Hanta Yo

This has to be one of my favorite books on Native American culture. In my mind, this is historical fiction at it's best. It's a multi-generational saga that gives us a glimpse into Sioux life right up to the 1830's when the onrush of settlers became torrential. This is a must-read for those wanting a glimpse at pre-reservation plains life.

Interestingly, the manuscript was translated from modern english into Lakotah and back into the english of the early 1800's with help from a full-blood Santee Sioux.

I will be re-reading this one again and again.

I think this was quite a good book and Hill made a definite effort to make as much of a trip inside the Dakotah language as she could. I came away with an impression that we moderns are definitely living the most comfortable lives anyone has yet had. It takes about a hundred pages until one feels at ease but I think the experience well worth it.

This is a fictionalized, multi generational story of a Lakota Sioux family. It's a story that makes you laugh and cry and love. The author lived with a Sioux tribe for many years to learn their language, customs and history. She wrote the novel in their native language, and then translated it to English. It's a powerful and fascinating novel.

I got this book when I was thirty years old. It took me about six weeks to read it. My memories of the experience are really quite dim. At the time I took it that the protagonist was the person through whom the Great Spirit came to the Sioux Indians. So the long and the short of this review is that I enjoyed the book even though the content was a puzzle.

Caveat lector: There was a lot of controversy about "Hanta Yo" and author Ruth Beebe Hill at the time. I don't remember what it was about or how it all played out, but the book was fun and interesting. If I was going to read it again, I'd lay in a brick of Panama Red and a bag of 'shrooms before starting through it. I'd camp in the woods while reading the book, and I'd read it by show more firelight. It was a long, strange trip the first time through, but that trip was a good one. show less

I was very engrossed in this depiction of Native American life, when I read it 40 years ago.

Rings with authenticity! Very enjoyable. One of my all-time favorites! Be sure to first read the glossary at the end of the book before you start to read the novel. (I didn't and had to re-read the novel once I had a better understanding from the glossary of some of the terms used----but even then it was enjoyable to revisit!)

Ruth Beebe Hill spent a couple of decades researching and writing this history of the Lakota people from shortly before their first encounter with Europeans until the Europeans captured them and seized their property.