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Traits of American Indian Life and Character (Native American)

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This is an odd book, a surreal book, I might add, originally published anonymously in 1853. Almost every vignette of Native American and frontier life written by Peter Skenne Ogden (1794--1854) in these pages ends in death, despair and metaphysical dread. A man has a nightmare in which he dreams that he dies, tells of it to expedition leader Ogden, then proceeds by his actions to make the dream a reality, with a strange twist of fate worthy of von Kleist added at the end. A Native American who loses his only son has himself buried alive and stoically allows the sod to be piled over him. People are hacked to bits by members of their own family. A harrowing picture emerges of what it must have been like to live on the physical and the psychological frontier in the early 19th century. The illustrations do not match the text; indeed they augment the strangeness of this book with cut-away views of a chief ordering a hunt from within the narrow confines of a crowded teepee (Kafka's Trial springs to mind); a hunter balances atop the back of a gazelle-necked pony with his gun held straight up to signal the presence of game; and on and on the dream-like visions with their odd perspective and doll-like characters proceed. Poe would have delighted in this book. If you're a collector of literary curiosities this is the book for you. On the other hand, those attracted by a sanitized picture of Native American life would do well not to pick this book up.