All the Buffalo Returning (Paperback) - Common

Buffalo Woman #2

by Dorothy M. Johnson

This sequel to Dorothy M. Johnson’s prize-winning Buffalo Woman continues the story of Grandmother Whirlwind’s family of Hunkpapa and Oglala Sioux who flee to Canada with Sitting Bull after the Battle of the Little Bighorn. All the Buffalo Returning is a haunting novel about the fate of the Lakotas who find no surcease in Canada but are driven back onto their dwindling reservation by starvation. They face the enormous problem of surviving in the world of the white conquerors. Stormy, the grandson of Whirlwind, travels with his family to Pine Ridge for Wovoka’s Ghost Dance. There, true believers who perform the sacred dance will experience the return of the lost buffalo and pony herds as well as the spirits of the beloved dead.

248 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Dorothy Marie Johnson (December 19, 1905–November 11, 1984) was an American author best known for her Western fiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy...

Reviews

[Bernadette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite a few of Dorothy M. Johnson's writings have been remade into western films, perhaps most famously "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence." With this in mind, I expected "All the Buffalo Returning" to celebrate white settlement of the West and to typecast Native people as the usual savages or stoics. Thus I was very pleasantly surprised to encounter a compelling story told from a Sioux point of view, with a range of complex, distinct, and memorable Indian characters.

Most of "All the Buffalo Returning" is told through the eyes of Stormy, who was just a boy during the Battle of Little Bighorn. Following that confrontation, he flees with his family to Canada in hopes that its government will treat the Sioux better than the Americans did. While the Hunkpapa are allowed to stay north of the "Medicine Line," the Canadian government -- unwilling to provoke the enmity of the United States -- does not provide rations or any other assistance to them. Poor hunting and ensuing starvation thus force Stormy and his family to return south to Standing Rock Agency, where disease and hunger are ever-present. Years of desperation lead many of Stormy's people to embrace a new religion. The "Dance of Spirits Returning" includes the belief that Christ's imminent second coming will wipe whites from the face of the Earth and that the land's natural abundance, including its buffalo, will recover.

Within this evolving plot, Stormy faces the choice with which many in his generation struggled -- whether to grasp proffered opportunities to assimilate or whether to remain true to cultural traditions. After seeing a vision in which he is urged to "help the people," Stormy decides that an Anglo-American education may enable him to assist the Sioux in commercial transactions, treaty negotiations, and other interactions with whites. Several years of instruction at Carlisle provide a solid understanding of arithmetic, but only pidgin English and vocational skills that are useless on reservations. Encounters with the school's founder, Richard H. Pratt, and with other "Wasichus" who renege on their promises confirm Stormy's belief that they are full of falsehoods and hatred. Yet while his life seems aimless for much of the book, his self-respect is not destroyed. Stormy works hard for the Formans, the one Pennsylvania family who is kind to him. When leaving Carlisle, he asserts to Pratt that he and his friend Takes Much are "not boys" but "men." Before accepting a job at a reservation store, Stormy negotiates where he will sleep and which days he will have off from work. Finally, he makes the fateful decision to leave that job and the possibility of marriage to a Christianized woman and follow his parents to Wounded Knee.

Readers seeking a happy ending will not find one here, at least not in the usual sense. The final scene is the infamous 1890 massacre and we are led to believe that Stormy and most (if not all) of his family is killed. However, in his final moments, Stormy sees grandmother Whirlwind who reminds him "When everything is gone, there is still love. That is how we lived. That is what matters." Because Stormy purposefully cast his lot with his parents and traditional culture and agrees with Whirlwind even as he lays down his life, the end of the book is a kind of affirmation. While Johnson is not an American Indian, I believe All the Buffalo Returning does an excellent job of capturing a perspective and story that is often difficult for white Americans to understand -- the complex interplay between victimization and self-agency that is very much a part of Native experiences. One of the best books I've ever read.

[Craig Schlossin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sad story that is mostly true and I hope we can do better in the future.