In the opening pages of Mourning Dove’s 1927 novel, Cogewea, the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range, the narrator tells us, “Of mixed blood, was Cogewea; a ‘breed’!—the socially ostracized of two races.” And yet what is striking about this work of contemporary American Indian literature is that it both asserts and, at the same time, subverts this essentialist vision of blood identity.
In certain circumstances (where there is a competition for money), Cogewea is indeed ostracized—denied an identity as either white or American Indian. Yet, at the same time, her Indian grandmother, the Stemteemä, and her white suitor, Alfred Densmore, far from ostracizing her, actively seek to claim her against the wishes of the other. The Stemteemä tells stories from the Okanogan oral tradition to the “mixed-bloods” at the ranch— Cogewea, her sisters Mary and Julia, and Jim—to teach them that Indian women have been poorly treated by certain (not all) non-Indian men. Densmore, on the other hand, repeatedly urges Cogewea to forget the past, to deny the relevance of the Stemteemä’s stories, and to affirm the “superiority” of her white lineage. After considerable deliberation, Cogewea chooses to ignore Okanogan oral tradition and to elope with Densmore, a choice that ends disastrously. Yet in denying the truth of the oral tradition, Cogewea in fact relives the old stories, adding her name to the list of wronged Indian women, affirming the truth and value of the stories. The novel, then, becomes an extension of the Okanogan oral tradition, creating a thematic bridge between the oral word and the written text.
