In this account of his long residence with the Blackfeet, Mr. Schultz has given us a remarkable story. It is an animated and vivid picture of Indian life. The scene is on the plains in the old days, in the picturesque period when the tribe lived in a primitive way, subsisting on the buffalo and at war with hostile neighbors. It is a true history and not romance, yet abounds in romantic incident. In its absolute truthfulness lies its value.
The book has extraordinary interest as a human document. It is a study of human nature in red. The author has penetrated the veil of racial indifference and misunderstanding and has got close to the heart of the people about whom he writes. Such an intimate revelation of the domestic life of the Indians has never before been written. The sympathetic insight everywhere evident is everywhere convincing. We feel that the men and the women portrayed are men and women of actual living existence. And while in the lodges on the Marias the elemental passions have fuller and franker sway, we recognize in the Blackfoot as here revealed a creature of common humanity like our own. His are the same loves and hates and hopes and fears. The motives which move him are those which move us. The Indian is the white man without the veneer of civilization.
The chapters of this volume were published serially in Forest and Stream under the title "In the Lodges of the Blackfeet" and over the pseudonym W B. Anderson. The title page now bears the author's real name. Not only is the story a true one, but many of the characters still live, though today under conditions as different as though centuries had intervened. Father Prando died in the year 1906.
