The Portable WESTERN READER Edited and with an Introduction by WILLIAM KITTREDGE / .••: -•• * PENGUIN BOOKS '. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii INTRODUCTION: "WEST OF YOUR TOWN: ANOTHER COUNTRY" by William Kittredge xv PART ONE: ANCIENT STORIES Introduction 1 Washington Matthews "House Made of the Dawn" (Navajo night chant) 2 A. L. Kroeber "The Woman and the Horse," from Gros Ventre Myths and Tales 6 Catharine McClellan "The Girl Who Married the Bear" 7 Jarold Ramsey "Coyote and Eagle Go to the Land of the Dead" 14 C. C. Uhlenbeck "How the Ancient Peigans Lived" (Blackfeet tale) 17 James Welch from Fools Crow 23 James Mooney from The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 39 Linda Hogan from Mean Spirit 40 John Graves "The Last Running" 47 Louise Erdrich "Fleur" 61 Joy Harjo "Deer Dancer" 74 x Contents PART TWO: TRANSCENDING THE WESTERN Introduction Walt Whitman "Song of the Redwood-Tree" from Leaves of Grass e. e. cummings "Buffalo Bill's" D. H. Lawrence from "Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales," in Studies in Classic American Literature Meriwether Lewis and William Clark from the Journals A. B. Guthrie Jr. from The Big Sky Teddy Blue Abbott from We Pointed Them North: Recollections of a Cowpuncher O. E. Rolvaag from Giants in the Earth Elinore Rupert Stewart from Letters of a Woman Homesteader Wallace Stegner "Carrion Spring," from Wolf Willow Mari Sandoz from Old Jules Dorothy M. Johnson "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" • Jack London "A Raid on the Oyster Pirates" John Steinbeck "The Squatters' Camps," from The Harvest Gypsies Robinson Jeffers "Eagle Valor, Chicken Mind" Ernest Hemingway "The Clark's Fork Valley, Wyoming" Theodore Roethke "All Morning" . 215 "The Far Field" 217 Norman Maclean from A River Runs Through It . , 221 Contents Wright Morris from Ceremony in Lone Tree John Haines "If the Owl Calls Again," from The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer from "Three Days," in The Stars, the Snow, the Fire Ivan Doig from This House of Sky Larry McMurtry "Take My Saddle from the Wall: A Valediction" Mary Clearman Blew from AM But the Waltz PART THREE: OUR OWN STORIES Introduction W. H. Auden . "The West from the Air," from The Dyer's Hand Galway Kinnell "The Bear" William Stafford "Traveling Through the Dark" "Help from History" "Paso por Aqui" "Late, Passing Prairie Farm" David Wagoner "A Guide to Dungeness Spit" Ken Kesey . from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest . Thomas McGrath "Legends, Heroes, Myth-Figures and Other American Liars" "The Pleasures of the Great Salt Lake" "Longing" Keith Wilson "The Poem Politic 10: A Note for Future Historians" Edward Abbey from Desert Solitaire Contents Gary Snyder "Above Pate Valley" 342 "Painting the North San Juan School" 343 "Getting in the Wood" 344 "Dillingham, Alaska, the Willow Tree Bar" 345 Richard Hugo "Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg" 346 "The Freaks at Spurgin Road Field" 348 "Silver Star" 348 "Driving Montana" 349 "Fort Benton" 350 "Duwamish" 351 "SaltWater Story" 353 Philip Levine "Sierra Kid" 355 "Soloing" 360 Richard Shelton "The Hole" 361 "The Stones" 363 Maxine Hong Kingston "American Father," from China Men 364 Raymond Carver "My Father's Life 382 Richard Ford "Communist" 391 David Quammen "Orphan Calves," from "Walking Out" 406 Thomas McGuane "The Heart of the Game" 413 Rick DeMarinis "Paraiso: An Elegy" 425 Greg Pape "Some Names" 436 "Blessing at the Citadel" 437 Tess Gallagher ' "Cougar Meat" 440 "The Borrowed Ones" 442 Contents PART FOUR: BRILLIANT POSSIBILITIES Introduction Czeslaw Milosz "To Robinson Jeffers" N. Scott Momaday from The Names: A Memoir Robert Hass "On the Coast near Sausalito" ' "On Squaw Peak" Gretel Ehrlich "On Water," from The Solace of Open Spaces Leslie Marmon Silko "Storyteller" Marilynne Robinson from Housekeeping David Long "Lightning" Pattiann Rogers "A Passing" "Why Lost Divinity Remains Lost" Garrett Hongo "Yellow Light" "What For" Robert Wrigley "Ravens at Deer Creek" "Majestic" Alberto Rios "The Secret Lion," from The Iguana Killer Jimmy Santiago Baca from "Martin," in Martin and Meditations on the South Valley [Section V) Ray Gonzalez "Snakeskin (A Dream)" "Talk with the Priest" James Galvin "Water Table" "Coming into His Shop from a Bright Afternoon" from The Meadow ' Contents Terry Tempest Williams "The Clan of One-Breasted Women," from Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place 546 Richard K. Nelson "The Gifts of Deer," from The Island Within 554 Adrian C. Louis "In the Ghetto on the Prairie There Is Unrequited Love" 576 "Sometimes a Warrior Comes Tired" 577 "America Loomed Before Us" 578 Sherman Alexie "The Business of Fancy dancing'' 579 "My Heroes Have Never Been Cowboys" 580 Barry Lopez "The Passing Wisdom of Birds" 584 Allen Ginsberg "A Supermarket in California" 594.