From the River's Edge by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn

First published: 1991

Type of plot: Historical realism

Time of work: The late 1960’s

Locale: Missouri River country near Pierre, South Dakota

Principal Characters:

• John Tatekeya, a Dakotah cattleman who seeks justice after the theft of forty-two head of cattle
• Aurelia, John’s young lover
• Rose Tatekeya, John’s wife
• Harvey Big Pipe, an old friend of John
• Jason Big Pipe, the son of Harvey, suitor of Aurelia
• Walter Cunningham, the district attorney
• Joseph Nelson III, the defense attorney

The Novel

With the Missouri River as a background presence, its dammed-up waters forcing change upon Native American inhabitants of the South Dakota grasslands who have lived there for generations, From the River’s Edge juxtaposes modern progress with the Native American struggle to retain a separate culture and identity in a world of white rules and white justice.

This fictional story, related by an unseen third-person narrator, is divided into three parts. Each corresponds, in turn, to the trial, summation, and verdict of the legal proceeding to establish the innocence or guilt of an unnamed young man accused of stealing John Tatekeya’s cattle.

The novel beings soon after the discovery of the theft of forty-two cattle from John’s herd. John, who is in his early sixties, is taciturn and reclusive, yet he is a respected member of the Dakotah Sioux community. He seeks help from the U.S. government to locate his missing animals. After finding three of the missing herd scattered throughout the countryside, he decides to pursue justice through the courts.

In his younger days, John had been a rodeo rider, somewhat wild and reckless, and sometimes in minor scrapes with the law. Now he finds himself somewhat disconcertingly on the other side of the justice system. As John at first rides the wide prairies and grasslands searching for traces of his missing cattle, he muses about his past and about the changes brought on by the damming of the great Missouri River, including the inundation of much of his own grazing land. During his silent and reflective searches, John visits acquaintances and friends, including Harvey Big Pipe, and tries to discover not only his missing cattle but also the significance of the changes around him.

During the trial, John is misunderstood, degraded, and finally made to seem guilty of stealing his own cattle. Neither the district attorney, the judge, nor even John’s own attorney show any awareness of how John perceives the proceedings or that their sense of justice is not necessarily shared by him. Through all this, John is keenly aware of what is happening, but he makes no attempt to correct the bigoted notions of those involved. He feels that such an attempt would do no good. During the trial, the district attorney attempts to discredit John through disclosure of John’s previous arrests and of his extramarital affair with a younger woman, Aurelia. Through flashbacks, the origins of John’s and Aurelia’s relationship, and the character of Aurelia herself, are made known.

As the trial drags on, John recalls histories of his people related to him by Old Benno and handed down from figures such as Smutty Bear, Struck-by-the-Ree, and his own great-grandfather, Grey Plume. The stories are about the earliest treaties with the whites and the broken promises that followed. History seems to repeat itself as the injustice, ignorance, and intolerance continue in the supposedly enlightened era of the novel’s present.

Waiting for the trial’s end, John becomes increasingly disillusioned and despondent. He keeps himself occupied doing chores on his ranch, and at one point he is visited by his younger brother, Dan. Dan talks him into attending the wacipi, an intertribal gathering in Bismarck, North Dakota. On the way, the two share memories of some wild youthful adventures, and John recalls his marriage and reflects upon his relationship with Rose. At the gathering, John seems to regain some lost sense of himself.

As the trial concludes, so does a phase of John’s life. Aurelia decides to leave him for Jason Big Pipe, who, it turns out, was an unwilling accomplice in the theft of John’s cattle. She feels that she, too, has now become part of John’s larger betrayal. A young white man, who is never named, is found guilty of the theft of three of John’s forty-two missing cattle, and soon after is free on bail. That day, John’s barn is set on fire, apparently by the boy, in retribution. As his neighbors gather to help put out the blaze, John is finally overwhelmed by the events, and he collapses. Yet the novel’s final images are positive: John and Rose reach a reconciliation of sorts, and John and Harvey pass on traditions to a young boy of the tribe.

The Characters

John Tatekeya, the Dakotah rancher whose cattle have been stolen, at first appears enigmatic. The reader may be at a loss to understand John’s seemingly indifferent behavior toward the trial. Yet what seems a puzzling lack of response on John’s part may be tied to the point of the story: that the crimes committed against John, by the individual and by the system, are only the most recent in a long legacy of prejudice and contempt. In other instances, the reader readily sympathizes with John’s deep feelings toward the natural world, his respect for tradition, and his sense of personal honor. In the end, John is demystified; the story reveals him as a human being with understandable problems, concerns, obligations, and faults.

Aurelia, John’s lover, is a beautiful young woman torn between two worlds. On one hand, Aurelia is respectful of the ways and traditions of her people; on the other, she is defiant of the proscriptions placed upon her by some of those same traditions. Closely monitored by her tradition-minded grandmother, Aurelia is in many ways emblematic of the struggle of women in any culture to be their own persons in the modern world. Readers can sympathize with Aurelia’s decision, at seventeen, to become John’s secret lover; she helps readers to understand the conflicting impulses to remain true to traditional values and at the same time to break free of outmoded ones. The only fully developed female character in the novel, Aurelia may symbolize the synthesis of old values and new.

Rose Tatekeya, John’s wife, is seldom seen in the story until the ending. Rose may represent traditional values of womanly behavior and the inability of many women to embrace the changes of the modern world. Yet Rose is possessed of inner strength and awareness. She knows of John’s affair, and her deep hurt is revealed when it becomes open knowledge. Yet, in the ways of her people, she stands by John in the end, not speaking of her own disappointments and supportive of his own deep anguish. In a patient and understanding way, in the aftermath of the trial and the burning of John’s barn, she cries with him, and she reveals her belief that John’s actions were never meant to hurt her.

Jason Big Pipe, the son of John’s close friend Harvey, turns out to be involved in the theft of John’s cattle. He betrays John during the trial, yet in other instances he seems respectful of tribal customs. Like Aurelia, he is trying to make sense of conflicting messages. Jason has been interested in Aurelia for some time, and he makes his intentions known to her late in the story.

Walter Cunningham, the district attorney, while clumsily seeking “justice,” treats John as though he were an ignorant and uneducated child. At one point, Cunningham speaks enthusiastically to John of his hobby: the study of General George Armstrong Custer, the infamous “Indian fighter” who died at Little Big Horn. Like the defense attorney Nelson, Cunningham typifies the prejudice and ignorance historically shown Native Americans by the U.S. legal system.

Critical Context

From the River’s Edge is the first novel-length work by author Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. She previously published two collections of poetry, Then Badger Said This (1983) and Seek the House of Relatives (1985); a collection of her short fiction, The Power of Horses and Other Stories, appeared in 1990. In these works as well as in various magazine, journal, and review articles, Cook-Lynn has continued writing about people and themes related to the Sioux and Lakotah/Dakotah cultures of the South Dakota region of the United States. From the River’s Edge reflects Cook-Lynn’s continuing preoccupation with teaching as well, for the story seeks to impart a message to its readers about the cultural, historical, and political realities of the American Indian.

In From the River’s Edge, Cook-Lynn departs from the sometimes folkloric approach taken in her earlier work, with mixed results. While the story of John Tatekeya at times reaches into myth and legend for anecdotal stories related by Old Benno or Grey Plume, the narrative never achieves the synthesis for which the author seems to be aiming. Such a combination of oral traditions and modern narrative technique would seem to go along with the overall theme of culture in transition; however, the attempt may suffer from the modern narrative voice itself, which some critics view as intrusive and preachy. Also, whereas her previous work was able to convey a realistic sense of Sioux heritage through songs, dances, social customs, and family interactions, From the River’s Edge tells more about the culture of John Tatekeya and his people than it shows, and this may be a weakness of the novel.

The author should be credited, however, with producing a story that achieves a sense of complexity in many of its characters while avoiding stereotypes. Also, the apparent intent of the novel should be praised. The story seldom bogs down in overworked examples of white injustice toward Native Americans. Such scenes are present, but these episodes are interwoven with history and tradition of the Dakotah Sioux, and the result is a fairly successful interplay between the past and present.

Bibliography

Cook-Lynn, Elizabeth. “As a Dakotah Woman: An Interview with Elizabeth Cook-Lynn.” Interview by Joseph Bruchac. In Survival This Way: Interviews with American Indian Poets. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987. Bruchac discusses some of the beliefs and motivations that influence Cook-Lynn’s works. Cook-Lynn comments on her identity as a poet and discusses some of the concerns that show up in her writing, including religion and male/female relationships.

Danker, Kathleen. “ The Violation of the Earth’: Elizabeth Cook-Lynne’s From the River’s Edge in the Historical Context of the Pick-Sloan Missouri River Dam Project.” Wicazo Sa Review 12 (Fall, 1997): 85-93. Recounts the history of the Pick-Sloan Project, which was responsible for flooding 6 percent of five Native American reservations in South Dakota. Shows the relationship between theproject and Cook-Lynne’s novel, a work that details the spiritual and economic loss and community breakdown resulting from alterations to the Missouri river.

Houston, Robert. “Stealing Cattle and a Way of Life.” The New York Times Book Review 96 (September 8, 1991): 35. Houston sees the novel as originating from the best motives and refers positively to its complexity, but he comments that the execution is flawed. He objects to heavy-handed dialogue and confusing diction in the story and complains that the novel merely tells about incidents rather than shows them.

Jordan, Robert. Review of From the River’s Edge, by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. Library Journal 116 (May 15, 1991): 108. Jordan comments on how the novel is based upon an actual trial. He suggests that though the story is an isolated portrait of the period, its characters are multifaceted. Jordan also makes brief comparisons to other novels and to the film Dances with Wolves (1990).

Kino, Carol. “Old Loyalties.” The Times Literary Supplement, October 16, 1991, p. 4620. Kino praises the day-to-day details of the Indian characters as honest portrayals. Kino, however, objects to Cook-Lynn’s mingling of fact and fiction, noting that John Tatekeya’s dialogue comes from actual court transcripts. Kino suggests that this interferes with the truth of the character.

Matchie, Thomas. “Spiritual Geography in Four Midwestern Novels.” Midwest Quarterly 39 (Summer, 1998): 373-389. Comparative study that discusses a spirituality rooted in goodness as revealed in novels by Jon Hassler, Sharon Butala, Michael Dorris, and From the River’s Edge. Explores the spiritual importance of ceremony and community in Native American society as portrayed in Cook-Lynn’s novel.