Often well educated in white schools and comfortable in white society, the first generation of Indian leaders to emerge on the national level included persons like Charles Eastman and Gertrude Bonnin. Yet despite their acceptance of assimilationist ideals, they also contributed a new ideal of their own: a Pan-Indian identity that emphasized the commonness of Indians of all tribes. They recognized things that Indians held in common, much more than previous tribal leaders had done. While they valued a "civilized" lifestyle, they also respected their native traditions enough to recognize the injustices of the federal colonial domination.

In a sense all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's life had been a struggle with his "talent for self-delusion," a search for his "lost city." That search had led him from New York to Great Neck, to Paris, to the Riviera, and finally to Hollywood. When he died there in 1940, leaving the...