Mourning Dove (Okanogan)
(1888-1936)
By Kristin Herzog
Mourning
Dove was born Christal Quintasket near Bonner’s Ferry,
Idaho. Besides her English name, she was given the name
Hum-ishu-ma, or Mourning Dove. On her mother’s side she
was descended from an ancient line of warrior
chieftains, and her paternal grandfather was an Irishman
who worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company. She received
some education at Sacred Heart Convent at Ward,
Washington, but left school to help care for four
younger sisters and brothers. In her later teenage
years, Mourning Dove lived with her maternal grandmother
and through her developed an intense interest in the
oral tradition of her people, the Okanogans, who today
live in the western part of the Colville Reservation,
near the Columbia and Okanogan Rivers and the Canadian
border.
Cogewea, published in 1927, was considered the first
novel written by an American Indian woman until the
discovery of S. Alice Callahan’s Wynema: A Child of the
Forest, first published in 1891. Mourning Dove wrote in
cooperation with Lucullus McWhorter, whom she met in
1914, by which time she had already drafted a version of
the novel. McWhorter, who became her friend and mentor
for twenty years, was a serious scholar of Indian
traditions and had been adopted into the Yakima tribe.
In contrast, Mourning Dove had little more than a
third-grade education and some training in a business
school. Thus she agreed to let McWhorter “fix up” the
story by adding poetic epigraphs and elaborate notes on
Okanogan traditions. His stylistic influence is also
apparent in the often stilted language, including a
self-conscious use of slang, which contrasts with the
simple style of Mourning Dove’s later drafts of some
coyote stories. However, McWhorter knew what a white
readership expected, and he was able, after a delay of
many years, to find a publisher. While the novel is
uneven, it gives an excellent picture of some Okanogan
traditions, and the western romance plot made it
acceptable in its time.
Meanwhile, in 1919 Mourning Dove had married Fred Galler,
a Wenatchee. She had no children, and with Galler she
became a migrant worker, camping out, working in the hop
fields and apple orchards, and lugging her typewriter
along to work at her writing. McWhorter failed to
mention this part of her life in his preface to Cogewea;
instead, he gave a more idyllic picture of the
deprivations of her life.
Coyote Stories, also published with the help of
McWhorter, was much more Mourning Dove’s own work. She
agreed to Heister Dean Guie’s receiving credit on the
title page for illustrating and editing. Guie insisted
on standardized spellings and verification of Okanogan
beliefs. McWhorter mediated between him and Mourning
Dove. Unfortunately, neither Guie nor McWhorter regarded
Mourning Dove as an authority on Okanogan folklore. A
foreword by Chief Standing Bear probably helped sell the
book because Standing Bear had published two popular
autobiographies during the previous years, and his Land
of the Spotted Eagle, focusing on Sioux beliefs and
customs, appeared in the same year as Coyote Stories.
The stories give an impression of Mourning Dove’s
personality and tradition as well as of the folk
material she gathered. Her introduction gives
authenticity to her collection by describing her family
heritage and the tribal setting in which these stories
were passed on for education, entertainment, and social
bonding. The story “The Spirit Chief Names the Animal
People” exemplifies all of these purposes, but also
expresses the spiritual aspect of the coyote tradition
by describing the concept of power (squastenk9) and the
origin of the Sweat House ritual. Both are central to
Okanogan beliefs and indicate an aboriginal insight into
the subtle connections between physical and
psychological vitality and their grounding in
cosmological mystery. Coyote himself is part of this
mystery by being laughably human and divinely powerful
at the same time.
Mourning Dove’s later years were spent in relative
obscurity. Occasionally she traveled to lecture in the
East, but she was uncomfortable before strange audiences
and could hardly afford the travel expenses. The single
honor bestowed on her was her election as an honorary
member of the Eastern Washington State Historical
Society. Having for years been plagued with various
illnesses, Mourning Dove died in a state hospital at
Medical Lake, Washington, at the age of forty-eight.
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