Old Missoula

D’Arcy McNickle

 

 

D’Arcy McNickle lived in Missoula while attending the University of Montana in the early 1920’s. He was influenced by H. G. Merriam who taught  English at the University. Some of his early work can be found in the University publication – The Frontier.

The article below is found in Encyclopedia of World Biography (see link below).

 

D’Arcy McNickle (1904-1977) was an advocate for Native American rights and is considered to be among the founders of modern Native American literature.

As a writer, historian, activist, government project manager, community organizer, and university professor, McNickle’s career was as diverse as his accomplishments. His voice was heard in the halls of Congress and the halls of universities, in homes on the reservation and homes in urban America. He was an advocate for Native rights both when Indian causes were championed and when Indian rights were being eliminated. Not only was he able to speak to non-Natives about the Native world, but he talked to the Natives about the changes coming from the non-Native world. Throughout it all, he was a cultural mediator, thoroughly at home in both worlds.

He was born William D’Arcy McNickle on January 18, 1904, in St. Ignatius, Montana. His mother, Philomena Parenteau married Irish rancher William McNickle and lived with him on the Flathead reservation. The Parenteaus, of Cree descent, had fled to Montana after the failure of the Métis uprising in 1885 and were formally adopted into the Flathead tribe.

In his early years, McNickle attended school on the reservation. Then over his own and mother’s objections, he was sent to the Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school at Chemawa for three years. He was shocked by the harsh, culturally insensitive attitude that permeated the school, preferring the schooling in Washington state and Montana. When he entered the University of Montana at the age of 17, he was drawn to the world of literature and the study of languages, including Greek and Latin. He was encouraged by one of his professors to attend Oxford. In 1925, he sold his tribal allotment and traveled to England. Difficulty with the transferability of his college credits kept him from matriculating, and, with money running out, he moved to Paris with uncertain thoughts of being a writer or a musician.

Returning to New York, McNickle took a series of jobs, including positions as editor for the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. In November 1926 he married Joran Birkeland and they had a daughter, Antoinette. During his years in New York, he periodically attended courses at the New School for Social Research and at Columbia. However, he was continually working on his writing. He finished a number of short stories and revised his novel, which was published in 1936 as The Surrounded.

Joins Collier Administration

When the Collier administration took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), McNickle joined the staff as an administrative assistant. During his 16 years with the BIA, he held a number of positions, including field representative and director of tribal relations. He was a tireless advocate of Indian rights, believing in change, but change with respect and Native initiative. By 1944 he was aware of the necessity of unified political action on the part of tribal groups. He cofounded the National Congress of American Indians to create an effective Indian political voice.

In 1949 he published They Came Here First: The Epic of the American Indian, which drew on anthropological sources to chronicle Indian history and the interaction of Indians and settlers. This work initiated a series of publications that included his juvenile novel, Runner in the Sun: A Story of Indian Maize (1954), Indians and Other Americans: Two Ways of Life Meet (1959) with Harold Fey, and Indian Tribes of North America (1962). These last two books reviewed Federal Indian policy and the history of white/Indian interaction so as to explain the clash of values and cultural misunderstanding that have resulted in so much tragedy.

In the early 1950s the federal government increasingly strove for the termination of tribal groups and their relocation to urban centers. McNickle did not agree with the federal goals and resigned from BIA to pursue community development work with the American Indian Development Corporation. He worked extensively in Crownpoint, New Mexico, for a number of years before he moved on to other work with students and Indian communities. He sat on the United States Civil Rights Commission and worked on leadership workshops for Native students.

In 1966 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado. Moving from community work to academia, McNickle accepted a professorship at the new Regina campus of the University of Saskatchewan. He was given the position of chairman and asked to set up a small anthropology department.

In 1971, he published a biography of Oliver La Farge, Indian Man: A Life of Oliver La Farge, which was nominated for a National Book Award; and retired to Albuquerque to work on his writing. He remained on the editorial board of the Smithsonian Institution’s revision of the Handbook of North American Indians. He also agreed to serve as founding director of the Newberry Library’s Center for the History of the American Indian. During his retirement, he revised two of his books and wrote numerous book reviews and entries, but most importantly he worked on his novel, Wind from an Enemy Sky. In October of 1977, he died in Albuquerque of a massive heart attack.

Further Reading

Owens, Louis, Other Destinies: Understanding the American Indian Novel, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1992.

Parker, Dorothy, Singing an Indian Song: A Biography of D’Arcy McNickle, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

Purdy, John Lloyd, WordWays: The Novels of D’Arcy McNickle, Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1990.

Ruppert, James, D’Arcy McNickle, Boise, Boise State University, 1988. □

“D’Arcy McNickle.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 7 Nov. 2013 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. 

“D’Arcy McNickle.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Retrieved November 07, 2013 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3404704356.html

 

 

The article below can be found on the internet at the website found below. John Lloyd Purdy is a professor of English at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wa.

 

 

D’Arcy McNickle (1904-1977)

Contributing Editor: John Lloyd Purdy

Classroom Issues and Strategies

Like so much of McNickle’s fiction, “Hard Riding” is a deceptively simple story. As in the verbal arts (such as story-telling), it implies and suggests more than it states. Students often accept the “joke” played upon the Agent, and then dismiss it as clever but relatively insignificant. However, McNickle will work on them even after they have done so.

In his first novel, McNickle shows the effect of an evening of storytelling on his young protagonist, Archilde, who considers himself a “modern man” (an assimilated Indian who no longer believes as his mother and her people believe) and who easily dismisses “the old stories” they tell. On the night of a feast, however, he is captured by those same stories and taken to a new level of awareness in which he becomes an “insider” and sees his people’s lives in new ways. They are no longer the residue of the old bowing under the new, but the bearers of a dynamic and important culture. In short, McNickle consistently attempted a similar end for non-Native readers, using a written medium.

Since the story “Hard Riding” is presented from Mather’s point of view, one can examine what his thoughts and reactions reveal about his character at the outset. For instance, does the opening simply establish “setting” or does it enlighten an important aspect of Mather’s nature, as he spurs his horse on to the meeting? Also, he is, literally, a mediator: He represents the modern, the progressive, and therefore he possesses many of the same feelings and beliefs as McNickle’s intended audience. Moreover, he is privy to knowledge of “Indian ways” that he shares with us, revealing what his years of experience have taught him about the people he has been sent to manage. He becomes, at least initially and momentarily, the expert, the authority.

The story obviously hinges on the thwarted efforts of that authority, so the conclusion needs careful examination, not only as it pertains to what precedes it, but also in how we, as readers, respond to Mather’s failure to have his way, that is, to spur the men “below” him to accept a new way of “justice.” We are never involved in the debate that takes place among the Native American characters; instead, the action is filtered through an interpreter and the Agent himself, yet we become “insiders” when we reflect upon the implications of the maneuvering: that the orders of the “dominant society” have been followed, in form but certainly not in principle. Do we applaud, condemn, or dismiss the actions of the tribe?

Major Themes, Historical Perspectives, and Personal Issues

In 1934 McNickle took a job on the staff of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, John Collier, who reflected the New Deal ideals of the Roosevelt administration. It was Collier’s belief that, as much as possible, tribes should be allowed to direct their own affairs, using traditional, rather than Euro-American, governmental frameworks. McNickle subscribed wholeheartedly to this ideal, which in turn directed his work for the remainder of his life. We can see that concept in this story. When a federal functionary attempts to impose a new way, a way he and the readers may consider wholly logical and in the best economic interests of his charges, he is not only frustrated but humiliated. However, the significance of this dramatic crisis lies not in its overt political statement, but in its demonstration of the efficacy of traditional Native economic systems and governments in contemporary times.

As McNickle well knew, the survival and renewal of Native cultures rest in the communal aspects of tribal life perpetuated through ceremonialism and literature. Community, rather than alienation and individuality, is a major thematic concern in both, and in the writings of McNickle and those who followed him. This communalism calls for sharing hardships as well as bounty (that is, the cattle), and it is maintained through the ability to reach consensus through group reasoning and discussion, a governmental form McNickle’s audience may uphold as an ideal of democracy, but fail to recognize in practice in the story. The Indians whom Mather addresses work in concert and exert control over their own affairs. In a word, they are empowered by their communal presence, their group identity as “insiders.” This, again, is a recurrent theme in McNickle’s fiction, and his scholarly writings. (See also the “Original Audience” section below.)

Significant Form, Style, or Artistic Conventions

McNickle was fond of the juxtaposition of very divergent points of view. For instance, in his last novel, Wind from an Enemy Sky (1978), he often uses chapter breaks to move from his Native American to his Anglo characters. Given his subject–American Indian perspectives–and his non-tribal audience, this is an understandable technique. He forces readers to assess what they believe about American Indians, by consistently undermining those beliefs with culture “shifting” and therefore ethnographic revelation. His humane handling of cross-cultural explorations creates moments of crisis.

In “Hard Riding,” this can be seen in the final passages, where the primary point of view, that of the Indian Agent, is somehow inverted, or shifted, as readers move from “listening” to Mather’s narrative to trying to understand what has happened beyond it, and how he has been duped.

McNickle also makes suggestive use of descriptions as a means of shaping an audience’s preparation for events. More than simply foreshadowing, this technique often works as a symbolic subtext. For instance, in the opening ride he describes the time of day, noting the “crimson flame thwarting the prismatic heavens.” This may be dismissed by students bred on stark realism as merely flowery prose; however, in discussion it could also be considered as a preface to what follows. Mather is thwarted at story’s end. Considering the idea of a prismatic effect, and McNickle’s perspective on the religions that had subjugated Native America, one might be able to go further with the discussion. In fact, it may not be too difficult to question the use of the name “Mather” for the main character. McNickle was an avid reader in all disciplines, including colonial history, in which the Mather family and their ethnocentric beliefs figure prominently. McNickle played with language and its allusive qualities in some interesting ways.

Original Audience

McNickle’s audience changed dramatically over his lifetime, which makes him, once again, a significant figure for study. Today, his books have been continuously reprinted since the mid-seventies and remain popular because they reflect what many have come to understand as a revised and therefore acceptable image of contemporary Natives and tribal issues. When this story was first written, however, history books and novels by non-Native writers still proffered as fact the popular stereotypes we have come to recognize and reject: Native Americans as either Noble Savages or savages; as the remnants of a dying race, on the brink of extinction; as the dull and sullen subhuman at a loss to deal with civilization; and so on. They also devalued Native cultural achievements, pre-Columbian populations, and the ill effects (and the morality) of European colonization. Moreover, the ideal of assimilation–the “melting pot” of America–was equally prominent. It is little wonder that McNickle’s early works, although well-received by critics, were not widely popular; he presents Indians who exert a degree of control over their lives and who take pride in their tribal identities. He presents a very different American dream than his popular contemporaries, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, do.

Comparisons, Contrasts, Connections

The anthology provides ample points of comparison and contrast. McNickle’s work can be placed, in some ways, in the context of other writings from the 1930s, writings by non-Native writers; it can also be compared or contrasted with writings by Native Americans produced before 1935. For instance, Whitecloud’s “Blue Winds Dancing” (published in the same year as McNickle’s first novel, The Surrounded) possesses some of the same issues of community and commercial America. Most profitably, however, one can compare the ways that his work anticipates later works by Native writers. There is a great deal of “resonance” to be found here.

Questions for Reading and Discussion/Approaches to Writing

1. Is Mather’s proposal a logical one? Why or why not? On what basis is that logic built?

2. Is the group’s alteration of Mather’s plan a logical one? Why or why not? On what basis is its logic built? (McNickle offers another “logic,” the logic of communal needs and obligations over financial expediency, and the latter is proffered as a distinct and viable alternative to that of “modern, commercial America.”)

3. What is the significance of the title? How does McNickle’s description of Mather’s riding style reflect or imply the author’s evaluation of governmental policy-making?

Bibliography

The four books on McNickle and his writings are John Purdy, The Legacy of D’Arcy McNickle: Writer, Historian, Activist (1996); Dorothy Parker, Singing an Indian Song: A Biography of D’Arcy McNickle (1992); John Purdy, Word Ways: The Novels of D’Arcy McNickle (1990); and James Ruppert, D’Arcy McNickle (1988). General criticism about McNickle’s works can be found in several journals, including Studies in American Indian Literatures and Western American Literature.

http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/mcnickle.html