Mourning Dove
Cogewea, the Half-Blood: a Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle
Range.
Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1981.
Mourning Dove was perhaps the first Native American woman to write
and publish a novel. The story of Cogewea echoes her own personal
history and incorporates some of the unwritten stories of her
tribe. She collaborated in writing with Lucullus V. McWhorter, a
man genuinely interested in Indian history who also became a
personal friend. Her emphasis on the Indian point of view was an
unusual approach at the time, and it helped push the novel's
popularity. Throughout the book we see a writer struggling with
her craft and her quest to keep, by writing, her tribe's
traditions.
