"Catch Colt" by Sidner J. Larson

When I was still living in Portland, OR, in the Nineties and yearning to be back in Montana, I began to subscribe to “list servs” about Native American Literature, which is why I was aware of a big conference about “Nat Lit” in Eugene, OR, at the U of O.

“Nat Lit” is a whole spectrum of kinds of writing, not just from poetry to fiction to non-fiction, but from simple narrative to historical reconstruction to autobiography to post-modern criticism, about which I knew nothing. In fact, I usually can barely follow the latter and when it fades over into Native American studies, I am sometimes alarmed by the ferocity of the rhetoric. Most people think of Indian fiction as jolly stories like “Stay Away, Joe.” They remember the jokes, and let the rest go. This cannot happen with NA Studies which is usually insurgecy-based.

Driving down to the Eugene campus daily during the conference introduced me to the actual authors, which was entirely different than reading their books. I’d think about them all the way home up the freeway in the dark and still not get it figured out. Sid Larson, the organizer, seemed to revel in the excitement, the rivalries, the insights and goofiness. He bounded around in very white tennis shoes, remembering everyone’s name, joking, pulling people over to sit by him during the few times he rested. He was so irresistible that this shy person (me) was motivated to keep in touch over the ten years or more since. Now that I’m back on the High-Line I can even share gossip.

His cousin, Jimmie Welch, was and is a famous writer, especially in France where they bring the highest theories to bear on his strong painful stories. Jimmie’s father, also Jimmie, was Bob Scriver’s best friend when they were kids, and I guess I thought that meant I was entitled to be a friend, though the listserv people thought I was being far too familiar to say “Jimmie.” Neither Jimmie nor Sid objected.

The name of Sid’s autobiography is “Catch Colt,” a humorous slang term for a baby born to an unmarried woman. Not that he lacked for family. He has cousins, aunts, uncles, everywhere along the High-Line of Montana. Most of all, he belonged to the Human Family and knew how to hustle. He went to school, bought a bar and made a success of it, went to the University of Nebraska Law School but was crippled in his practice since he had a conscience and stood up for Indians, and finally landed as a professor of English and Native American Literature and Studies. At Shelby High his senior year English teacher, Terry Radcliffe, probably had something to do with this. Radcliffe also taught Sid what he calls “the Zen of running” which is probably why Sid is still sane.

Right now he is in Iowa and feeling the “long withdrawing roar” of universities running out of money and throwing overboard all the minority studies and special humanities programs they so recently were proud to invent. What now? Will Indian professors retreat to the tribal colleges? Will they move into government jobs? I predict unforeseen consequences.

”Catch Colt” would be an inspiration to any High Line kid -- any color -- whose family has struggled with the patchy economics and the over-extended family, but I worry a little that he makes the drinking seem too attractive. (I’m being sarcastic -- he never misses a chance to show how defeating and stupid it is.) Exactly ten years have passed since this book was published and a lot more living has flown by. He speaks of writing a new revised version, now that many folks have “gone on ahead” to wait for the rest of us. I hope like heck he does it. For one thing he breaks up stereotypes right and left, cheerfully trampling over romantic notions and then handing you a little ball of fat that has a curled up bit of bone in it which, when the fat has melted in your stomach, will spring out and pierce you.

Sid and Jimmie were related through their mothers, who both belonged to Fort Belknap Gros Ventre people. Though Welch is usually represented as Blackfeet, he spent very little time in Browning. Sid is writing a “high theory” book about Jimmie’s writing. I hope I’ll be able to read it with understanding, but I trust that a lawyer’s logic and a barkeep’s story-telling will probably come together into something pretty special. Athlete’s endurance and raunchy stories, cowboy men and Indian women, ceremonial protocol and a vision quest fortified by a lot of book-reading -- it’s a mix that makes “Stay Away, Joe” look, well, pale. He’s not the only Indian to be redeemed by tough women, old friends, and science-fiction novels, but he’s certainly one of the most charming. HIs spirit is large and he's not close to done yet.

“Catch Colt,” by Sidner J. Larson. (University of Nebraska Press, American Indian Lives Series; 1995. ISBN 0-8032-2908-9)


“Sacagawea’s Child: the Life and Times of Jean-Baptiste (Pomp) Charbonneau” by Susan M. Colby

Those who were intrigued by the little snippet about Pomp in the essay about Holterman, will be happy to hear of the publication of this book by The Arthur H. Clark Co. (PO Box 14707, Spokane, WA 99214-0707. 800-842-9286 Email: info@ahclark.com. Website at www.ahclark.com) The flyer includes the painting that Holterman described, “Camp of the Kansas Indians at the Blue River, on the 3rd July 1823. Chiefs Wakan-zie and Sa-ba-no-sche, by Duke Paul of Wurttemberg.” Dr. Susan Colby (Ph.D. in anthro from UCLA) is a distant cousin of Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau.