Mourning Dove (Christine Quintasket, (ca. 1888-1936) Author
Native American traditions are rich in oral stories. The older people in the tribes would pass the stories down to the next generation verbally. The stories would entertain and educate the young people. In this series on Native American women, we are featuring a few indigenous women who wrote books and articles for publication. We can be thankful that there is more and more available to us as time goes on.
Last time we featured one of the few works of a nineteenth century indigenous author, Sarah Winnemucca. Sarah was the first Native American woman to receive a copyright. Sarah wrote her semi-autobiographical book to let white people know what life was like for Indians. She hoped that Europeans and Indians would learn to live together in peace. She wanted justice for her people and dedicated her life to working for equity for indigenous people. Sadly, she died without seeing justice accomplished to any great extent.
The first Native American woman to publish a novel was Christine Quintasket also known as Mourning Dove. Christine devoted her life to achieving better conditions for her people. Like Sarah Winnemucca, Christine wanted the natives and the white people to learn about each other and to get along.
Christine Quintasket – Humishuma (Mourning Dove, Okanagan, circa 1888-1936) Author
Christine was not sure when she was born but she gives the date as 1888. According to family lore, her mother was canoeing across the Kootenai River near Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho when she went into labor. She gave birth to Christine in the canoe about halfway across. She wrapped her newborn baby in a steersman’s shirt and continued home. Whether or not this is true, it seems an appropriate place for a girl who like to travel to be born.
She spent most of her life on the Colville Reservation in Washington State. Her heritage language was Salish. She and her sisters and brothers grew up near Kettle Falls. Each summer she took part in fishing for salmon with them.
Christine learned traditional life ways from her grandmother. An older woman named Teequalt, who lived with the family also taught spiritual things. An adopted orphan named Jimmy Ryan taught her to read. One of the novels he used was Therese Broderick’s The Brand: A Tale of the Flathead Reservation. Christine was enthralled and decided that she wanted to write novels too.
In 1894 she attended the Goodwin Catholic Mission School near Kettle Falls. Here she experienced what thousands of indigenous children were experiencing – punishment for speaking their native tongue. American schools had decided it was better for the native children to learn how to be good citizens which required them to forget their native language and customs. The school closed in 1900 and Christine transferred to the Fort Spokane agency. She never forgot her native tongue.
Christine’s mother died in 1902, so Christine stayed home to help with the family. When her father remarried in 1904, she went to the Fort Shaw Indian Boarding School near Great Falls, Montana. In 1909 she married Hector McLeod of the Flathead Nation but there was trouble in the marriage so they separated.
Around 1912, Christine was living near Portland, Oregon. She began to dream again of becoming a novelist. She had an idea of interweaving buffalo roundups and traditional tribal life within an exciting love story. She realized that she would have to improve her writing skills to become a novelist. She changed her name to Humishuma (Mourning Dove) and went to the Calgary College business school where she learned how to type. She also studied composition as well as bookkeeping and shorthand.
By 1915, Humishuma had completed a rough draft of a novel about an Indian girl named Cogewea, intitled Co-Ge-Wea, the Half-Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range. This story was a popular tale at the time – a “half-breed” caught between two cultures. Christine’s story was unique however because a native woman was the main character. Few women, let alone indigenous women, were the main characters in books in the nineteenth century.
She met a Yakima businessman and tribal advocate Lucullus McWhorter at the annual Frontier Day festivities in Walla Walla, Washington. He had recently published a pamphlet defending the irrigation rights of the Yakama people. He encouraged Mourning Dove to tell her people’s stories. They remained correspondents for two decades.
Mourning Dove did much of her writing after working up to ten hours daily picking Washington fruit. She began to gather and record traditional Okanagan stories in order to preserve them for posterity. It was also her desire to shatter the stereotypes of the American Indian. She told a Spokane newspaper reporter, “It is all wrong, this saying that Indians do not feel as deeply as whites. We do feel, and by and by some of us are going to be able to make our feelings appreciated, and then will the true Indian character be revealed.”[1] Christine also realized that education would play a key role in the future of her people.
In 1919, Christine was teaching at Inkameep Day School. She used part of her money to buy a typewriter. She continued her friendship with Lucullus McWhorter who helped her edit her novel. They met with many roadblocks when they tried to find a publisher for Cogewea: The Half-Blood. It wasn’t published until 1927. When she saw the resulting book, Christine was appalled at the changes that were made. She hardly recognized it, but did not complain. She said that she felt like it was someone else’s book. (In 1971, Donald Hines re-edited some of the Okanagan folklore that Mourning Dove had collected and in 1981 he released a new version of Cogewea: The Half-Blood.)
In the meantime, in 1919 Christine had met and married Fred Galler, an enrolled Colville of Wenatchee and white ancestry. They lived on the Colville reservation and worked in the fields picking apples and hops. They moved around quite a lot. Christine collected and wrote stories when she could.
Her next book, Coyote Stories (1933) met with the same heavy-handed editing as Cogewea. The editor eliminated any Native American customs that he felt would offend Euro-American readers. Even though the forward was by Chief Standing Bear himself,[2] the Colville-Okanagan elders did not recognize the stories as being the ones that they had told to Christine.
Christine became more involved with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She tried to bridge the gap between white and native communities. She spoke to various groups including the Campfire Girls and the Brewster Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She was president of the Wild Sunflower Indian Women’s Club in Omak This group was dedicated to the preservation of tribal artwork, history, and traditions. She was politically active and lobbied for fair tribal employment at an Omak lumber mill. She spoke out for a greater tribal voice in the administration of Indian affairs. In 1935 she became the first woman elected to serve on the council of the Confederated Colville Tribes.
By 1936 her health was worsening. She became so disoriented that her family took her to a state hospital at Medical Lake. She never recovered, passing away on August 8.
She was buried in a cemetery in Okanogan beneath a marker that read “Mrs. Fred Galler.” Sometime later a new marker was added with the inscription “Mourning Dove, Colville Author, 1884-1936.”
In 1990, Mourning Dove’s writings were organized into Mourning Dove: A Salishan Autobiography. Christine was more than a novelist and ethnographer. As noted above, she sought to dispel the mainstream myths and unfounded perceptions of Native Americans. They were neither “Noble Savages” nor murderers. It is a shame that the early editors of her books felt that they had the right to destroy most of what she actually wrote in order to make it more palatable to white people. Thankfully, you can now obtain her books in newer versions that restore her original writings.
Today, her cultural and political achievements for the betterment of the Okanagan are recognized by many people worldwide. Relatives and friends among the Confederated Colville Tribes hold cherished memories of Christine, Mourning Dove, Quintasket. They continue her work through programs for indigenous people including language programs, water protection and restoration projects and tribal education systems.
You can obtain her works on Amazon, and there are even some interesting YouTube videos (Sorry about the ads. Stick with it. The production from “Stuffed You Missed in History Class” is worth your time.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEB5YmIGyhI
[1] KB Schaller. 100+ Native American women Who Changed the World, “Mourning Dove (Christine Quintasket, B. Ca. 1888-1936), Author” (Sarasota, FL: Peppertree Press, 2014) page 56-57.
[2] For more about Chief Standing Bear see post on Susette La Flesche Tibbles, https://authormarywalker.com/susette-la-flesche-tibbles/ March 12, 2024.
