In all these tales Mr. Neihardt writes with extreme simplicity, grace, and beauty; he has adapted his style perfectly to his subject matter, and so has made his material as charming as it is engros-sing. –New York Times. Before Black Elk Speaks, before his epic poem A Cycle of the West, John G. Neihardt wrote many short stories that found favor with readers and critics. Among his best were the seventeen collected in Indian Tales and Others in 1926 and now available for the first time in paperback. The Singer of the Ache, considered Neihardt’s highest achievement in short fiction, portrays young Moon-Walker’s quest for supernatural powers achieved at a price. Other Indian tales include The Look in the Face, one of many about a social outcast; The White Wakunda, about a Christ figure; The Mark of Shame, concerning murder as a violation of the natural order; Vylin and Mignon, moral fables about Indian-white marriages; The Last Thunder Song ; and Dreams Are Wiser Than Men. Other stories, set on the frontier, are The Scars,
The Nemesis of the Deuces,
The Revolt of a Sheep,
The Parable of the Sack,
The Art of Hate, and perhaps Neihardt’s most popular tale, The Alien, in which a fur trapper makes a pet of a she-wolf, with unex-pected consequences.
The Red Roan, a ghost story, and Beyond the Spectrum, about a man who may have stepped outside his body permanently, bring to a peak the strain of the supernatural that is apparent throughout the collection.