Ageless Companions
It starts with a cornfield and an old man happy to give you directions. Soon the screams gratify the shapeshifter who has been working this field since the 1830's. The old man is an "opa," taking the form of an owl, entities who followed the Chahtas during their removal to Indian Territory.
In "The Bone Picker: Native Stories, Alternate Histories," Choctaw author Devon A. Mihesuah takes tribal folklore characters and casts them as forces in a number of tales. There are the bone pickers, actual people who performed what may have seemed ghoulish practices to non-native eyes. There are the dangerous and tricky little people, "the Kowi Anukasha." "Shampes," the tribe's version of Bigfoot, also makes an appearance.
There is a slightly fictionalized account of Ned Christie, a Cherokee councilman murdered after being accused of killing a deputy marshal. Another true-life character is Solomon Hotema, a man who followed his conscience and earned the label "Choctaw Witch Killer."
The "Pretendian" issue finds its way here. A non-native assumes an indigenous background in order to capitalize on "the advantages" he is missing out on. The recent Buffy Sainte-Marie scandal opened a painful wound of betrayal to many-- and in this story there is an opportunity for this fraud to be dealt with.
More potent than mere horror stories-- or humdrum slasher yarns-- these tales draw on traditions passed down, effectively conjuring an unsettling atmosphere that will echo with you into the night.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
It starts with a cornfield and an old man happy to give you directions. Soon the screams gratify the shapeshifter who has been working this field since the 1830's. The old man is an "opa," taking the form of an owl, entities who followed the Chahtas during their removal to Indian Territory.
In "The Bone Picker: Native Stories, Alternate Histories," Choctaw author Devon A. Mihesuah takes tribal folklore characters and casts them as forces in a number of tales. There are the bone pickers, actual people who performed what may have seemed ghoulish practices to non-native eyes. There are the dangerous and tricky little people, "the Kowi Anukasha." "Shampes," the tribe's version of Bigfoot, also makes an appearance.
There is a slightly fictionalized account of Ned Christie, a Cherokee councilman murdered after being accused of killing a deputy marshal. Another true-life character is Solomon Hotema, a man who followed his conscience and earned the label "Choctaw Witch Killer."
The "Pretendian" issue finds its way here. A non-native assumes an indigenous background in order to capitalize on "the advantages" he is missing out on. The recent Buffy Sainte-Marie scandal opened a painful wound of betrayal to many-- and in this story there is an opportunity for this fraud to be dealt with.
More potent than mere horror stories-- or humdrum slasher yarns-- these tales draw on traditions passed down, effectively conjuring an unsettling atmosphere that will echo with you into the night.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
