Our Osage Hills presents an exciting portrait of the Wahzhazhe (Osage) people and their prairie homelands in the early twentieth century and beyond, this book presents excellent lost work by the charismatic Osage author and naturalist, John Joseph Mathews, plus a wealth of contextual stories and Osage history. Dr. Michael Snyder discovered, compiled, and edited Mathews's captivating articles, and crafted researched commentaries; these articles and commentaries interweave to form an Osage-centric chronicle of the Great Depression. Using Mathews's articles as a cue, a prompt to move through a vast memory palace, Snyder's pieces tell a broader story of Osage cultural survivance, continuity, and the political struggle for sovereignty; the involvement of Osages in high culture performance and music; the special contributions of Osage women; the novel of the West and novelists in the West; Hollywood as a reflection, however distorted, of the Osage Nation and the surrounding nation; Indian athletics, especially baseball; and crucially, birds, animals, and the beginning of ecological understanding and the emergence of environmental protection. The essays also offer new discoveries on the Osage murders of the 1920s, and show the continued white exploitation and violence against Osages during the 1930s. Through this entertaining and wide-ranging study, the reader will gain a new and fuller understanding of the Wahzhazhe people and their homeland.
Michael Snyder is assistant teaching professor at the University of Oklahoma. John Joseph Mathews (1894-1979) was the preeminent Osage author, naturalist, and historian of the twentieth century.
Acknowledgments Foreword by Russ Tall Chief Foreword by Harvey Payne Introduction by Michael Snyder PART I - SCENE SETTING PART II - BIRDS OF THE OSAGE PART III - CULTURE AND POLITICS PART IV -ROMANCE OF THE OSAGE PART V-AFRICAN AMERICANS PART VI-AUTUMN PART VII - MAN IN NATURE PART VIII-OSAGE WOMEN AND OTHERS PART IX-CONSERVATION PART X-CRITIQUE OF SETTLER COLONIALISM PART XI- MURDER Bibliography Index About the Contributors About the Authors
An important contribution to our understanding of the writer, the era, and, most significantly, the place: the Osage hills of Oklahoma. Michael Snyder has uncovered lost gems of John Joseph Mathew's work and offers them in extraordinary bites, accompanied by his own interstitial essays that illuminate backstory and sociohistorical context. Coupled with his biography John Joseph Mathews: Life of an Osage Writer, this book affirms Snyder's place as a significant scholar of Mathews' work. John Joseph Mathews observed and immersed himself in the natural world, documenting, honoring, and defending it. In Our Osage Hills, Michael Snyder revisits Mathews's early lost writings, contributing his own valuable perspective and historical context. From where we stand now, we would do well to pay attention. Michael Snyder has done an excellent job of collecting and providing context for Mathews' pieces. This is an important book about an important literary figure. Michael Snyder is to be praised for his profound literary archeological work in unearthing and contextualizing previously unknown writings by John Joseph Mathews. Snyder's short essays and commentaries punctuate Mathews's texts, reminding readers that Mathews was a nature-writer and philosopher as well as a chronicler of the Osages who is to be reckoned with. This monograph is an important contribution to the field of American Indian Studies because it brings attention to the writings of John Joseph Mathews. Alongside his fellow Indigenous intellectuals, McNickle and Deloria, all three represent the scholarly and literary achievements that create a deeper understanding of "tribalography," and the collective experiences of Indigenous peoples can be traced through their writings.
