Hill of the Rooster

by Curry Holden

Curry Holden.Hill of the Rooster. New York: Holt, [1956]. First edition. Publisher's binding, dust jacket.

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1956

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Curry Holden was a Texas Tech history professor with a long-runing interest in the Yaquis of Sonora (and their Tucson refuge of Pasua). His daughter coaxed and edited A Yaqui Life. He published a novel, Hill of the Rootser (1956), focused on the Mexican government/army attempt to exterminate the Yaquis in the early years of the 20th century (before the revolution). Before being enslaved, a girl (Chepa) and a boy (Teta) watch their mothers being hanged and infants smashed against trees (before their mothers were hanged).

Both escape and return to Sonora. Each becomes the leader of rebel bands in the mountains. Eventually they marry. The pregnant Chepa goes along on a raid that ends with the siege of a mountaintop refuge. There are numerous action sequences, some atrocities beyond the opening Mexican army ones (including another band of Yaqui raiders), and the decorous central romance.

These days, novels about Native Peoples written by white authors (Laughing Boy, The Man Who Killed the Deer, etc.) are suspect of romanticism, inauthenticity, etc., even as they demonstrate racism and genocide, as Holden did. I think that Hill of the Rooster is a tragic tale of horrors that are unknown or at least forgotten and deserves readers, along with the (less readable) Yaqui life histories gathered by his daughter, the Spicers, and others.