Synopses & Reviews
Originally published in 1932 as Red Mother, this book was perhaps the first record of the womens side of Indian life, and it has become a classic work in its field.
Pretty-shield told her story to Frank Linderman through an interpreter and using the sign language. A medicine woman of the Crows, she was one of the few who remembered what it was like before the white man came and the buffalo went away. She tells about the simple games and dolls of an Indian childhood and the duties of the girls and women—setting up the lodges, dressing the skins, picking berries, digging roots, cooking. From her account we learn about courtship, marriage, childbirth and the care of babies, about medicine-dreams, the care of the sick, and the dangers and joys of womanhood among men whose lives were spent in hunting and fighting.
Synopsis
Grandmother's Grandchild is the remarkable story of Alma Hogan Snell, a Crow woman brought up by her grandmother, the famous medicine woman Pretty Shield. Snell grew up during the 1920s and 1930s, part of the second generation of Crows to be born into reservation life. Like many of her contemporaries, she experienced poverty, personal hardships, and prejudice, and left home to attend federal Indian schools.
What makes Snell's story particularly engaging is her exceptional storytelling style. She is frank and passionate, and these qualities yield a memoir unlike those of most Native women. The complex reservation world of Crow women -- harsh yet joyous, impoverished yet rich in meaning -- unfolds for readers. Snell's experiences range from the forging of an unforgettable bond between grandchild and grandmother to the flowering of an extraordinary love story that has lasted more than five decades.
About the Author
Frank B. Linderman was born in Ohio in 1869 and in 1885 went to Montana. His early years there were spent as trapper, hunter, and cowboy. He was intimately associated with the Crows and other Indian tribes. Lindermans Plenty-Coups: Chief of the Crows, is also a Bison Book.