The Mammoth Book of Westerns by Jon E. Lewis

Author:Jon E. Lewis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781780339160
Publisher: Constable & Robinson
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

OLIVER LA FARGE

The Young Warrior

OLIVER LA FARGE (1901–1963) was born a member of an elite East Coast family, and was educated at Harvard. His anthropology studies took him to New Mexico, where he became fascinated by Navajo Indian culture. La Farge’s 1929 novel set amongst the Navajo, Laughing Boy, was an immediate bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize. As Dee Brown, the author of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, once remarked, La Farge’s Navajos “stand amongst the first real Indians to appear in fiction”. La Farge’s other Western fiction includes The Enemy Gods (1937) and the short story collection, A Pause in the Desert (1959). In addition to writing fiction (and later working as columnist for Santa Fe New Mexican), La Farge continued his career as an anthropologist, leading expeditions to Mexico and Guatemala. For many years he was President of the Association of American Indian Affairs.

“The Young Warrior” was first published in Esquire in 1938.

“WE HAD GOOD profit and good fun,” he said. “Truly, we were much amused, and on the way home we laughed a lot. And I tell you that that Nantai, he is a great leader.”

He was about eighteen years old, at the age when young men wish to prove themselves and to recite their exploits in the presence of young women. He sprawled beside the fire in the camp of his cousin’s band, aware that he had an audience, men who had proved themselves on the warpath, old men, boys his age who had not yet gone fighting, and girls. The fire burnt generously in front of his cousin’s wickeyup, he had an audience, and he had something to tell.

He wore the usual knee-high Apache moccasins, a breechclout, a white man’s coat of very fine green material, much too large for him, and a heavy turban of shining, blue silk covered with a design of small, pink and yellow flowers. Across his lap he nursed one of the new, short rifles that load from the back.

Supper was over. He had been quiet, saying nothing about himself, until at last one of the old men asked him about the war party. He lit a corn-husk cigarette. Seeing that they all waited, listening, he went on with his narrative. Now and again a man grunted approval, from time to time a woman would laugh.

We set out on foot for the Mexican settlement at Cottonwood River. There were five of us young men, and Nantai, who had agreed to come as our leader. The raid there was nothing. Most of the people had gone further east for a fiesta, so we simply took what horses we could find, a small amount of goods, and set the houses on fire. The few who were there ran away, and we did not bother hunting for them. There was really very little there, we each got a horse, that was about all. So Nantai took us to the north, to see what we could find.

The next day we came into sight of the road that runs from the far east to the big settlement at Muddy Flat.

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