Thesis: D'Arcy McNickle's ‘The Surrounded’ sparked the renaissance of Native American Literature and reinvented American Indian Story Telling.
Native Americans found themselves lost in the cultural matrix that was controlled by the whites. Indians make the biggest portion of Native Americans, and their interrelationships with other people and races resulted to a dilution of their cultures such that it was difficult to find a pure Indian. For McNickle, he qualified for an Indian through the ‘quarter Indian’ requirement that meant someone had to have at least a grandparent of the Indian origin. The novel, The Surrounded was his first book, published in 1935 after the previous series of rejections. Interestingly, it was one of the rejection letters that predicted the impact the book will have in the Indian literature, and by the year 1980, the impact had been so much such that it was compared with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930’s, and in some quarters, actually, thought of as having sparked a better literal response that the Harlem counterpart (Owens).
The novel oscillates the character and actions of Archilde Leon, an Indian, who had been schooled in boarding schools away from Montana and went on to become a musical instrument player in Portland. He wanted to connect with his people, so he set out to Montana, where he found his mum, a pure Indian, living in a makeshift shelter on the farm while his dad and two sons lived in a permanent house in the main yard. Leon is keen on reconnecting with his native way of life, but he cannot communicate in the Indian language. His father, Max, is disappointed that Leon wants to go back to Portland, his mum too. Through the intervention of the Indian elder and priest, and with the promise that Archilde will be assisted with his music he changed his mind and decided to stay. Catharine, Archilde’s mother, takes him to a deer hunting escapade, where they meet Louis, and a later, a sheriff who was looking for Louis. The Sheriff kills Louis with one shot, and when he bends to inspect his body, Catharine whacks him with an axe, and he dies. Archilde helps his mum in burying the body. By the end of the novel, he is charged with two murder charges, and, putting his hands to be shackled, he awaits the unknown (McNickle 300-10).
The story paints the lives of Indians as caught up in the mix of identities, with the white supremacists taking advantage of the Indians. Perhaps, going back to history during the times of white invasion, the Indians were always victims of the strength of the white people, and most of the times they acted from negative positions where victory was unlikely. The novel elicits the conversation of the place of native Indians in the American society and the overlapping identities they face, first, as a result of their inter-creation with other races, and secondly, as a qualification to be considered a minority. By telling the story of Archilde, McNickle sparked a series of books, by himself and other Indian writers that evaluated the position of the Indian, and the importance of their culture in collective survival. The fact that McNickle’s Salish father, Max Leon cannot understand the culture and language of the Indians highlights the level of the Indian tribe seclusion from the mainstream white individualism.
Literature was the loudest voice of the early 20th century, and every minority group in the Unites States needed a voice in the grand scale. McNickle stepped up front to represent the Indians, and his works gave confidence to his readers and a sense of pride to the Indians, encouraging more and more writers to join the bandwagon and tell the Indian story. By the end of the day, The Surrounded achieved more success outside its plot, through the figurative impact of influencing a thought process that enhanced the status of the Indians and other native Americans. That McNickle had been a victim of white violence, and poor treatment of the Indians helps in making his case, as he had been snatched away from his mum after birth by the whites (Smithsonian).
The dissection of the closed Indian culture paves the way for another intersectional complexity, where, within the Indian communities, people were divided in the way of lives to lead. For instance, McNickle was torn between joining Catharine’s hunting career and that of ranch management by his father. Even more confusing, was the demarcation between the wishes of the Indian priests and the ideals of the Salish father, and such kind of intersectionalism added into the cultural conflict in the heart of McNickle. Reading the book, one gets the idea of a public shaming, where McNickle wrote about the Indians in their real set and highlighted the mix of blood among, so much so that they would use terms such as a quarter Indian. Nevertheless, the book changed the nature of the Indian story and painted the intermarriages as a good thing fo every culture.
Subsequent works by McNickle, and particularly, his last novel, Wind From an Enemy Sky offer more insight into the world constructed by McNickle, in an attempt to mend the white-Indian relations. Worth a mention is the openness of the Indians to the ways of the white people, and their willingness to leave the whites alone, to pursue their dreams and cultural inclinations. Unfortunately, the white people did not extend the same gesture to the Indians, and the relationship is destroyed, as McNickle gives up in the last line of his last novel, Wind From an Enemy Sky, published posthumously in 1978. He wrote ‘No meadowlarks sang, and the world fell apart." Signifying his disillusionment with the white people, and how they held onto their demands and discrimination on the minorities.
The surrounded lived on, after its author’s death, as a success and the official signature of American Indian story is telling. Through the lens of the book, many people came to appreciate the closed nature of the Indian culture, and the great intermarriages that brought forth a distinctively different crop of Indians who can claim their belonging to America one hundred percent. From one end, that should be a good thing, but the historical differences between the whites and Indians pose the challenge of mending the relationships. Americans Indians have consolidated their position in the American society, through sheer hard work and determination, but, despite their success, they still face the challenges of the 20th century. One thing remains constant, though, that the narrative of Indian Americans is different because McNickle went first with his novel, The Surrounded.
Works Cited
McNickle, D’Arcy. The Surrounded. United States: University of New Mexico Press, 1978. Print.
Owens, Louis. “The Red Road to Nowhere: D’Arcy McNickle’s ‘the surrounded’ and ‘the hungry generations.’” American Indian Quarterly 13.3 (1989): 239–248. Web. 19 July 2016.
Smithsonian. Soul of a people: Writing America’s story. Smithsonian Channel, 2010. Web. 19 July 2016.
