Naapiikoan Winter

by Alethea Williams

At the turn of a new century, changes unimagined are about to unfold.

THE WOMAN: Kidnapped by the Apaches, a Mexican woman learns the healing arts. Stolen by the Utes, she is sold and traded until she ends up with the Piikáni. All she has left are her skills—and her honor. What price will she pay to ensure a lasting place among the People?

THE MAN: Raised in a London charitable school, a young man at the end of the third of a seven year term of indenture to the Hudson’s Bay Company is sent to the Rocky Mountains to live among the Piikáni for the winter to learn their language and to foster trade. He dreams of his advancement in the company, but he doesn’t reckon the price for becoming entangled in the passions of the Piikáni.

THE LAND: After centuries of conflict, Náápiikoan traders approach the Piikáni, powerful members of the Blackfoot Confederation. The Piikáni already have horses and weapons, but they are promised they will become rich if they agree to trap beaver for Náápiikoan. Will the People trade their beliefs for the White Man’s bargains?

Alethea Williams is the author of Willow Vale, the story of a Tyrolean immigrant’s journey to America after WWI. Willow Vale won a 2012 Wyoming State Historical Society Publications Award. In her second novel, Walls for the Wind, a group of New York City immigrant orphans arrive in Hell on Wheels, Cheyenne, Wyoming. Walls for the Wind is a WILLA Literary Award finalist, a gold Will Rogers Medallion winner, and placed first at the Laramie Awards in the Prairie Fiction category.

Partially based on the works of Canadian trader, explorer, and mapmaker David Thompson, Náápiikoan Winter spans a continent, examining the cultures in flux at the passing of an era and the painful birth of another.

Genres: Historical Fiction

296 pages, Paperback

Published May 9, 2016

About the author

Alethea Williams grew up in southwest Wyoming. Willow Vale is her first novel of the immigrant experience, dealing with the Tyroleans after WWI. Willow Vale won a 2012 Wyoming State Historical Society Publications Award. Her second novel details the Irish immigrant experience and the Orphan Train movement in Walls for the Wind. Walls for the Wind is a WILLA Literary Award finalist, a gold Will Rogers Medallion winner, and placed first at the Laramie Awards in the Prairie Fiction category. Her third book is a Western American pre-history spanning the North American continent, entitled Náápiikoan Winter, an Inspirational Western Fiction Will Rogers Medallion third place winner, Best Regional E-Book- Fiction Independent Publisher Book Awards Bronze,
Laramie Awards finalist, and Goethe Awards finalist. The second in the Irish Blessings series, Joy That Long Endures, is a Will Rogers Medallion bronze level winner. She also has a collection of newspaper columns in print: Boomer Blues Book: Staying Alive and Sane in the Modern American West. Twice president of Wyoming Writers, Inc. she still lives in her native state.

Reviews

[Mary Eve · Rating 5 out of 5]

NÁÁPIIKOAN WINTER

At the turn of a new century, changes unimagined are about to unfold.

I stumbled across Alethea Williams and her books as I browsed a few blogs I follow. Each blog was highlighting several interesting books. NÁÁPIIKOAN WINTER happened to stand out. The blurb sounded fascinating, and so I did a Google search of Williams and ended up adding her three books to my TBR shelves. Coincidentally, after following Williams on her social sites, she contacted me on Twitter and offered to send me copies of each of her published books. I'm always so appreciative of those authors that reach out to me to share their stories. To be honest, I'd never heard of Williams or her books but the historical aspects completely captivated me. One of my favorite books of all time is Love is a Wild Assault, the extraordinary story of legendary Texan, Harriet Potter, written beautifully by Elithe Hamilton Kirkland. I loved the primitive Western-wildness of Potter's story. The synopsis of Alethea's stories reminded me of that favored book and with little hesitation, welcomed Williams offer. Yes! Please send them! And so she did. I began with her latest, this one, and I'm happy to report that I was not disappointed in the least. What I don't understand is WHY haven't more people read this book? I see I'm the first person on Goodreads to review NÁÁPIIKOAN WINTER and I hope I do it the justice it deserves. Divided into four parts, it's outstanding and offers an intriguing look into the past, when Western America and the Northern Plains were just beginning to be explored by the English and the fur traders that followed.

Part One begins in Nuevo Mexico at the hacienda of Don Emilio Ramirez y Santiago, grandfather to eight-year old Isobel Ochoa y Ramirez. Isobel is wisked away in the middle of the night by her father, who plans to start a new life for himself and his only child. He hopes to give Isobel the life she craves and he promises Isobel that they're running away to better lives, the finest education for Isobel and riches from his newly acquired silver mine. Her father, Don Armando Ochoa, had not expected his daughter to be so difficult during their escape and the aventura is almost over before it begins when one of her grandfather's Indian workers, San Juan, appears before father and daughter as they are saddling the horses for departure. San Juan insists they remain at the hacienda but Don Armando will not be stopped. He and Isobel begin the long ride under the turquoise sky of Nuevo Mexico, en route to the silver mines and Pueblo mission, Gran Quivira. It will be an ill-fated decision. The valleys and deserts of the Rio Grande during this time were largely inhabited by fierce Indian tribes, among them the Apache, who did not hesitate to scalp, torture, or enslave their captives.

Part Two introduces the reader to Donal Thomas, a young Englishman who winters with the Piikáni (Blackfoot) hoping to learn their language and open trade with the local tribes. Saahkómaapi, Beaver Bundle Man( a seer or Dreamer) to the Inuk'sik band of the Piikáni, is immediately suspicious of the Englishman and predicts great change will come with this white man's visit. Thomas and Saahkómaapi try desperately to understand one another but their differences are immense. Donal Thomas is completely foreign to the Piikáni customs and a misunderstanding will lead to punishing accusations with severe consequences for Thomas, a beautiful Piikáni princess named Sweetgrass Woman, and the Piikáni medicine woman, Buffalo Stone Woman.

Williams weaves a wonderful tale of adventure, giving an absorbing account of life within the Piikáni. I admit to knowing very little about Indian customs, relations, hierarchy, and the many bands of Indians. All so very fascinating and Alethea Williams must have extensive knowledge about a time in American history when the West was wild and the Indians were keepers of the lands. Brilliant.



Thank you for sharing your stories with me, Alethea. I deeply appreciate it.
Nitsiniiyi'taki. (I thank you.)

[K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

When one nation strives to dominate another for economic gain, more than money is at stake. Cultures, lives, passions, traditions and human needs also fall in sacrifice. This realization resonates through the deeply-woven story line and intriguing characters of Alethea Williams’s novel, Náápiikoan Winter.

As we writers do when we deliver a new novel, Alethea Williams provided a review copy of this book for my consideration. Although I don’t know Ms. Williams personally, I offered to review her book because I read primarily historical fiction about the Great Plains and American West. When I do, I look for that magical blend of re-examined history and story, careful truth and colorful imagination. In short, a believable story well told.

Náápiikoan Winter is an ambitious novel; it sets out to portray an epic view in very personal detail. It captures a turning point in the American West when Native tribes face the crisis of aggressive English and French trading and exploration. This novel succeeds, through well-integrated research, in making this intense, global crisis feel immediate and personal. Several characters bond and clash to demonstrate the spiritual and material treasures at stake for Native and European interests at the turn of the 19th Century, on the as-yet uncharted North American continent.

The first key character in the book is a young Mexican girl who grows into one of the significant women in this story, Buffalo Stone Woman. I won’t spoil the plot, but young Isobel undergoes personal and cultural trauma and transformations. After a strong introduction to Isobel, the author only hints at most of her adolescent changes, but they ultimately situate Isobel to sense oncoming disaster and try to save her adopted Pììkáni tribe.

The second key character is Donal Thomas, a Náápiikoan (meaning Old Man Person, a term given by the Siksikà to White traders, out of respect for their many wonders). The seventeen-year-old boy, indentured to the Hudson Bay Company for seven years, is sent against his will to the Rocky Mountains to learn and to trade. He is a fascinating character, depicted well from within (ambitious, yet traumatized by his childhood), and through the eyes of Native characters. I found Donal believable as he naively and unwittingly precipitates several levels of social, spiritual and domestic disaster for the Pììkáni, who welcome and host him for the winter.

Ms. Williams develops many other Native characters into clear and interesting individuals who struggle for tribal status, safety or love. One of particular interest and beauty is Sweetgrass Woman, a credible teenage girl who longs for respectability and self-determination in a tribal culture that has already decided her domestic role. Her confused attempt for spiritual autonomy through association with Buffalo Stone Woman is particularly touching. I also appreciate the depth and complexity of Bear Dog, who could have easily remained a one-dimensional “bad guy,” yet he, with his devious longing for acceptance, feels complex and human. Also deeply satisfying is the character of Saahkómaapi, the elderly dreamer who squabbles with his wife, hungers for more women, and risks everything to protect his people’s medicine from Náápiikoan.

Náápiikoan Winter doesn’t romanticize tribal or individual behavior or suffering. Complex tribal and inter-tribal politics, family rivalries, and White disruption of these dynamics—all are well-depicted, often through tense, yet subtle confrontations. Several well-drawn secondary characters sense, but don’t know how to resist, the looming “white wings” of the traders and the civilization they signify. The goods and relationships the traders bring to the tribe are attractive, yet unrelentingly erode Pììkáni religion, leadership, decision-making and survival through this one Náápiikoan winter, and through those to come.

In addition to her intuitively-integrated research, one aspect of storytelling Ms. Williams manages well is what I’ve learned to call “knowledge gaps.” She skillfully withholds and manages key information, giving the characters and reader just enough knowledge, but keeping all in the dark for just long enough, to keep the pages turning.

When I closed the covers of Náápiikoan Winter, I felt a sense of loss for a time in history. I felt a connection to place and regret for characters and cultures who would have no happy-ever-after, romantic ending. I respected the author for not glossing over a hard telling of a story that seemed true, both in facts and in details. I felt the dust of the past clinging to me. I had that echo—of living character voices and cultures intimately experienced—that I get from fine historical fiction.

I highly recommend Náápiikoan Winter to readers who like strongly-researched fiction about the clash of cultures and diverse individuals, in North American history.

[Story Circle Book Reviews · Rating 4 out of 5]

As this review was written, there was a growing protest by Native Americans in North Dakota, where an oil pipeline was planned for deep beneath the Missouri River, endangering the Standing Rock tribe's only source of water. The pipeline was also set to run through ancestral burial grounds and land traditionally held sacred. The pipeline company had already bulldozed such sites, and the peaceful demonstrators were gaining public support. These current events made it especially thought provoking to read Náápiikoan Winter by Alethea Williams. She imagines the early history of contact between white men (Náápiikoan) and an indigenous Plains tribe, and gives a sense of the cross-purposes and cultural confusions that continue to trouble the Americas.

Williams' story begins with a kidnapping. In brutal scenes that make it clear that native people also have the capacity to exploit others, a Mexican child is stolen into slavery by Apaches. From her captors, the child learns their healing arts and her skill becomes respected. She is traded and stolen many times, but at last finds her place as the medicine woman of the Inuk'sik, the Small Robes band of the Piikáni, a powerful tribe in the Blackfoot Confederation. Yet Buffalo Stone Woman is still a slave. All she owns are her skills, and she lives with uncertainty at the edge of a chief's tipi circle. In her effort to create an enduring place with the band, Buffalo Stone Woman will cause problems she can't solve.

Stirring those problems is a teenaged Welshman, Donal Thomas, who is indentured to the Hudson's Bay Company and bound to follow the Company's instructions. It is the 1700s. The Company sends him with a handful of other men into the unopened territory of western Canada. Their task is to learn the language and foster trade with the Piikáni, who have heard of white men but not met them. As Thomas comes to know the People, his understandings change and his loyalty is tested. But he is fundamentally in the Náápiikoan position of exploiting the resources of native people, and the author offers no facile resolution of that essential reality. She simply shows us some of the difficulties. The Piikáni want the white men's weapons and metal goods, their blankets and trinkets, yet they recognize that these strangers also bring powerful change, and new dangers.

Adding to the drama are Sweetgrass Woman and her stepmother, Makes Rain. They are women of traditional Blackfoot culture, making the most of a mix of powers, strictures, and vulnerabilities. Though highly specific in nomadic details, their work and daily lives are Everywoman's, and Sweetgrass Woman is a figure recognizable anywhere. In rebellion against her stepmother and her own limited options, she does the teenaged-girl thing and falls for the wrong man, the fascinating young trader. Meanwhile, she is sexually coerced by her stepmother's Shoshone grandson, Bear Dog. Like Buffalo Stone Woman, he struggles for acceptance by the Piikáni. He approaches the medicine woman to help him and the tangled inevitability of the story follows. Both Bear Dog and his stepbrother, Owl's Child, are driven by economic and social pressures that any modern man might recognize.

The author treads carefully, attempting to balance the differences and similarities of groups whose interests are still in conflict hundreds of years later. She shows us both sides, though native characters carry the story. (Note for the next edition: a brief historical introduction and a pronunciation guide would be helpful.) She might have come down harder on white colonialism, but this is not a political volume. It's a novel, and a compelling one. The characters have human struggles that transcend differences. In Náápiikoan Winter, Alethea Williams has created a well-written, engaging story, one that helps us to think about the roots of a struggle continuing to plague many countries. Such an author deserves to be read. And the issues raised deserve our full attention.

by Susan Schoch
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

[Helen Hollick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has received a Discovering Diamonds Review:
" Ms Williams writes with great skill, confidence and what appears to be highly detailed research. Her understanding of the differences between the two cultures is handled with dexterity, and makes this a recommended, very enjoyable read. "

Helen Hollick
founder #DDRevs

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book about the hardships of pioneer life. Isobel was captured as a young girl and lives with Native Americans as a slave. She becomes a powerful medicine woman within the tribe even though she is a slave. The other main character is Donal Thomas who works for the Hudson Bay Trading Company and lives with the Native American tribe during the winter months. He is an outsider but he becomes involved with daily tribal life - perhaps too involved. There are other characters, Sweetgrass Woman, her stepmother-Makes Rain, her father-Orator, Orator's brother-in-law-Saahkomaapi, Bear Dog and Owl's Child. There are a lot of characters and some of them change names during the book so it is confusing for the reader to follow the plot sometimes.

[Debra Schoenberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Naapiikoan Winter is a novel written from the perspective of several very different characters during the time the Hudson's Bay Company was forging trading routes into the western part of North America.

The novel begins with Isobel Ochoa, the kidnapped daughter of a Mexican hacienda-owner. We witness her capture by the Apaches and subsequent trade to other tribes. In the beginning of the book, her personal voice is strong and we follow with interest as she survives her capture. The novel branches off to include the stories of several other characters including Donal Thomas from the Hudson's Bay Company as well as persons from the different Amerindian tribes during her lifetime.

I was expecting to hear more abut Isobel but her voice fades and she becomes a secondary character with little more written about her as the story progresses. Although the other characters were interesting, I found that their inclusion watered down Isobel's own part in the book.

This novel was an ambitious undertaking considering the time period and the range of characters involved. Each story kept me engaged and wanting to read more. I look forward to reading more of Alethea's work.

[InD'tale Magazine · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5.0

"Naapiikoan Winter" is a historical novel rich in traditions and a bit of magic, and will give many readers a new look at what it was like for the native tribes when the European traders began to spread across the Americas.

Read full review in the 2016 November issue of InD'tale Magazine.

[L.G. Cullens]

Didn't get very far into it before deciding I didn't like it. No rating means zero interest.