Voices of the Plains Cree (Canadian Plains Studies(CPS))

When buffalo were many on the western plains, when Cree and Blackfoot warred in unrelenting enmity, when the Sun Dance and the shaking tent were still a way of life these were the days of Chief Thundershild (1849-1927). His stories of a fierce and vanished freedom are reprinted here, exactly as he told them to Edward Ahenakew in 1923. His voice, simple and poetic, resonates with the wide expanse of sky, the song of the wind, the sound of water.

The other voice in this volume is equally moving, but in a very different way. It is the voice of Old Keyam, pained and angry, raised in protest against the Indians' lethargy and the white man's insensitivity. A fictional character, semi-autobiographical, he is very much the voice of Edward Ahenakew, telling of life on the reservations in the new white world of the early twentieth century.