James Willard Schultz (1859–1947)

First off, this isn’t a history. It is, in the words of an introduction by Hugh A. Demsey, Chief Curator Emeritus of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, a semi-autobiographical novel, “semi-fiction”.

Second, Schultz, as made clear in the actual text, never lived as an Indian. While he did live around the Piegan Blackfeet, it was always as a trader and a rancher.

However, Schultz did learn the Blackfeet language and marry a Blackfoot girl named Fine Shield Woman though he dubs her show more Nät-ahʹ-ki which means “pretty woman”. Their marriage and love affair is at the heart of this novel which ends with her death in 1902.

Schultz arrived in Montana Territory in 1877 at the age of 18. By this time, the Blackfeet, which had for so long been implacably hostile to American traders, had started to deal with them. As Demsey suggests, you shouldn’t pay attention too much attention to Schultz’s chronology which seems a bit muddled when he gives dates and doesn’t exactly match his own life.

Schultz was from New York and had attended the Peekskill Military Academy and came to Montana after hearing tales of Indian life there. He fell in with Joseph Kipp, a man of mixed white-Indian heritage and from a family of traders. Schultz refers to him as Berry who remains his longtime friend and business partner.

This was Schultz’s first book, regarded as his best, and of enough enduring appeal that it’s published by Dover Books. And it’s easy to see to see why.

Schultz writes a romantic tale full of both joy and general and personal melancholy. While its fictional status precludes it as being a generally consulted ethnographic text, Dempsey claims that the Blackfeet themselves have drawn on it for their cultural programs and proclaimed, in 1980, that Schultz was a respected figure among them.

Schultz, who says he was called Far Off White Robe by the Blackfeet (his actual moniker was “Scabby Robe”), rapidly, with Berry’s help, became friends with the Blackfeet. He went on a wife-stealing raid with one and, at times, became involved with intertribal warfare (mostly with the Crow). He discusses their religion and respects it though, like Christianity, it’s not one he can bring himself to embrace. He goes on buffalo hunts with them, trades with them, and discusses their culture.

There is plenty discussion of whites in the area too with an opening colorful scene of the hurly-burly and violence around the steamboat arriving at Fort Benton. Expensive whiskey and violent card games are featured here.

The Blackfeet way of life was already on its way out when Schultz arrived. He talks about visiting the site of the Baker Massacre when a band of friendly Indians was attacked in 1870, their bones still bleaching there years later. The buffalo herds were already noticeably thinning by 1882 and collapsed in 1883. Later on, the Blackfeet were put on a reservation and suffered the depredations of ignorant or corrupt Indian agents and cattle ranchers making – usually – false accusations of the Blackfeet killing their cattle.

There is, inevitably, a contrasting of white and Blackfoot worlds.

On the question of alcohol, Schultz doesn’t deny it caused problem among the Indians, including violence. But he doesn’t think it was any worse than among a group of drunken whites. He also claims the Blackfeet weren’t as fond of trading for liquor as other tribes. But he does call his and Berry’s alcohol trade “evil” and regrets it. In their defense, he says they had to compete with other traders and watered down their liquor substantially.

He compares the life of a Blackfoot woman with white women with, in his eyes, the former having the advantage. Their life had less drudgery. They had their own property – horses and buffalo hides they’d tanned – they could trade. On the other hand, the punishment for an adulterous Blackfoot woman was to have her nose cut off.

As we’ve heard before, white traders were considered good marital prospects, and it has to be explained to the naïve Schultz why Indian women are always asking him to dance. We learn of the Blackfoot taboo that men must not talk to their mother-in-law. (He wryly notes that many white men might eagerly embrace this.) However, Schultz likes his mother-in-law a lot and simply ignores that prohibition.

As was frequently the case for Indian wives who became the companions of white traders, Nät-ahʹ-ki is told that Schultz will eventually abandon her. And, indeed, he returns to his New York home and spends an awkward time and makes no mention of his “wife”. Only his mother dimly understands his congenital need for freedom and adventure which life in Montana satisfies. He finds himself looking up the few nearby men with experience on the frontier whom he can talk with.

Eventually, Schultz returns – as Nät-ahʹ-ki assures him she always knew he would – and marries her formally in a Methodist ceremony.

In the latter part of the book, as more and more whites move into the area, Schultz talks about “squawmen” like him. That was the derisive term whites called men like him who had married, for all practical purposes, Indian women. White women, in particular, were hostile to them. But Schultz defends his fellow squawmen who, he says, materially provided for their Indian friends and relatives and protected them from corrupt Indian agents. They also, he claims, taught their Indian wives to assimilate to white ways and to keep houses that were often cleaner than those of whites.

Nät-ahʹ-ki partially represents that assimilation process. She chides her husband for wanting to live in Indian lodges instead of a white house, for going on buffalo hunts and with war parties. She wants to learn to speak English, but Schultz says he never bothered to teach her because the Blackfoot language lacked certain English consonants and her accent would always be ridiculed.

Her desire to assimilate is noted in the last chapter when she goes to Helena for medical treatment. (A heart condition eventually killed her.) She finds kindness from some white women, is in wonder at indoor plumbing and hotels, and takes a ride on the railroad which has finally arrived in Montana. She is determined, though her old way of life is forever gone, to adapt to the new world.

Schultz had a great deal of respect for Jesuit missionaries regarding them as practical men who possessed many practical skills, hardy, dedicated to serving the Indians. Nät-ahʹ-ki pleads with Schultz to learn the powerful magic of the Lord’s Prayer.

Throughout Schultz’s fictionalized account of his life, he inserts the stories he’s told about other Indians or people he knew. There is the Snake Woman who has wandered far and alone seeking her husband. We hear about the elderly Hugh Monroe, now mourning the death of his wife. He came to the area at the age of fifteen in 1813 and entered into service with the Hudson Bay Company. In his eighties, he’s still an active and vigorous man, a devout Catholic who, nevertheless, respects and partially believes in the Blackfoot religion. A friend of Berry’s mother, Crow Woman, presents her tale of being taken from her Arikara tribe. The Crow man who killed her husband took him for one of his wives and treated her well, but, of course, his kindness did not foster a return of that love. She fled and was discovered by a tribe of the Blood band of the Blackfeet and found a new home.

A main story is the sorrowful young white man, Ashton. The Indian women are fascinated by his melancholy air which seems to come from some secret bitterness over a love affair out East. Schultz even regales him with tales of the faithfulness and devotion of Indian women to their husbands as an argument that not all women are faithless. An accident of fate has Ashton rescuing a young Indian girl from a raid by another tribe. He becomes devoted to her, sends the girl, whom the childless Nät-ahʹ-ki comes to regard as a daughter, East for an education. Eventually, Ashton marries her, but their story does not end well. Then there is the tale of Queer Person who went from a marginalized member of his tribe to a respected leader of a bloody raid he undertook to get his true love.

Schultz does specifically rebut the popular tales of Agnes E. Laut who, in the wake of the Canadian government assuming control of the Hudson Bay Company’s land, depicted the bloody movement of violent men and whiskey traders from Canada into Montana.

Frequently, at the end of chapters, Schultz mournfully notes how happy he was in those days and how irrevocably things have changed. The final two sentences, after the death of wife, end on a despondent note:

"By day I think about her; at night I dream of her. I wish that I had that faith which teaches us that we will meet again on the other shore. But all looks very dark to me."

This is an engaging tale which doesn’t bog down, a slice, albeit in fictionalized form, of a way of life that held great attraction for its author, and one that gives some sense of what the Blackfeet were like in that time. show less

James Willard Schultz left his family, traveled to Montana, and lived among the Blackfeet, marrying the Blackfeet woman Natahki. That much is fairly well documented. For the rest of Schultz’s book My Life as an Indian it isn’t clear what’s fully factual. I see just a little of the “white savior” meme in the narrative but perhaps I’m too suspicious. The book was published in 1907; I suppose that after killing or dispossessing all the Native Americans, whites were ready to see them show more as Noble Savages again. And Schultz’s Blackfeet usually fall into the Noble Savage category; the young men are brave warriors, the young women are beauties, and the elderly are wise. (There are a few exceptions, but Schultz stresses that they are exceptions). Although there are a lot of anecdotes about Blackfeet life, Schultz doesn’t provide anything that can be pinned down – places, dates and names tend to be vague or perhaps deliberately disguised. To be fair Schultz isn’t claiming to be an ethnologist – he’s writing a biographical account, not an academic paper. That being said, I found Schultz quite readable; his stories are interesting and his characters plausible. No maps, which is something of a handicap since geography plays a role in a lot of the stories. Photographs in the text but they seem to be generic Indians rather than particular people Schultz is talking about. He went on to write 30+ books, I may try some of the other ones. show less

This is without question the best book of its type which I have ever read. It is the memoir of a man who set out for the western plains and Rockies during the 1870s. He worked with a trader and so was there when the end of the buffalo came, and along with it, the end of the way of life of the natives of the plains. He married a Piegan woman, spoke the language and lived among the Blackfoot people. As a trader, he had exposure to many of the tribal peoples of that area. He hunted with them, show more went to war with them, lived in his lodge among them, and then wrote about them.

I was afraid that this book would be either idealistically unreal, or condescending in tone. It was neither. Schultz wrote a portrait for all time of these tribes in their humanity. Not evil, not perfect, not happy little natives or horrible scoundrels, but as people, individuals with all of those characteristics and more. He described many of their rituals, traditions and beliefs, told their stories, and introduced us to many of the individuals around him with all the drama of their lives. This is a vivid word picture of a moment in time which will never be seen again. As such, it is underlain with sadness, not written to be manipulative, but simply to expose to view a very sad epoch in the history of people. The ending is so abrupt one has the feeling that the author couldn't bear to write more. Do not discount it on account of the sadness though. He has filled this book with laughter, love, heroism and adventure as well as death, sorrow and pain. show less

I enjoyed this narrative quite a bit. It is unlike many of the books I've read from the same period and gives a glimpse into the lives of the Indians in early western America. I couldn't help but notice the contradiction the author portrays in condemning the actions of other tribes for committing the same moral failures that the Blackfeet committed also, and in which he participated! Stealing horses, people, possessions and land, according to this account, was common. However, the author set show more the Blackfeet up as morally superior than many (but not all) of the other tribes in which he came in contact but with no acknowledgement of the hypocrisy of this position. show less