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A New Historicist Interpretation of The Indian Lawyer
Introduction
James Welch (1940-2003), a Native American novelist and poet, is one of the four great American Indian literary masters during the Native American Renaissance. With his father a Blackfeet and his mother a Gros Ventre, James Welch grew up in Montana and became particularly interested in the American Indian culture. He began writing poetry in 1966. His collection of poems, Riding the Earthboy 40, was first published in 1971. Later, he turned to write novels. He published Winter in the Blood in 1974, The Death of Jim Loney in 1979, Fools Crows in 1986, The Indian Lawyer in 1991 and The Heartsong of Charging Elk in 2000. Besides, he had a nonfiction, Killing Custer: The Battle of Little Big Horn and the Fate of the Plains Indians published in 1994. With these works, Welch offers vivid depictions of American Indian society and helps introduce the Native voice into American literature. His great contributions have not only earned him numerous praises and a Native Writer’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 but also paved the way for his works into American literary classics.
The Indian Lawyer is Welch’s fourth novel and one of his representative works. In this novel, Sylvester Yellow Calf, the hero, is born in a Blackfeet community, in Montana. He loses both of his parents at a young age and is raised up by his grandparents. Like many other Indian youths, Sylvester goes to school and joins in local basketball team. He does quite well and soon becomes a star player in his team. The basketball team keeps winning matches one after another and has gained much popularity among people. However, Ray Lundeen, a white sportswriter, owes the team’s great success to Sylvester only in one of his reports. As a result, Sylvester begins to experience estrangement from his team members and his own people. After his entry into university, Sylvester chooses to assimilate himself into the white society. Having spent most of his time with Lena Old Horn and Stanley Weintraub, his two non-Blackfeet teachers, he becomes more distant from his tribal community. After he graduates, Sylvester gradually becomes a famous Indian Lawyer in Helena. Selected as a member of the parole board, he has a chance to meet Jack Harwood, a white man and Class Two felon. He denies Harwood’s parole in his hearing, which annoys Harwood who immediately takes revenge, manipulating Patti Ann, his wife, to seduce Sylvester and later his two prison friends also get involved in his revenge. In the meantime, Sylvester is preparing to run for Congress. The scheme is soon let out when Jack Harwood can no longer control his two prison accomplices and Sylvester has no other choice but to inform his white counterparts of his immoral relationship with Patti Ann and to withdraw from his political campaign. In the end, he leaves Helena for a totally new place--the Sioux reservation in North Dakota and decides to help the the Sioux Indians with their water issues.
Interestingly, The Indian Lawyer seems to reverse the former literary patterns in which the white man often sits in judgment, imprisoning Indians and other ethnic minorities in ghettos, reservations, etc. Instead, in The Indian Lawyer, it is the Indian lawyer that sits in judgment, dominating his white prisoners and inciting hatred.
A Part of the plot in The Indian Lawyer is drawn from Welch’s own experience when he played a significant role on the Montana State Board of Pardons for ten years. With such an experience, he is particularly aware of the parole procedures and knows what American Indians might experience in a white dominant society. He once mentioned in an interview that the writing of The Indian Lawyer was to:
Talk about a whole different kind of Indian who is very successfulby anybody’s standards, to see how this Indian man functions in a white society, and toward the end of the book have him return to an Indian community. (Lupton, “Interview” 205)