John Joseph Mathews and Michael Snyder.
Our Osage Hills: Toward an Osage Ecology and Tribalography of the Early
Twentieth Century. Lehigh University Press, 2020.
318 pages. ISBN: 9781611463019.
Sharing co-authorship alongside John
Joseph Mathews (1894-1979), Michael Snyder draws primarily upon archival
research using the newspaper Daily Journal-Capital (Pawhuska, Oklahoma) to
locate additional and lesser-known writings of Mathews, the Osage "author,
historian, and naturalist" (1). Our Osage Hills: Toward an Osage Ecology and
Tribalography of the Early Twentieth Century reintroduces Mathews to a new
audience and firmly centers his writings to the growth and development of
Indigenous intellectualism in the first half of the twentieth century. While
Snyder does not draw these parallels or conclusions, one should place Mathews'
literary work alongside the literary and cultural achievements of both D'Arcy
McNickle and Ella Deloria who are contemporaries of Mathews. Snyder further
reminds the reader that Mathews "was a brilliant intermediary between lower
Plains Indian culture and mainstream North American readers, and an intrepid
advocate for his Osage Nation" (1). The monograph draws upon a newspaper column,
"Our Osage Hills," written by Mathews with companion essays, written by Snyder,
each with their own italicized headings, providing historical, cultural, and
literary contexts. Snyder explains: "my pieces tell a broader story of Osage
cultural survivance, continuity, and the struggle for sovereignty" (2).
Furthermore, Snyder explains that his intent was to loosely organize Mathews' writings
chronologically; although, he does depart from a rigid
timeline to group the writings according to theme. These eleven themes are as
follows: Scene Setting, Birds of the Osage, Culture and Politics, Romance of
the Osage, African Americans, Autumn, Man in Nature, Osage Women and Others,
Conservation, Critique of Settler Colonialism, and Murder. These themes are
given titles by Snyder, including the titles for each of Mathews' narratives which have a publication date but did not include
a title other than the title of his column, Our Osage Hills.
Snyder uses the theoretical lens of "tribalography,"
a term he attributes to author LeAnne Howe which "entails synthesizing through
narrative the collective experiences of individuals, families, clans, and
ancestors into a meaningful form to inform readers about who, in this case, the
Wahzhazhe people truly are" (8). Additionally, Snyder draws attention to what
he terms as the "Osage ecology" contained in the writings of Mathews. For
example, in the first theme of the text, "Scene Setting," the reader is
introduced to Osage ecology when Mathews writes, "The Osage is unique in its
topography. Its hills can be seen from almost every direction from adjoining
counties"; he continues, "One wonders if we who live here will ever grow to the
stature of the Osage Hills. Man's environment plays a great part in moulding
him, but he must come to an appreciation of that environment" (16). Clearly,
Mathews had been "moulded" by his environment because he writes in his many
observations about the natural world and the "balance of Nature. This was the
status quo before the advent of the white man. In the struggle for existence,
each animal, bird, fish, and insect played a role in the Osage" (25). Osage
ecology is further explained in Mathews' narrative #49, found in the second
theme, Birds of the Osage, and titled "Hawk and Quail: The Balance of Nature
Before the White Man." In this narrative, Mathews writes about the hawk being a
"flesh-eater and [...] very fond of quail" (23). He continues at length to
describe the "delicate balance" (25) between the hawk and quail: "To go back to
the hawk, we find that the number of the hawks is limited by food supply, which
really depends upon the ability of the quail to protect himself. But there is
more to the balance of Nature than this" (24). Snyder also expands upon Mathew's
observations of hawks and quails by writing, "Mathews knew hawks like the back
of his hand, and he deeply loved this bird of prey. He described more than once
gazing up at the circling red-tail hawk as a boy and literally crying tears of
frustration at his inability to fly" (35). Mathews' use of "Osage ecology" also
made him a conservationist, as when he writes of prairie chickens:
the chicken is admirably adapted to the prairie of the Osage.
There is no reason why there should not be thousands of them [...] These gunners
seem to feel vindictive; they, in a spirit of defiance of the law and its
representative, the game warden, take pride in outwitting the latter and in
shooting the remnant of the great flocks wherever and whenever they find them;
it is a sort of determined action to exterminate this great bird. (38)
For Snyder, he sees a distinct Osage
ecology emerge in the writings of Mathews—an Osage ecology that is rooted
to the close relationship Mathews has with the land, his observations about the
interplay between animals and "man," but also Mathews' call for the
preservation of those animals against "man."
In Snyder's companion
essays, he follows through on his earlier statement that his "pieces tell a
broader story" (2) by including discussions and deeper research into the
historical change that came to Mathews and the Osage people in the 1920s and
through the Great Depression. While the third theme of "Culture and Politics"
speaks to these tumultuous changes, Mathews' Our Osage Hills column remains
focused on landscapes, found within, for example, the narratives titled "One of
Many Beautiful Places in the World," "Life Cycles," and "The Moon," all written
beautifully in Mathews' style of prose. It is Snyder who writes and provides a
deeper understanding of the tumult that those decades had upon the Osage
people. For example, while Mathews writes about "How natural it was for
primitive people to worship the moon," in narrative #20, titled "The Moon" (74),
Snyder follows with a companion essay, "The Passing of Red Eagles" (75). This
is not Snyder's attempt at Osage ecology. Rather this essay shares with the
reader that "Three days after the preceding column ran ['The Moon' written by
Mathews, dated May 13th, 1930], readers of the Pawhuska Daily
Journal-Capital learned that the case of Ida Martin, a 'Pawnee farm
woman' charged with selling wine to a party of fullblood Osages, had been
submitted to a jury in the federal court" (75). Snyder continues to tell the
darker history of the "Osage murders," a topic that Mathews was reluctant to
write about. Snyder offers this: "Joe Red Eagle's death speaks volumes of the
precarious period in which he lived. The 1920s and early 1930s were a violent
and risky time to be a fullblood Osage" (77). Snyder would return to this topic
in the last theme, entitled "Murder." Here, Snyder offers this important
context, that Mathews was living overseas and that "One crucial fact has eluded
writers covering the Osage murders: the victims were almost entirely of Mathews's
own band, the Big Hill band, whose members mainly lived in the vicinity of Gray
Horse Indian Village" (260). Thus, a fuller picture emerges, that Mathews was
away from the community during the times of the Osage murders and that he would
reluctantly write about them in other published works.
This monograph is an important
contribution to the field of American Indian Studies because it brings
attention to the writings of John Joseph Mathews. Alongside his fellow Indigenous
intellectuals, McNickle and Deloria, all three represent the scholarly and
literary achievements that create a deeper understanding of "tribalography," and
the collective experiences of Indigenous peoples can be traced through their
writings. Finally, the sharing of co-authorship by Snyder re-centers and gives
primacy to the work of Mathews, thus giving credit to Mathews and bringing his
lesser-known writings to a new audience.
Majel
Boxer, Fort Lewis College