S. Alice Callahan Biography

S. Alice Callahan's Wynema: A Child of the Forest (1891) is probably the first novel published by an American Indian woman. Callahan's parents were Samuel Benton Callahan, who was one - eighth Creek and seven - eighths white, and Sarah Elizabeth Callahan, née Thornberg or McAllester (the names vary in different sources), a white woman. A captain in the First Creek Confederate Regiment, Samuel Callahan was a delegate to the Confederate Congress at Richmond, Virginia, representing the Creek and Seminole nations jointly. After the Civil War he joined his wife and children in Texas, where they had settled. Sophia Alice Callahan was born on 1 January 1868 in Sulphur Springs, Texas. In 1885 the family moved to the Creek Nation in Indian Territory (today Oklahoma), where Samuel held various positions with the tribe; farmed and ranched near Okmulgee; edited the Indian Journal in Muskogee; and served as superintendent of Wealaka Boarding School, a Methodist mission school for Creeks, from 1892 to 1894. The Callahans were members of the Creek aristocracy, a close - knit group that had large landholdings, had been slave owners, and built fine homes adorned with expensive furniture. As Angie Debo points out in The Road to Disappearance (1941), the Creek mixed - bloods were proud of their Indian heritage and sympathetic toward what they called the "real Indians."

By 1886 Alice Callahan seems to have been teaching in Okmulgee. The next year she went away to attend the Wesleyan Female Institute in Staunton, Virginia, returning in June 1888 after a ten - month stay. In February 1891 Callahan became a teacher at Harrell International Institute, a private Methodist high school for both Creek and white children in Muskogee. Wynema was published in the late spring of that year. In 1892-1893 Callahan taught at Wealaka Boarding School, where her father was superintendent. In letters written during this period she says that William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1847-1848) amused and entertained her more than anything else she had ever read but that she was more interested in Edward Bulwer - Lytton and Charles Dickens. Her feminism is revealed in her reaction to Thackeray's comments about women: "I don't like a great many things he says such as 'it's only women who get together and hiss and shriek and cackle,' or 'the best of women are hypocrites -- a good housewife is of necessity a humbug.' " Callahan planned to return to the Wesleyan Female Institute to study languages, literature, and mathematics in preparation for opening her own school, but she returned to teach at Harrell in late 1893. Unwell after Thanksgiving, she developed pleurisy in December and died on 7 January 1894.

A mixed - blood raised away from the Creek Nation, Callahan was well aware of the issues facing the Creeks because of her father's involvement in tribal politics; she was, thus, both a part of and separate from Creek culture. Wynema reflects her position as both an insider and outsider. It also shows an Indian woman author both using and departing from the dominant literary trends in women's literature of the late nineteenth century.

The title character of Wynema is Wynema Harjo, a Creek girl; her first name is probably taken from that of the female Modoc subchief who saved the Indian commissioner, A. B. Meacham, from death in 1871 during the fight at the California Lava Beds. Wynema becomes the best student and close friend of the novel's other heroine, Genevieve Weir, a Methodist teacher from a genteel southern family.

The first part of the novel chronicles Genevieve's adjustments to life in the Creek Nation. Wynema and Gerald Keithly, a Methodist missionary, help her to understand Creek culture. That part and the second part also describe the "civilizing" of Wynema. A reverse acculturation theme is introduced in the second part, when Genevieve takes Wynema on a visit to her family home in the "sunny Southland" (no specific place is named); there the teacher must readjust, and the pupil must adjust, to the southern lifestyle. Genevieve has turned down Gerald's marriage proposal because she has an "understanding" with Maurice Mauran, a childhood friend; but she breaks off that relationship when she recognizes his prejudice against Indians and women. In the meantime, Wynema and Robin Weir, Genevieve's sensitive and enlightened brother, fall in love. Wynema and Genevieve return to the Creek Nation and marry Robin and Gerald, respectively. Two other romances, involving Genevieve's younger sisters, are introduced but not developed: between Bessie Weir and Carl Peterson, a missionary to the Creeks who formerly served the Sioux; and between Winnie Weir and a Dr. Bradford.

The third part of the book is an abrupt departure from the earlier romance plot and was obviously inspired by the Sioux hostilities, the murder of Sitting Bull on 15 December 1890, and the massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on 29 December 1890. The picture of domestic bliss, in which the married Wynema and Genevieve are surrounded by their loved ones and live in harmony with the Creeks, is interrupted when Carl announces that he must rejoin his Sioux friends, who are about to go to war. Accompanied by Robin, Carl acts as an intermediary between the Sioux chiefs and the army. Through the debate between Carl and Chief Wildfire over whether the Sioux should surrender, Callahan reveals her own mixed feelings about the events of that winter. Wildfire, his wife, and most of his followers die; through the stories of Chikena, a surviving widow, Callahan narrates how the Sioux were starved by Indian agents and massacred by the army. The details correspond to the events at Wounded Knee.

Callahan's bicultural background, her years in Staunton, her experiences as a teacher at a Methodist mission school for Creeks, and her support for women's rights inform the novel. She uses a plot formula that was common in American women's fiction from about 1820 to 1870, in which a heroine finds within herself the intelligence, will, resourcefulness, and courage to overcome the hardships that befall her. Also like other nineteenth - century women authors, Callahan uses sentimentality for political purposes. Genevieve is both a domestic heroine and woman of ideas: though wary of marriage, she is a shy, romantic woman who longs for a love based on mutual respect between a man and woman. Wynema, a bright and determined girl, shows the possibility of acculturating Indians through education. By the time Wynema visits Genevieve's southern home she has become a cultured, refined lady who speaks fluent English. Her relationship with Robin Weir exemplifies not only the ideal love of sentimental romantic tradition but also the ideal love between an Indian woman and a white man.

Callahan uses multiple voices and perspectives, Indian and non - Indian, female and male, to educate her readers. Gerald Keithly is the author's main vehicle for explaining the significance of Creek customs, but Genevieve and Wynema discuss such issues as the allotment of Indian land in severalty, authorized under the General Allotment Act, or Dawes Act, of 1887; corruption among Creek delegates; and the sale of whiskey to Indians in violation of federal law. In the third part of the novel Callahan quotes from contemporary newspapers that supported and opposed the Indian cause. Although most of the novel deals with Indian issues, Wynema, Genevieve, and Robin all express the author's commitment to the cause of equal rights for women.

Wynema was ignored by contemporary reviewers and critics. Only two copies of the original edition appear to be extant, one in the Library of Congress and the other at the Oklahoma Historical Society. Photocopies are in the library of the University of Illinois at Chicago. The book was not reprinted until the annotated edition, edited by A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 1997. Though the novel lacks a complex plot or multidimensional characters, it deals with issues generally ignored by white male authors of the period and is a significant contribution to the evolution of American Indian fiction.