The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
Sheesh.
The ham-handed racial stereotyping of the past is bad enough, but how far have we really come? Now, besides the good old-fashioned racist stereotypes that somehow refuse to die, we also have the well-intentioned but often inverted racism of adding of a dollop of native blood (and mystical woo-woo) to a hero to suggest some sort of progressive cred, and the woker-than-thou torches-and-pitchforks crowd throwing hissy fits over the audacity of any writer who doesn’t pass some racial and/or cultural purity litmus test before daring to put a Native American character on paper.
It’s complicated.
Which makes it all the more inspiring when a writer — any writer — cares enough to get it right. Sometimes they actually do.
But mostly they don’t.
Native American Eyes
- Jim Anthony by John Grange (Comanche)
- Jim Big-Knife by Stewart Sterling (a “full-blooded” Kwanee Blackfoot)
- Johnny Canuck by James Moffatt (Sioux)
- Joe Leaphorn by Tony Hillerman (Navajo)
- Eagels by Ian Alexander (Iroquois)
- David Return by Manly Wade Wellman (Tsichah [ficticious])
- Mohawk Daniels by William L. Rohde
- Trade Ellis by Sinclair Browning (Apache)
- November Joe by Heskith Prichard
- Sharon McCone by Marcia Muller (Shoshone)
- Howard Moon Deer by Robert Westbrook (Objibwa)
- Kate Shugak by Dana Stabenow (Aluet)
- Jane Whitefield by Thomas Perry (Seneca)
- Laura Winslow by David Cole (Hopi)
- Leo Desroches by Wayne Arthurson (Cree)
- Virgil Wounded Horse by David Heska Wanbli Weiden (Lakota)
Faithful Indian Companions
You can blame it all on the Lone Ranger’s Tonto, but the “faithful Indian companion” is a mainstay of American literature, for better or (often) worse, stretching back at least to Chingcachgook in James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales.
- Chief Moses Tamiami by William Babula (Seminole)
One of private detective Jeremiah St. John‘s two partners. - Jimmy Sisiwan by Betty Webb (Pima)
Jimmy’s the assistant toprivate eye Lena Jones in Webb’s desert noir series. - Willie Prettybird by Richard Hoyt (Cowlitz)
Also known as “Willie Sees the Night,” this Cowlitz shaman first appears in Fish Story (1985), the fourth in the John Denson private eye series, and later becomes his assistant. - Sara Morningsky by Lee Driver (a “Native American” shape-shifter)
Assistant to private eye Chase Dagger. - Zebulon Sixkill by Robert B. Parker (Cree)
Parker introduced Zebulon in his Spenser final novel, Sixkill (2011), and the former college-football star becomes his “apprentice” in the subsequent novels by Ace Atkins.
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Native American Detectives
An impressive chronological checklist, compiled by Steve Lewis, from Mystery*File.
Preliminary list respectfully compiled by Kevin Burton Smith.
