Ella Cara Deloria was born in 1889, about a month before my paternal grandfather was born 200 miles to the south. She was Yankton Dakota Sioux, from the reservation in southern South Dakota, and although her mother was 3/4 white, she had been raised as a traditional Dakota woman and brought her children up accordingly. Dakota was thus Ella's first language. Her father was one of the first Sioux to be ordained as an Episcopalian priest and Ella actually grew up on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation among the Lakota people, so she was familiar with both Dakota and Lakota dialects (they're very close). She earned a B.Sc. from Columbia Teachers College, part of Columbia University, in 1915, and while there became acquainted with the anthropologist Franz Boas, who recruited her to do linguistic work among the Sioux.
Earlier this year I read a really interesting book (Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century by Charles King) about Franz Boas and his students, who included Margaret Mead, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ella Cara Deloria. That's the first time I remember hearing about Deloria and the book painted a vivid, though brief, picture of her. I was thus delighted to be able to add Waterlily to my reading list.
Deloria had a hard life. She trained as a teacher, and did work for several years in various Indian schools, teaching PE and dance. But she gave that up to do linguistics and anthropology for Boas -- for a pittance, and not a very reliable pittance at that. Sometimes she lived in her car because she couldn't afford an apartment. She could never afford to go to graduate school and become a "real" anthropologist. But I'm starting to think she was happier than I first thought, and reading Waterlily is what gave me that idea.
I'm getting ahead of myself! So, the book. I loved it! This might be my favorite of the ten books I've read so far this year for the Challenge. And I didn't expect that I would feel this way. The book looked rather forbidding, somehow, with that photo of Deloria in traditional dress on the cover. It was published by the University of Nebraska press, and books from university presses never look like they're going to be much fun. In addition, I knew that Deloria wrote the novel as a sort of fictional ethnography -- it is based on the work she did collecting stories from elderly Lakota people and also her translations of material that was collected by others in the 1800s.
That doesn't sound very inspiring, does it? But the book is marvelous, even though its ethnographic origins are obvious. Deloria includes explanations of all the things her characters do, which ought to make the book wooden, unreadable. Instead, it is charming and engaging. The characters come alive, especially Waterlily, and her mother Blue Bird, who gives birth to Waterlily on the third page of the book while on a march with her "camp circle" to a new site. The rest of the book covers the lives of the two women up until Waterlily is about 20 and embarking on a new phase of her life. We follow them, and the rest of whichever camp circle they belong to at the moment, as they go through the good times and the hard times -- and there are many of both. We learn all about the Lakota and their customs and traditions, especially the women but also the men, since one of Deloria's sources was stories collected by a young Sioux man in 1887.
I think one thing that made the book enjoyable was that the action takes place at the very beginning of contact between the Sioux and the white man. Waterlily's people are aware that white people exist, but they know very little about them. As the book goes on, white people gradually begin to worm their way into the story, but they are always kept on the periphery. The only one I recall who is given a name is Lean White Man, a friend of Waterlily's "social father" (the father of her brother's close friend). There is mention of how more and more Sioux are using white men's guns, and at one point Waterlily's camp circle creates a large food cache in case the whites kill all the buffalo and the Lakota are in danger of starvation. So you know the crisis is coming. But, thankfully, it doesn't come in this book. On the last page, Waterlily is a happy woman, and I was happy to leave her there. That is, I wanted to know more about her, but I didn't really want to hear the sad stories that were undoubtedly ahead, so I was OK with the book ending at that point.
I just realized that this is the only book I have read this year that is like this, the only one that is about Indian life, not Indian life ruined by whites. It's possible that I should have read it first (or maybe second, after The Last of the Mohicans) because it is based on stories told by people who lived in the 1800s. Obviously, you can never forget the terrible things done to Indians by white people, but it's nice to have one story just about Indian culture.
All the qualms I had about the previous book I read for the Challenge, The Man Who Killed the Deer, are absent here because I know Deloria is absolutely qualified to tell this story, with her knowledge and background. And she makes no attempt to describe the Lakota as otherworldly and in touch with higher powers in a way that white people aren't. The Lakota are presented as being extremely different from white people, but the difference is explained. The main thing motivating the Lakota is their system of kinship, which governs every aspect of their behavior. Also, generosity and hospitality are highly valued, so giving things makes them happy, not getting things.
I mentioned earlier that reading the book caused me to view Deloria differently. In the book Gods of the Upper Air, she seemed like a sad case. What's mentioned in all the biographical sketches I've read of her is that she was desperately poor in part because of her family obligations. She supported her sister and her aging parents. Also, of course, Boas paid her very little, though he would have liked to pay her more. But two things are clearer to me now. First, she loved doing the anthropological work and was grateful to be paid anything for it. Second, since she was raised traditionally, kinship ties must have been extremely important to her. As a Dakota, especially since she was unmarried, her first priority would have been her siblings (including that dependent sister). So it doesn't make sense to view her as a typical white person who would have chafed under those family burdens. Waterlily would not have seen them as burdens. I'm guessing that Deloria was probably mostly OK with the situation, even though she would have appreciated more funding and the chance to learn more anthropology.
I would like to know more about Deloria. Supposedly there's a biography being written, by Susan Gardner who wrote the introduction to the 2009 edition of Waterlily. I would definitely read that. But I recommend this book to anyone who would like to read a novel about Native American culture. I liked it more and more as it went along. I should also note that I used it as my bedtime book -- not because it made me sleepy, but because it wasn't disturbing. I could read a chapter and then have a good night's sleep.
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