Reading post: Winnetou: The Treasure of Nugget Mountain

I finished my third book for the Classics Challenge last night: Winnetou: The Treasure of Nugget Mountain by Karl May, translated and adapted by Marion Ames Taggart. The original Winnetou story was published in Germany in 1893, and this translation is from 1898. This fulfills category #4, "A classic in translation," although supposedly it's a very loose translation, with many changes made and a brand-new title. There exist more modern and accurate translations, but I have to admit I didn't want to spend the money, nor the time, to read another. If I could have gotten one from Prospector... oh well, maybe I should stop complaining about that.

Winnetou is/was famous in Germany and really all of central/eastern Europe. If you read the reviews of the various translations on Amazon you'll see that they're mostly by Europeans wondering why this translation is so bad! Despite the fact that Karl May made the whole thing up (he'd never even been to America), his books and the subsequent films based on them led Germans to fall in love with the American West.

One odd thing about this translation is that it begins in the middle of Winnetou I, the first collection of Winnetou stories by Karl May. (I don't know whether there was an earlier volume by this translator that included the first part.) May's German immigrant Charlie has become an American named Jack, and his initial encounter with Winnetou and the Apache people is only referred to in passing. By the time the book begins, Jack (often called by his Indian name, Old Shatterhand) and Winnetou have already become blood brothers, and they decide to travel back to the world of white people along with Winnetou's father, the chief, and his sister, who wants to go to school to learn the ways of white women. Terrible things ensue almost immediately (I won't go into specifics), but at the end of the book, Winnetou dies a Christian while German-Americans sing a version of Ave Maria, and Shatterhand triumphs over the evil bandit Santer. Winnetou's death puzzled me, because that means this volume must comprise parts of all the Winnetou stories, or at least more than just Winnetou I. According to Wikipedia, Winnetou's death doesn't occur until Winnetou III, but he dies in this translation.

So I don't know what I read, and I'm not sure it should count as a "translation." It gave me a whiff of the true Winnetou, maybe. This cover is the translation I probably should have read, from 2008. I'm debating whether or not to buy a used copy and read it too. The thing is, this type of story really isn't my thing. I've never been interested in Westerns, and this novel -- at least the version I read -- is ridiculous. Winnetou and Shatterhand do everything perfectly. They evade detection in situations where they deserve to be caught, they hit almost everything they fire at, almost all of their schemes work. Also, they never have any trouble acquiring food & drink, money, horses, etc. All the practical aspects of life in the West are absent, and I admit that's the part I would have been interested in. Oh, and Winnetou supposedly becomes the chief of the Apache tribe, but he's always off riding around with Old Shatterhand -- shouldn't a chief have more responsibilities? The translation I read had only 111 pages, but I was ready for it to be over after reading just a few of those.

I'm looking forward to reading some books written by and about Native Americans, not this sort of romantic fantasy.