Indian Intellectuals of the 1930s and 1940s
For the Tribal Perspective this week we focus on two prominent Indian Intellectuals who emerged in the post-war era: D'Arcy McNickle (1904-1977) and Ella Cara Deloria (1888-1971).
Ella Cara Deloria
Ella Cara Deloria, a Yankton Dakota whose native name was Anpetu Waste Win (Beautiful Day Woman), was born on the Yankton Dakota Reservation at Lake Andes in South Dakota on January 31, 1889. Known primarily for her linguistic and ethnographic work with the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota (Sioux nations), Ella was most "remembered by reservation residents for her contributions as an educator" (Medicine, 1980), and as an author, linguist, and ethnologist.
Her grandfather was Chief Francois Des Lauriers, a medicine man and tribal leader, while her father, Philip Deloria (Black Lodge), was an ordained Episcopal priest and church deacon. Her mother, Mary Sully Bordeux, a devout Christian woman, was only one-quarter Native American, but had been raised in the traditional Dakota manner. Both her father and mother had children from previous marriages, and a total of four children were born to Philip and Mary, of which Ella was the oldest. Ella's brother, Vine Deloria, Sr., was a prominent minister and community leader, and her nephew, Vine Deloria Jr., is a lawyer and well-known author.
Deloria began her college education at the University of Chicago in 1910, transferred to Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1911, and completed her B.S. degree in education in 1915 at Columbia University in New York. While attending Columbia, Ella gave public lectures on Indian lore and dancing, and worked to promote a greater appreciation of Native American culture.
As a student at Columbia, Ella became acquainted with anthropologist Franz Boaz, ultimately had a great influence on Ella's life and career. When Boaz learned that Ella could speak the Sioux language, he asked her to translate a collection of stories by George Bushotter, a Lakota Sioux, who had left over 1000 pages of manuscripts written in the Lakota dialect to the Smithsonian Institute.
Over the next twenty years, Deloria authored several books, including Dakota Texts (1932), Dakota Grammar (1941 with Franz Boaz), and Speaking of Indians (1944). These books documented Native American myths, stories and accounts of Dakota life. She also assembled a critically acclaimed Sioux-English dictionary. In 1947 Ella finished writing the historical novel, Waterlily, a book that focused on native life from a woman's point of view. She was unable to find a publisher, however, so it did not reach the public until 1988, seventeen years after her death. Deloria was awarded the Indian Achievement Medal in 1943 and was considered to be the foremost authority on Sioux language and culture.
From 1955-1958 Ella served as the director of her former elementary school, St. Elizabeth's in Wakpala, South Dakota. In her later years, she maintained close ties to friends and family, and continued her work as a lecturer, researcher and consultant. She died in Vermillion, South Dakota, on February 12, 1971, at the age of 82.
Selected Works by Ella Cara Deloria
Buffalo People (Albuquerque: University of New Mexixo Press, 1994)
Folklore: Dakota Indians, oral tradition, Dakota women
Dakota Grammar, (S.D: Dakota Press: Sioux Falls, 1941, reprinted 1979)
Nonfiction: Dakota Language & Grammar
Dakota Texts, American Ethnological Society, vol 14 (New York : G.E. Stechert & Co., 1932)
Folklore: Dakota Indians & oral tradition
Deer women and elk men : the Lakota narratives of Ella Deloria (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992)
Folklore: Dakota Indians, Lakota dialect, grammar, social aspects
Iron hawk (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993)
Folklore / Nonfiction: Oglala Indians, oral tradition, Lakota dialect
Reminiscences of Ella Deloria, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, (New York: American Indian Oral History Project, Part II, no 69, 1969)
Speaking of Indians, (Vermillion: Dakota Press, reprint 1979)
Essays
Waterlily (Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1988)
Fiction: Dakota Indians
Selected Works about Ella Cara Deloria
Raymond A. Bucko, "Ella Cara Deloria," Encyclopedia of Anthropology, ed. H. James Brix (SAGE Publications, 2006)
Anne Ruggles Gere, "Indian Heart/White Man's Head: Native American Teachers in Indian Schools, 1880-1930," History of Education Quarterly, vol 45, no 1 (Spring 2005).
Bea Medicine, "Ella C. Deloria: The Emic Voice, Melus (Multi-Ethnic Literature in the Unties States), vol 7, no 4 (1980) pp. 23-30.
Carol Miller, "Ella Cara Deloria," in Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color (University of Minnesota, n.d.).
Julian Rice, "Deer Women and Elk Men: The Lakota Narrative of Ella Deloria, (University of New Mexico, 1992)
D'Arcy McNickle was born in St. Ignatius, Montana, on January 14, 1904, to an Irish father, William McNickle, and a Cree-Metis mother, Philomene Praenteau. McNickle was raised on the Flathead Reservation, attended the University of Montana in 1921, and went to Europe in 1925 to study at Oxford. McNickle later sought his fortune as a freelance writer and novelist in New York City, working as an editor for the Encyclopedia Britannica and the National Cyclopedia of American Biography. In 1936 McNickle published his autobiographical novel, The Surrounded.
McNickle held a number of positions in the Bureau of Indian Affairs during the Collier administration, and became a strong advocate of Indian rights. According to historian Fred Hoxie, McNickle's life experience
...demonstrated for him how poorly Indians and whites understood each other's cultures. The experience convinced him that the barriers between Indians and whites were not racial or moral, but cultural. After World War II McNickle witnessed the onset of decolonization and began to understand the experiences of Native Americans in global terms. "Indians saw their history extending beyond tribal limits," [McNickle] wrote, "sharing the world experience of other native peoples subjected to colonial domination." (Hoxie, 2001).
With the federal policies of termination and relocation during the 1950s, McNickle resigned from the BIA to pursue community development work with the American Indian Development Corporation, and later took part in the United States Civil Rights Commission. 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, McNickle retired to Albuquerque, New Mexico, 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. McNickle passed away in October 1977 in Albuquerque.
Selected Works by D'Arcy McNickle:
The Surrounded (Dodd, 1936; reprint University of New Mexico, 1978)
Fiction: Salish Indians
The Hawk is Hungry and Other Stories, ed. Birgit Hans (University of Arizona press, 1992)
Non-fiction: short stories, cross-cultural, Depression-era West
They came here first; the epic of the American Indian, (Lippincott Co., 1949)
Indian History US
Runner in the sun: a story of Indian maize (University of New Mexico Press, 1954; reprint 1987)
Juvenile fiction: Indians of North America - Southwest
The Indian in American Society (for National Congress of American Indians, 1955)
Manifesto on Indian Affairs
Indians and other Americans: two ways of life meet (Harper, 1959)
Government Relations, Indians of North America
Indian tribes of the United States: ethnic and cultural survival (Oxford University Press, 1962)
History: Indians of North America
Indian man: a life of Oliver La Farge (Indiana University Press, 1973)
Life of Oliver La Farge, 1901-1963
Native American Tribalism (Oxford University Press, 1973)
Fiction: Indians of North America
Wind from an enemy sky, (Harper, 1978)
Fiction: Indians of North America
Selected Works about D'Arcy McNickle and his writings:
John Purdy, ed., The Legacy of D'Arcy McNickle: Writer, Historian, Activist (Unviersity of Oklahoma Press, 1996)
____________, Word Ways: The Novels of D'Arcy McNickle (Tuscon: U of Arizona Press,1990)
Dorothy Parker, Singing an Indian Song: A Biography of D'Arcy McNickle (University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln & London,1992)
James Ruppert, D'Arcy McNickle (Boise State University,1988).