Indian Shorts

ALL THE YOUNG MEN--Oliver La Farge--Houghton Mifflin ($2.50). For years the Indians of the Southwest played a limited part in Western fiction, usually remaining in the story just long enough to let out a war whoop and bite the dust. With the novels of Oliver La Farge, braves and squaws seem at last to have been given sensible speaking parts, emerging as complex, poetic, dignified, good-humored men & women deeply conscious of the evil times that have come upon their race. Never loquacious, they speak with an easy informality that has the charm of a good translation of dialect. They suffer their humiliations at the hands of white men with impassive reserve, love their wives & children, misbehave only when a wild streak comes to the surface in the memory of past greatness, or in an unyielding desire for savage revenge. Although Oliver La Farge's stories of them, when analyzed, prove to be written around oldfashioned, commonplace plots of undying love or hate, they have the distinction of making Indian rites and traditions seem as human and amiable as college proms or midwestern barn dances.

Ten of the twelve short stories in All The. Young Men deal with Indians, are cut precisely in the pattern of Author La Farge's novels (Sparks Fly Upward, Laughing Boy}. Tall Walker, handsome Apache hero of "Hard Winter," went about his prolonged singing and dancing during a fiesta with all the enjoyment and absorption of a business man playing golf. At Taos, a white woman, fascinated by literary legends of the noble redman, made him her lover. When winter came and his wife on the reservation had trouble with the sheep and a sick child, Tall Walker was glad to give up his easy life and return to the familiar hardships of home.

Warrior-with-Gods, in "North is Black," fell in love with a rich white girl, was disgraced for cheating at cards. Taught by whites, he had thought cheating was part of the game. To unmask the girl's white lover, who also cheated, Warrior-with-Gods planned a fearful revenge. Waiting until the stakes were high and a large crowd was playing, he watched the game impassively, suddenly drew a knife and pinned the lover's hand to the table. An extra ace was under the impaled palm.

Some others:

P:Running Girl, her life ruined by the unrealistic education of the Great White Stepfather, could not reconcile herself to living with the Navajos, became the mis tress of a bad white man, killed herself.

P:A New England painter in New Orleans, engaged to an attractive heiress he did not love, tried to prevent his love for a French Quarter beauty from becoming serious, found that it had become overpoweringly serious when she left him in scorn.

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