When buffalo were many on the western plains, when Cree and Blackfoot warred in unrelenting enmity, when the Sun Dance and the shaking tent were still a way of life — these were the days of Chief Thunderchild, who roamed the Saskatchewan plains, fought and hunted, lived and sometimes nearly starved there. His stories of a fierce and vanished freedom are reprinted here, exactly as he told them to Edward Ahenakew in 1923. His voice, simple and poetic, resonates with something of the wide expanse of sky, the song of the wind, the sound of water. Chief Thunderchild was born in 1849 and died in 1927, four years after recounting his tales to Edward Ahenakew.

The other voice in this volume is equally moving, but in a very different way. It is the voice of Old Keyam, pained and angry, raised in protest against the Indian’s lethargy and the white man’s insensitivity. A fictional character, semi-autobiographical, he is very much the voice of Edward Ahenakew, telling of life on the reservations in the new white world of the early twentieth century. Precursor of later, more vehement voices, Old Keyam presents and examines the Indian’s predicament, conveying the tragic image of caged and broken spirits.