The Surrounded.

AuthorGoldberg, Carole
PositionBook review

THE SURROUNDED. By D'Arcy McNickle. New York: Dodd Mead. 1936. (University of New Mexico Press 1978 ed.). Pp. 297. $23.95.

That's the way it goes now; the old law is not used and nobody cares about the new.

Old Modeste The Surrounded (p. 207)

He could tell himself as he stood there, not only listening but seeing, that of all joys, there was none like that of capturing the future in a vision and holding it lovingly to the eye.

Archilde The Surrounded (p. 255)

INTRODUCTION

Although largely unheralded in its time, (1) D'Arcy McNickle's The Surrounded has become a classic of Native American literature. When the University of New Mexico Press reissued the book in 1978, a year after McNickle's death, the director of Chicago's Newberry Library, Lawrence W. Towner, predicted (correctly) that it would "reach a far wider audience." (2) Within The Surrounded are early stirrings of a literary movement that took flight several decades after the novel's first publication in the writings of N. Scott Momaday, Louise Erdrich, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Gerald Vizenor, among others. (3) All of these Native American authors share with McNickle a desire to present, from a Native perspective, the challenges of establishing identity and sustaining community in a world where indigenous societies must contend with powerful forces of colonization and modernity. Literary critics have offered sharply differing interpretations of the ultimate message The Surrounded conveys about the future of indigenous peoples. Some view the novel as a statement of despair, (4) while others discern McNickle's confidence in the strength of Native cultures and their capacity for renewal. (5) There is broad consensus, however, that The Surrounded is a seminal work. (6)

What the literary critics have largely overlooked is the novel's pointed analysis and critique of criminal justice in Indian country. Much of the novel's plot is driven by acts viewed as criminal by the dominant, non-Native social order. The protagonist, Archilde Leon, returns home to the Flathead Reservation of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana, hoping to say a last farewell to his family before making his way as a fiddler in the cities. His relationship with both parents has become strained, following his education in the local Catholic mission school and in a federal Indian boarding school. For different reasons, neither parent wanted him to pursue his ambition of making his way far from home in a big city. Greeting him is news that his older brother, Louis, is hiding in the mountains, accused of stealing horses---conduct outlawed by the local authorities but long carried out by the Salish against their enemies. (7) Archilde's non-Indian father is so displeased with Louis's behavior that he has disassociated himself from the other members of his family, living apart from his Salish wife, Catharine, and refusing all contact with Louis. At first, Archilde also feels alienated from the more traditional Salish ways that Catharine, his mother, still practices, despite her long-ago conversion to Catholicism. But as he develops greater appreciation for his mother-through feasts and Salish stories told in his honor by the blind elder, Old Modeste--Archilde agrees to accompany her on one last hunting trip into the snowy mountains. There they first encounter the hostile local sheriff, Sheriff Quigley, and later are surprised to discover Louis. Louis proceeds to shoot a young, female deer. When the local game warden comes upon the group and accuses Louis of violating state game laws, there is a confrontation, and the warden mistakenly believes Louis is about to shoot him. The warden fires his gun, killing Louis, and a furious Catharine steals behind the warden and fells him with a hatchet.

The remainder of the story unwinds the consequences of this double homicide. Archilde and Catharine hide the body of the game warden by burying him in the snow-hardened ground and drag Louis back to the reservation mission town of St. Xavier for a proper burial. They give no report of the actual events to the non-Indian authorities. The local federal government agent brings Archilde in for questioning by Sheriff Quigley, who is highly suspicious of the circumstances of the warden's disappearance. Archilde, however, denies any involvement, and the Sheriff must wait until the spring thaw to search for any evidence against him. After Archilde is released, he explains what happened to his father, who urges his son to leave Flathead as soon as possible to study music in Europe. Archilde agrees and reconciles with his father, but almost immediately thereafter, his father contracts a serious illness and dies. Archilde decides to remain on the reservation to complete the season of his father's ranching and farming enterprises--a decision that is reinforced when Archilde becomes attached to Elise, a young, flamboyant Indian woman, who is the granddaughter of Old Modeste. As spring turns to summer, Catharine has dreams that lead her to disavow her Catholic faith. Rejecting belief in sin and confession, she turns to Old Modeste and the elders to dispense the traditional punishment for wrongdoing--the whip. In a proceeding held in secret from the non-Indian authorities, Catharine receives her whipping.

Some time later, Sheriff Quigley reports his discovery of the warden's saddle at a location in the mountains that conflicts with Archilde's earlier story. As the Sheriff continues his search for the warden's remains, and Catharine nears death from a stroke, Archilde tells the federal agent what really happened. The agent, who thinks well of Archilde, responds that there will be some difficulties persuading the Sheriff of Archilde's innocence. But the agent allows Archilde to remain with his dying mother, trusting Archilde to turn himself in. Meanwhile, Elise warns Archilde not to expect fair treatment at the hands of the non-Indian justice system. After his mother's death, Archilde follows Elise into the mountains. The agent sends his federally commissioned Indian police force to track them down, without success. Eventually Sheriff Quigley locates them and enters their camp. As he tries to arrest Archilde, Elise throws hot coffee in his face and fatally shoots him. The federal agent and Indian police are nearby, and as the story ends, Archilde extends his arms so they can handcuff him and take him away.

Nearly seventy-five years after publication of The Surrounded, Congress passed the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 ("TLOA"), (8) acknowledging "a crisis of violent crime on many Indian reservations that has persisted for decades." (9) The TLOA introduced some modest improvements to the complex system of federal, state, and tribal criminal justice operating in Indian country. (10) The Act left more far-reaching, fundamental reforms to the recommendations of a bipartisan, hybrid legislative-executive commission, the Indian Law and Order Commission)1 As a member of that Commission (12) and someone who has conducted extensive empirical research on the current state of criminal justice in Indian country, (13) I found an uncanny correspondence between McNickle's understanding of the problems of Indian country criminal justice in 1936 and the assessments of contemporary scholars. Although that system has experienced some changes between the initial publication of The Surrounded and passage of the TLOA, many of the system's fundamental features have remained constant. The special power of The Surrounded is that it presents both the weaknesses of the present system and recommendations for improvement through a compelling story, rather than through data or scholarly exposition. A rereading of The Surrounded could help build support for long-needed reformation of Indian country criminal justice.

Part I of this Review presents both biographical and historical background that may explain how McNickle arrived at his perceptive, far-sighted understanding of justice issues affecting indigenous communities. Part II draws out the elements of narrative and character in The Surrounded that bear most directly on Indian country criminal justice. I show how the novel develops a critique of the Indian country criminal justice system--and an implicit argument for change--that accords remarkably with contemporary theory and policy analysis.

  1. BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT FOR McNICKLE'S VISION

    The sources of McNickle's remarkable insights and vision can be found both in his personal biography (14) and in the history of federal Indian policy during his lifetime. Like most of the more recent writers of what has been called the Native American Renaissance, (15) McNickle had biological and cultural ties to both Indian and non-Indian communities. Born in 1904 on the Flathead Indian Reservation of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, located in northwest Montana, McNickle was enrolled as a tribal member, even though neither of his parents was Salish or Kootenai. His father was of Irish descent, and his mother was Metis, a descendent of intermarried French and Cree who had made their home in what is now Saskatchewan, Canada. Beginning in the 1860s, many Metis--including McNickle's maternal grandfather--violently resisted dispossession by the Canadian government, which had begun dividing up the lands of that area for settlement by non-Natives. When the rebellion failed in 1885 and the Canadian govemment tried and hanged the rebel leader, many Metis fled south across the U.S.-Canadian border, seeking refuge among tribes such as the Confederated Salish and Kootenai. Not only did the Salish and Kootenai provide a sanctuary for McNickle's family, they also granted them tribal citizenship in 1905, part of the enrollment process that preceded allotment of tribal land into individually held parcels. (16) McNickle, his mother, and his two sisters all received allotments of Flathead land as a consequence...

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