Mourning Dove - (1882?-1936)
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I. Personal and Professional Biography
Many authors have paved the way for American literature as we know it today. Believe it or not, some of these authors have actually come from Idaho. Native Americans are among the group of these authors. Not only have they paved the way for American literature, but, also more specifically, for Native American literature. Mourning Dove is believed to have written the first novel by a Native American woman (Whitson 160). She paved the way for Native Americans and women writers.
Mourning Dove was born between April 1882 and 1888 in a canoe crossing the Kootenai River along the shore of Bonner's Ferry, Idaho (Whitson 160). She was a mixed-blood. Her mother, Lucy Stuikin, was of Colville and Arrow Lakes descent, and her father, Joseph Quintasket, was of Nicola, Okanogan, and, possibly, Arrow Lakes descent. She was the oldest of her siblings. Mourning Dove had three sisters; Julia, who was born in 1891, Mary Margaret, who was born in 1892, and Marie, whose age is unknown. She had one biological brother, Johnny who was born in 1897 (Brown 285).
She and her family grew up in the Kelly Hill community near Kettle Falls, Washington. In 1895 she attended school at the Goodwin Mission School of the Sacred Heart Convention. She was punished constantly for speaking Salish, and, finally, she became sick and was sent home for a while. During that time, 1895 or 1896, her family adopted a thirteen-year-old Irish orphan named Jimmy Ryan. He introduced Mourning Dove to novels for the first time. That was a turning point in her life. She found a new desire to learn. She returned to school to further her education. Unfortunately, tragedy struck, and she had to leave again. Her little sister Marie died on April 29, 1900. In the following year her mother died on May 8, 1901, and then her brother Johnny died in the next year on July 8, 1902 (Brown 285).
In 1904 her father remarried. Mourning Dove didn't like this, so she took her sisters to Jennings, Montana, to stay with their grandmother. While in Jennings, she wanted to keep attending school. In order to do so, she became a matron at the Fort Shaw Indian School in Great Falls, Montana. For her work she received free room and board and was able to attend classes (Brown 286).
On July 31, 1908 she married Hector McLeod. He was a Flathead Reservation mixed-blood from Kalispell Montana. Soon after their marriage, they moved to Polson, Montana. Little did Mourning Dove know, Hector was an alcoholic and more than likely abusive. She became pregnant and a few months later she was hospitalized. For some reason, due to an error by the doctor or by damage done to her by Hector, she was never able to have children again. She left Hector in 1912 and went to Calgary, Alberta. She found a business school and studied typing, shorthand, and composition skills for two years (Brown 286).
In the years to follow, she fought several different illnesses. In 1916-1917 she acquired inflammatory rheumatism and pneumonia. She moved to British Columbia to heal. While there, she felt at peace. She chose this as her spot to return whenever she needed to regain focus or relive the Salish culture. During this time, Mourning Dove began to teach Indian students on the Inkameep Reserve. In 1917 she became sick with a severe toothache and an inflamed eye problem. Then in 1918 she suffered from the Killer Flu (Brown 287).
After recovering, she married Fred Galler. Fred was a half-blood Wenatchee, who lived in Okanogan County Washington. Soon after their marriage, they moved to Omak, Washington. Over the years, Fred became quite an alcoholic and a gambler. At the peak of his problem, he had gotten drunk, and gambled away their car and many other essentials. Luckily for him, Mourning Dove was a strong woman, and they always managed to work things out (Brown 287-288).
In her later years, she had many accomplishments. She founded the Eagle Feather Club in 1928. This was an all-woman organization. Their focus was to mentor, educate, and meet the social needs of Indian women in Omak. In 1930 she became a spokeswoman for the Colville Indian association. While maintaining that position, she tried to help commissioner John Collier obtain adoption of the new Indian Reorganization Act in 1934. Even though their attempts were unsuccessful, she was elected into the Tribal Council. Mourning Dove became the first woman ever to hold such a position (Brown 287-288).
On July 30, 1936 Mourning Dove was hospitalized. She had mental distress and cuts on her chest, shins, and buttocks. The cause of the abrasions is unknown (Brown 288). As a result of the attack, she died a few months later of a brain hemorrhage somewhere between the ages of 48 and 54 (Whitson 160).
Not only was Mourning Dove's life interesting, it was also full of many accomplished writings. She wrote numerous books. Her first novel was Cogewea, the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range. It was published in 1928 and then again in 1981. Cogewea shows the cultural and personal struggles of Native Americans (Whitson 160). It is semi-biographical. She collaborated with Lucullus Virgil McWhorter to publish the book, though the two had very different views on how Cogewea should be interpreted. McWhorter made many changes to the book without Mourning Dove's consent. For instance, he made poetic titles to gain the sympathy of the reader, and he changed the dialogue to monologue. It is said that in order to understand Cogewea it is best if you try to listen to both voices. McWhorter used Cogewea to voice his opinions on society and describe to how he thought the Indians were being treated. Unfortunately, his revisions damaged the book more than they actually helped. As a result, Mourning Dove made less than twenty-five dollars on its publication (Brown 287).
Mourning Dove later composed a book of thirty-eight Okanogan tales called The Okanogan Sweat House . She sent it to McWhorter in 1921 to look over. Soon after he looked over the tales, he convinced her to change the title to Coyote Stories (Brown 287). It was published originally in 1933 (Whitson 160). Like all of her works, Coyote Stories is highly edited. In fact, it was the most heavily edited out of all of her works. Nevertheless, Coyote Stories was a huge success. It made people more aware of the struggles that the Indians were facing in trying to keep their culture alive (Brown 290).
Her next novel, Mourning Dove: A Salishan Autobiography , was published long after her death, 1990. This novel was originally started as an autobiography, but after it was passed down through editor to editor it became a book about a whole culture. Mourning Dove first gave it to McWhorter in the 1930's. He did all that he could and then passed it off to Heister Guie. Guie had it for a while. He eventually rewrote all of Chapter 5. After he was through, he passed it on to Erna Gunther who made a few changes. She gave it back to Guie, who finally gave it to the book's claimed editor, Jay Miller. Miller stated that the story itself was great, but it was full of grammatical errors (Whitson 160-161).
In the mid-1930's, Mourning Dove began working on three works, Son of the Squaw, Tepee Life, and Educating the Indian. Son of the Squaw was meant to be a novel, but Mourning Dove grew disappointed with the way that it was turning out so she stopped writing about it. Tepee Life and Educating the Indian were nonfiction works that she never finished. Later on, Erna Gunther discovered these materials and edited them (Brown 288).
Two other works that were published after Mourning Dove's death include Tales of the Okanogans, published in 1976 and edited by Donald M. Hines, and Mourning Dove's Stories, edited by Clifford E. Trafzer and Richard D. Scheuerman. Tales of the Okanogans includes all of the original thirty-seven stories in The Okanogan Sweat House. It was slightly edited to make more sense, but all format and wording stayed basically the same. The only downfall of the editing was that it lost its dramatic effect. Mourning Dove's Stories contains eleven tales from Guie's heavily edited revisions, and five of Mourning Dove's later unpublished works (Brown 290).
Although Mourning Dove's time in Idaho was extremely brief, she still originated here. She should be honored and remembered for her achievements. She did many things that not only helped literature, but also helped women and Native Americans. She was enormously important to her time period. Without her, who knows how American Literature would have evolved.
II. Major Works
Cogewea, the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range
Coyote Stories
Mourning Dove: A Salishan Autobiography
Teepee Life
Educating the Indian
Tales of the Okanogans
Mourning Dove's Stories
II. Works Cited
Brown, Alanna Kathleen. "Mourning Dove (Humishuma)." American Women Prose Writers, 1870-1920. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Ed. Sharon M. Harris. Vol. 221. Detroit: Gale, 2000.
Whitson, Kathy J. Native American Literature: An Encyclopedia of Works, Characters, Authors, and Themes. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999.
This essay was submitted by a student of Joanne Davis, an English teacher at Emmett High School in Idaho.