The author, James Welch, is himself a plains Indian. We have lost James Welch, the person now - far too soon, but I believe that his work will continue to teach, and to affect, untold generations to come.įools Crow, a novel by James Welch, tells the story of a young plains indian who is chosen to be given the knowledge of his doomed people's fate. These two books should lead you to reexamine the way you view the world. Follow up with his last novel - The Heartsong of Charging Elk. Fools Crow is Jim Welch's masterpiece - and it should be mandatory reading. Fools crow somehow helped me see my world with the eyes of an American Indian and I believe that having experienced that I began life anew. Having grown up among those same landscapes as are the settings for his novels, I can attest that he captures both the mood and the power of Blackfeet country, but in a way that we of the European descent simply do not normally see or feel. His voice is as authentic as you can find, to the point that it allows a "Napikwan" to live the life of a 19th century plains Indian. Of course when he began to publish, I read each of his works as soon as I could get my hands on them. His poetry dwarfed the clumsy efforts of most of his classmates. There I became acquainted with a young Native American student/poet by the name of Jim Welch. In 1967, bored with a steady diet of History classes, I enrolled in a Creative Writing class taught by Dick Hugo (University of Montana).
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