal struggles preceded the national pan-Indian movement and proceeded alongside; and that the Fish Wars were a crucial period in the history of tribal state-building.

“Guardians of the Indian Image”: Controlling Representations of Indigenous Cultures in Television

This study enhances existing scholarship on Indigenous media and activism by documenting the strategies Native organizations have historically used to challenge misrepresentation in television. Focusing specifically on the efforts of the National Congress of American Indians, the National Indian Youth Council, and the Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium, this article demonstrates that control of televisual images is a political struggle in which Indigenous activists have repeatedly asserted self-determination through confrontation and collaboration with governing institutions. Historical news sources, organizational reports, legal proceedings, and interviews reveal the motivations for and consistency with which Indigenous activists have attempted to seize control of mediated images. Since the 1960s, Native advocacy groups have initiated petitions, boycotts, and lawsuits to hold lawmakers and federal agencies accountable for misrepresentation. In doing so, these organizations have relied on Indigenous peoples and resources outside of the media industry, including intertribal and interethnic coalitions that supported the broader Red Power movement. Ultimately, these activists have created opportunities for Native peoples to re-present meaningful images of themselves in television. This history of organized resistance to racism in television offers important lessons to activists engaged in the ongoing battle against popular stereotypes and cultural imperialism.

Clyde Warrior: Tradition, Community, and Red Power

The Ponca activist Clyde Warrior came to prominence during a time when a younger generation of American Indians was challenging the established tribal leadership with more radical notions of Indian rights. Warrior, according to his biographer Paul R. McKenzie-Jones, played a leading role in developing the ideology of red power and translating it into a movement, especially with his leadership of the influential National Indian Youth Council (NIYC). Through its focus on Warrior's life, work, and legacy, Clyde Warrior joins a body of literature that locates the origins of the American Indian civil rights movement in the grassroots organizing and political awakening of the 1960s. Warrior's activism was rooted in the belief that American Indians should be able to retain their tribal cultures and traditions while participating in modern American society. Born in 1939, Warrior was raised by his maternal grandparents within the Ponca community in Oklahoma and traveled the American Southwest on the Indian powwow circuit. In the early 1960s Warrior attended college and participated in a series of regional and national conferences and workshops to discuss American Indian issues. It was through these networks that Warrior emerged as a leader of a group of radical native youth who denounced with fiery rhetoric what they saw as weak tribal leadership too willing to accommodate the dominant society. Warrior channeled this energy into support for the NIYC while also joining direct action protests such as the 1964 Washington State fish-ins for treaty rights. By 1966, Warrior was using the term red power and articulating it as a focus on tribal self-determination, or the retention of tribal culture and identity while fostering the social and economic means for American Indian peoples to live as sovereign nations and self-sustaining communities. Warrior's work increasingly came to focus on education as a means of achieving these goals through federal Office of Economic Opportunity programs that promoted culturally relevant curriculums for American Indian students. Warrior died young, in 1968, but the concepts of red power that he developed had a direct influence on both the major shift in U.S. Indian policy initiated by the Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon administrations and the high-profile protests led by such groups as the American Indian Movement in the 1970s.

Clyde Warrior: Tradition, Community, and Red Power. New Directions in Native American Studies Series. By Paul R. McKenzie-Jones.

Clyde Warrior: Tradition, Community, and Red Power. New Directions in Native American Studies Series. By Paul R. McKenzie-Jones. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. xxii + 234 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.) Clyde Warrior (1939–1968) has long deserved a full-length biography, and we can now thank Paul R. McKenzie-Jones for providing one. Warrior was one of the leading young American Indian activists of the 1960s, in part due to his role as founder and leader of the National Indian Youth Council, established in 1961. Along with contemporaries during the red power era, Warrior challenged the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and other Indian leaders and organizations he found overly cautious and conciliatory to non-Indians. Warrior was … jlagrand{at}messiah.edu

Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism by Bradley G. Shreve (review)

Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism by Bradley G. Shreve (review)

Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism

Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism

Nikkei in the Interior West: Japanese Immigration and Community Building, 1882–1945 by Eric Walz

 OHQ vol. 114, no. 2 through the turbulent times of the 1960s and 1970s to the calmer waters of the present. She begins with a profile of Willie Frank, Sr., or “Gramps,” who taught his son the ways of the Nisqually people and inspired him to fight for their rights under the Treaty of Medicine Creek.Heffernan provides just enough historical and legal context to orient general readers, but her relatively thin research on the period before Billy’s birth causes some minor errors and problematic generalizations.In particular, she downplays the fact that Northwest Indians had intentionally violated state law in order to generate test cases decades before the dramatic protests of the 1960s made national news. Although the Frank family was crucial in attracting that attention, they acted within a larger tradition of resistance that stretched back fifty years and reached from Puget Sound to the Columbia River. Heffernan effectively captures the chaotic and sometimes comic scenes that accompanied the “fish wars” on the Nisqually and other Northwest rivers. Drawing extensively from interviews with Frank and other participants in the struggle, she chronicles the escalating battles that culminated in the controversial Boldt Decision in U.S. v. Washington (1974). At times, her reliance on oral history gives the narrative an episodic feel, as if readers are listening to a conversation among people who already know the whole story. It also produces some priceless quotations and anecdotes,such as the revelation that the steelhead Marlon Brando was arrested for catching had actually come from a local seafood company. Those personal stories are complemented by dozens of photographs from tribal archives and private collections, including those of Billy Frank and his close friend Hank Adams. Heffernan gives due credit to Adams, whose involvement with the National IndianYouth Council helped link the local fishing rights struggle to the national Red Power Movement. She also includes a few erstwhile enemies,notably formerWashington governor Dan Evans, who initially opposed the tribes but ultimately aided their efforts to restore the salmon. The second half of the book celebrates Frank’s shift from confrontation to cooperation . A consummate “bridge builder,” he overcame both political obstacles and personal tragediestobecomealeadingproponent of collaborative conservation (p. 175). Frank helped broker the United States–Canada Treaty (1985) and the Timber, Fish, and Wildlife Agreement (1986);and under his leadership,the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission developed into a major player in regional salmon politics. Divisions within and among tribes are alluded to but never fully explained in Heffernan’s account,which steadfastly accentuates the positive ; yet she does not sugarcoat the challenges still facing the fish. As habitat loss continues and the climate warms, Frank laments that everyone is “still talking about the salmon problem. It never seems to get done, and we’re running out of time”(p. 260). Frank has never been one to quit, though, and Heffernan’s book honors his dedication to ensuring a future for native fish and Native cultures in the Northwest. Andrew H. Fisher The College of William & Mary Nikkei in the Interior West: Japanese Immigration and Community building, 1882–1945 by Eric Walz University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2012. Maps, photos. 264 pages. $50.00 cloth. You should read this book. The story of Japanese Americans on the Pacific Coast during the first half of the twentieth century often has been told. Usually, the sequence of topics goes like this: a background on Meiji Japan; the forces that led to emigration; the frontier period when Japanese men traveled theAmeri-  Reviews can West and worked in the forests and fields; the era of settling, when they brought wives, made farms and businesses, and had children; the rise of the second generation; incarceration during World War II; and denouement. On the other hand, the story of the smaller numbers of Japanese Americans who lived inland from the coast, in places such as Utah, Colorado,andWyoming,has seldom been told. Eric Walz joins a very short list of historians — Hiram Kano (A History of the Japanese in Nebraska, 1984), Thomas Walls (The Japanese Texans, 1987), Bill Hosokawa (Colorado’s Japanese Americans, 2005), and Robert T. Hayashi (Haunted by Waters, 2007) — who have addressed the subject. Walz is...

ReviewRed Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism. New Directions in Native American Studies Series. Foreword by Shirley Hill Witt. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. xiii + 275 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.) Bradley G. Shreve

ReviewRed Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism. New Directions in Native American Studies Series. Foreword by Shirley Hill Witt. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011. xiii + 275 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95.) Bradley G. Shreve

Review: Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism, by Bradley G. Shreve

Review: <i>Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism</i>, by Bradley G. Shreve

Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism (review)

Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism (review)

Bradley G. Shreve . Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism . Foreword by Shirley Hill Witt . (New Directions in Native American Studies, number 5.) Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2011. Pp. xviii, 275. $34.95.

Bradley G. Shreve . Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism . Foreword by Shirley Hill Witt . (New Directions in Native American Studies, number 5.) Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 2011. Pp. xviii, 275. $34.95.

Red power rising: the National Indian Youth Council and the origins of Native activism

P revious treatments of “Red Power” and Native American activism in the 1960s and 1970s began their histories with the occupation of Alcatraz, lionized the male leadership of the American Indian Movement (AIM), or characterized Native activism as inspired by or derivative of the other “power” movements of the time period. Shreve challenges such portrayals by detailing the development of the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), an organization of Native activists responsible for sparking two decades of grassroots and national activism in the mid-twentieth century. Using exhaustive archival sources and interviews with several key activists, he contextualizes the NIYC within a broader history of intertribal organizing, and traces its inception, development, key personalities, and controversies. In doing so, Shreve provides persuasive evidence that indigenous activism in the mid-century United States not only predates AIM and the Alcatraz occupation but also must be understood within the larger flow of 20th century Native American history. Doing so deepens and complicates our understandings of Native American activism at mid-century and prevents us from stereotyping “Red Power” as derivative of contemporaneous activist movements. After reviewing intertribal and Native youth organizing in the early twentieth century in the first two chapters, Shreve’s next two deal with the foundational years of the NIYC. His fifth chapter details NIYC’s successful involvement with the fish-ins of the Pacific Northwest, while chapters six and seven reveal an association of activists struggling to balance grassroots activism with their status as a national organization, and militancy with the need for institutionalization. The final chapter and epilogue follow the NIYC after the push for organization won out over militancy as the late 1970s saw legislative and legal successes for Native communities and the 1980s produced a sharp right turn in national politics. Shreve succeeds in asserting that the development of the NIYC is essential to understanding Native activism in the twentieth century. By Book Reviews 155

Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism

Red Power Rising: The National Indian Youth Council and the Origins of Native Activism

"From Time Immemorial": The Fish-in Movement and the Rise of Intertribal Activism

This article explores the fish-in movement of the 1960s, uncovering the roots of modern intertribal activism. Fish-ins as intertribal activism began in March 1964 when the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) brought together Native people in the Pacific Northwest and beyond to protest the arrests of local Native fishermen whom Washington State game officials charged with violating conservation laws and fishing out of season. The NIYC contended that the wardens had violated Native peoples' right to fish at "all usual and accustomed places" as guaranteed by federal treaties. Modeled after African American student sit-ins, fish-ins were a form of civil disobedience designed to produce arrests, garner media attention, and highlight abrogated rights. Tapping recently opened archives, including NIYC Records, Washington State Sportsmen's Council Papers, and the Frederick Haley Papers, the article posits that NIYC fish-ins represent the first example of intertribal direct action and the beginning of the Red Power Movement.

Native activism in Cold War America: the struggle for sovereignty

The heyday of American Indian activism is generally seen as bracketed by the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969 and the Longest Walk in 1978; yet Native Americans had long struggled against federal policies that threatened to undermine tribal sovereignty and self-determination. This is the first book-length study of American Indian political activism during its seminal years, focusing on the movement's largely neglected early efforts before Alcatraz or Wounded Knee captured national attention. Ranging from the end of World War II to the late 1960s, Daniel Cobb uncovers the groundwork laid by earlier activists. He draws on dozens of interviews with key players to relate untold stories of both seemingly well-known events such as the American Indian Chicago Conference and little-known ones such as Native participation in the Poor People's Campaign of 1968. Along the way, he introduces readers to a host of previously neglected but critically important activists: Mel Thom, Tillie Walker, Forrest Gerard, Dr. Jim Wilson, Martha Grass, and many others. Cobb takes readers inside the early movement from D'Arcy McNickle's founding of American Indian Development, Inc. and Vine Deloria Jr.'s tenure as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians to Clyde Warrior's leadership in the National Indian Youth Council and describes how early activists forged connections between their struggle and anticolonialist movements in the developing world. He also describes how the War on Poverty's Community Action Programs transformed Indian Country by training bureaucrats and tribal leaders alike in new political skills and providing activists with the leverage they needed to advance the movement toward self-determination. This book shows how Native people who never embraced militancy-and others who did-made vital contributions as activists well before the American Indian Movement burst onto the scene. By highlighting the role of early intellectuals and activists like Sol Tax, Nancy Lurie, Robert K. Thomas, Helen Peterson, and Robert V. Dumont, Cobb situates AIM's efforts within a much broader context and reveals how Native people translated the politics of Cold War civil rights into the language of tribal sovereignty. Filled with fascinating portraits, Cobb's groundbreaking study expands our understanding of American Indian political activism and contributes significantly to scholarship on the War on Poverty, the 1960s, and postwar politics and social movements.

Almost Invisible: The Brotherhood of North American Indians (1911) and the League of North American Indians (1935)

Almost Invisible:The Brotherhood of North American Indians (1911) and the League of North American Indians (1935) Steven Crum (bio) Native American people established intertribal or pan-Indian organizations throughout the twentieth century. Existing scholarship has made us familiar with several, including the Society of American Indians (1911), the American Indian Federation (1934), the National Congress of American Indians (1944), the National Indian Youth Council (1961), and the American Indian Movement (1968).1 On the other hand, there are others we know very little about. Two such organizations are the Brotherhood of North American Indians (1911) and the League of North American Indians (1935), also called the League of Nations, Pan-American Indians. The League has received only passing scholarly references, including mentions in the earliest and latest writings of Native American scholar Vine Deloria Jr. In a 2003 essay, Deloria writes, "The League of Nations—Pan-American Indians was in its final phase [in the late 1960s], although I tried my best, in the afterword in Custer [Died For Your Sins (1969)], to boost its status."2 There are multiple reasons we know so little about the Brotherhood and the League. One is that a percentage of the public, both Indian and non-Indian, had a negative view of both organizations since they were led by so-called controversial figures. This image or representation has discouraged later generations from making historical inquiries about these and other organizations. When scholars do write about them, their descriptions are largely negative and based on official Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) documentation.3 This article examines [End Page 43] why the two organizations ended up almost invisible in twentieth-century Native American history. The Brotherhood of North American Indians Richard C. Adams, a member of the Delaware Tribe in Oklahoma, founded the Brotherhood of North American Indians on December 5, 1911, in Washington, D.C. Adams drafted a written constitution that included the following objectives: to "promote a feeling of friendship, brotherhood, and good citizenship" among the Indian tribes; to "perpetuate the ancient traditions" of the tribes; and "to collect . . . records, papers, and documents" of Indian tribes. Indian tribes could organize local Brotherhood chapters and send representatives to larger conventions to be held in Washington, D.C. Participants at the conventions would elect twenty national chiefs and also council officers, including a Great Sachem, a Chief Historian, and a Great Chaplain. Any person of Indian blood could become a member of the Brotherhood. Non-Indians married to Indians could also become members, but their status would be strictly "honorary" (they couldn't vote). The president and vice president of the United States, the commissioner of Indian affairs of the BIA, and other public officials could also become honorary members.4 Besides the written constitution, Adams produced other written statements that outlined additional objectives for the organization. The Brotherhood wanted the federal government to fulfill its treaty obligations by allowing tribes to press claims in the U.S. Court of Claims against the white Americans. It wanted the BIA to release Indian trust money (up to 25 percent per individual) so Indian allottees who received land allotments under the Dawes Act of 1887 could improve their land. The Brotherhood favored Indian "preference," or that the BIA needed to hire qualified Indians for BIA jobs. It wanted Indian children to attend public schools, implying that the BIA schools were inferior. It wanted Indians to possess the right to vote, or that Indians needed to become U.S. citizens. And the Brotherhood wanted Indian delegates in Congress, with one delegate representing every 60,000 Indians.5 Of course, Adams favored Indian presence in Congress because of the Delaware Treaty of 1778 (the first American treaty with an Indian tribe), which noted that the Delawares would have representation in Congress.6 The Brotherhood also publicized itself in different ways. It selected Senator Robert L. Owen of Oklahoma to give the keynote address at the founding organizational meeting held in December 1911. Owen told the Indian audience that Indians had been weakened over the years because of their tribal diversity, and that the Brotherhood would bring them together politically.7 The organization also had two [End Page 44...

Up against Giants: The National Indian Youth Council, the Navajo Nation, and Coal Gasification, 1974–77

It is perhaps ridiculous for Indian people to challenge a multi-billion dollar industrial operation, but if our right to an existence as a people is threatened by corporate greed, we have nothing to lose.

Around the Sacred Fire: Native Religious Activism in the Red Power Era: A Narrative Map of the Indian Ecumenical Conference (review)

Reviewed by: Around the Sacred Fire: Native Religious Activism in the Red Power Era: A Narrative Map of the Indian Ecumenical Conference George E. Tinker (bio) Around the Sacred Fire: Native Religious Activism in the Red Power Era: A Narrative Map of the Indian Ecumenical Conference by James TreatPalgrave Macmillan, 2003 his is a volume about a little-known part of the broader Indian activist movement of the 1970s called the Indian Ecumenical Conferences. In the foment generated by the American Indian Movement, National Indian Youth Council, Indians of All Tribes, and several less-remembered "Red Power" or movement organizations, the Indian Ecumenical Conferences gave voice to one smaller but distinct slice of the American Indian nationalism of the day. With deeper roots in Canada than in the United States, this part of the movement brought together traditional Indian religious adherents along with those Christian Indians who leaned more toward affirming traditional culture and values. It is, as the subtitle announces, a narrative history rather than a critically argued analysis. The book begins by tracing Treat's account of the beginnings [End Page 203] of what he calls the "red power movement" from the early twentieth century on, but with particular attention paid to the 1960s. Treat's rendition of this critical period in the development of Indian activism is seriously deficient in its near total disregard of the beginnings of the American Indian Movement but does nicely treat some of the other currents of foment and their intertwining relationships. Curiously enough, in his brief retelling of this history he fails to note the foundational work of Ward Churchill or the excellent analysis of Robert Warrior and Paul Chaat Smith and their discussions about this historical period.1 It becomes apparent through the end of the volume that his disregard of AIM in this first chapter is much more than an oversight; it is an intentional disavowal. The second chapter introduces the renowned Cherokee anthropologist, Robert Thomas, who was an important figure in the early development of the Indian Ecumenical Conferences, and gives a thumbnail sketch of his life and work. This is in some respects the best writing of the book, yet this chapter is wholly derivative, relying as it does on critical work that has already been published by others on Thomas's life and work. The third chapter shifts the focus of the book decidedly toward Canada and Canadian Native peoples' history, focusing on the history of Christian missionary outreach, the work of Edward Ahenakew, one of the early Native Anglican priests, and the ongoing tensions within that church over their missionary enterprises. The last part of the chapter is given over to contemporary church activism, focusing rather unfortunately on one extremely well-meaning non-Native priest—who is important to Treat's project because of the priest's closeness to Robert Thomas and their joint role as organizers in the Indian Ecumenical Conferences. The shift here to almost exclusive concern for the context of Canada signals what is to come in the rest of the volume. This book is essentially about Canada and Treat's strange contention, carried by the weight of anecdotal narrative rather than by argumentation, that the resurgence of Indian traditional religious traditions was initiated and significantly advanced by the Episcopal Church in Canada. This is an inference, of course, that would be greeted with certain surprise by most Episcopalians in Canada today, who only know that Native peoples continue to exist because of the intense public scandal surrounding reve-lations of the persistent history of white Episcopalian sexual abuse of Native children in mission boarding schools and the resultant law suits that have threatened the continued existence of their church. The fourth chapter continues this exploration of the Canadian context, focusing on the Canadian counterculture movement of the late 1960s and its expression in the alternative higher education experiment at the University of Toronto, and moving toward a discussion of Canadian Indian author and activist Harold Cardinal. The experimental [End Page 204] education unit, called Rochdale College, also housed the Institute of Indian Studies. Chapter 5 initiates descriptions of the ensuing conferences with a discussion of the organizing efforts during the few...

Last of the Breed by Louis L’Amour

84 Western American Literature One interviewee, Gerald Wilkinson, Director of the National Indian Youth Council, sets forth Steiner’s thesis aptly when he observes that, from the Indian perspective, the dominant thrust of American culture appears as “a perversion of life . . . a cancer.” He predicts that the white man will soon render the earth unfit for habitation in the manner to which Western people aspire. Only those, like the Hopi and others who are willing to work with nature by scrupulously replenishing whatever is taken, will be capable of sur­ viving the coming ecological Armageddon. So once again we turn to the American natives for a disinterested, non­ western perspective upon what really lies in the pot at the end of the rainbow of the American philosophy of unlimited material growth. One hopes (faintly) that the formulators of American political and economic policy might be more responsive to the signals of coming self-destruction than are cancer cells in a dying patient. Otherwise Steiner will remain a voice crying unheard in the wasteland we seem so determined to create as our monument to the future. JACK L. DAVIS University of Idaho Last of the Breed. By Louis L’Amour. (New York: Bantam Books, 1987. 366 pages, $3.95.) In this novel of a great escape across Siberia, Louis L’Amour writes a fascinating page-turner that shows both his strengths and his weaknesses. His hero is Joe Makatozi, major in the U. S. Air Force, test pilot of some of our most advanced aircraft, and a Sioux Indian. Besides flying military aircraft, Joe is skilled in bow-hunting, arrow-head-making and trapping, and he is devoted to wilderness life. From the above description you can re-create the plot. Joe Mack, as his friends call him, is kidnapped to Siberia by the Soviet military to be grilled for information, but he promptly escapes. In the year that follows, all through the terrible sixty-below winter and many adventures, Joe is escaping, killing his pursuers, falling in love with beautiful Natalya, head of an outlaw band, and attempting to re-enact the Indian migrations across the Bering Strait. L’Amour’s great skill is his ability to create interesting plot, fast-moving action, many surprising twists and turns, short chapters with dramatic crises at the end of each, and a somewhat believable picture of Siberia today. The main problem with the novel in literary terms is that the hero, though he grows admirably in ability to physically survive, seems to learn nothing from all his suffering. If anything, he regresses to a lower, more savage level of understanding, which is perhaps L’Amour’s basic point about tribal-warrior life. Or any kind of warrior life. Reviews 85 Yet the book does what many more literary works (like House Made of Dawn) fail to do: interest you immediately and hold you to the last page. And of course L’Amour arranged it so that a sequel is clearly possible, if Joe decides to return to the Soviet Union to get revenge on Colonel Zamatev—his already-ruined military intelligence kidnapper—which Joe has sworn to do. STARR JENKINS Cal Poly State University The Treble V: The Legacy of a Cattle Baron of the Old West. By R. Guild Gray. (New York: Vantage Press, 1986. 669 pages, $18.95.) The Treble V is the ambitious chronicle of a ranching family in north­ eastern Nevada, near the present town of Elko. Beginning in the mountain man era and ending in 1937, the novel spans six generations. Most of the action takes place from 1848 to 1898, and the book includes a great deal of interesting historical detail about Nevada’s evolution as a territory and state. Furthermore, the book shows a good sense of the Great Basin country—the natural environment and man’srelation to it. In order to enjoy these pleasant features, the reader must push through vast drifts of flawed writing. The proofreading is shameful, with scores and scores of typographical errors. This may account for some of the negligent punctuation, but there are also numerous distracting errors in the basic use of apostrophes, semicolons, and commas. Beyond that, there...