Hi Shatonska,
I understand that "Hanta Yo" is a novel - however, a historical novel usually has a strong research background, especially when it comes with very famous characters as Chief Bull Bear.For instance, even if Mari Sandoz 's "Crazy Horse" is in fact a novelized biography, it has been based on real Lakota sources (and that's why even now most people mistake it for a history work).
Re "Hanta Yo", I googled the title and added "Lakota language" as additional keyword. I found out that it was actually heavily criticized by Lakota people, but - which is more interesting - that it is actually based on a "linguistic hoax" . Here's an excerpt from one of the reviews I found (paper has other interesting points, btw):
www.brandonu.ca/Library/CJNS/5.2/murray.pdf.
"The Ugly category is reserved for "Hanta Yo!"by Ruth Beebe Hill, but could easily accommodate
"The Memoirs of Chief Red Fox" and other hoaxes. What makes "Hanta Yo!"
particularly reprehensible was the marketing technique and
"hype" which preceded its publication. Billed as the "authentic story of three
Dakota-Lakota families" in the period from 1750 to 1835, the book aroused
a great deal of ire in Indian country, particularly among the Lakota of the
Rosebud and the Pine Ridge reservations in South Dakota.
Like Berger, Hill invented an informant. While it was evidently clear to the
reader that Jack Crabbe in "Little Big Man" was not a real person, Hill tried to
substantiate her claims for authenticity through the character of a man called
Chunksa Yuha. While Berger used exaggeration for irony and humor, Hill's
exaggerations and inventions were for vulgar sensationalism.
The publicity surrounding the release of Hanta Yo! was dramatic. The
author claimed to have spent 30 years researching her book. She stated she
spent 16 years learning the "Dakotah-Lakotah" dialect from Chunksa Yuha
"the last survivor of eight Dakota boys who were taught the language, ritual,
and songs by the tribe's old men." Working together, the two said they had
translated her 2,000 page manuscript into Dakotah-Lakotah and then back into
English using Webster's dictionary of 1805.
Lakota scholars all over the country were enraged, not only by the book
itself, but also by the arrogance of the author. In a twenty-three page review,
Victor Douville, Lakota Studies Department, Sinte Gleska College, Rosebud
Reservation, destroyed Hill's claims for authenticity. Douville and other Lakotas
could hardly believe that such a monumental hoax could be foisted upon the
American people (Douville, 1980)
In the first place, Hill has a poor concept of the Lakota language. According
to William K. Powers, an anthropologist who has studied on the Pine Ridge
reservation for many years, Hill didn't even get the title correct.
"Whenever native sentences are employed, they are ungrammatical
or uncolloquial, as if they were pieced together from a dictionary
rather than falling trippantly from a native speaker's tongue . . . .
Even the title, which means "Clear the way," is inappropriate in
the context of the book: it is employed as a philosophical state-
ment which underscores for the author the fact that in archaic
Indian society every individual was entitled to 'walk a straight
path,' presumably meaning something like filling one's own exis-
tential shell. In this context the term "Hanto Yo" sounds absurd.
If a person is in danger, one might warn him "Hanta Yo - Get out
of the way!" If more than one person were addressed, one would
say "Hanta Po!" (Powers, 1979:68-71).
Later Hill admitted she did not write a complete Lakota version, but trans-
lated important concepts and phrases into Lakota, researched the root meaning
of each Lakota term, and then re-did the English version to fit (Time, May 5,
1980:98). The "research" sounds suspiciously like what Powers said about
piecing the terms together from a dictionary - probably the dictionary of
Lakota compiled by Father Buechel at the St. Francis Mission on the Rosebud
reservation.
As for her informant, his real name is Lorenzo Blacksmith and he is the
son of an Episcopal deacon. Blacksmith attended BIA schools from the time he
was five until he was eighteen..."
Ladonna, is this what you meant when you said that the book isn't true?
