Oregon Historical Quarterly/Volume 35/Review: The Heart of the Skyloo
By Irene Upson
It has been Mr. Sperlin's aim, in writing The Heart of the Skyloo, to produce a true picture of the Indians who lived in the Okanogan country during the fur trading era. He has gathered his materials from many sources. Alexander Ross, David Thompson, Ross Cox, and many other writers of the early days have furnished an historical back ground for his narrative and he has made good use of many of their incidents and much information relative to the customs and conditions of the Indians. To this he has added color and first hand information about Indian lore and traditions which he has gathered by means of personal interviews with Indians and descendants of some of the characters who appear in the book.
The tale of the Indians is fictionized, as tales of Indians must need's be, from the lack of any record of their lives, but many of the native characters have been introduced in the pages of Cox, Ross, and others. In tracing their lives he has made some assumptions unwarrantable in the eyes of an historian, such as the merging of the character of Kokome Nepeeka, one of the Indian women who preceded Thompson to Astoria, into that of Bundosh or Boudash the Kootenai woman, and the invention of the subsequent career of Ross's priest, but these devices are acceptable as fiction or conjecture. Although his native heroine might be thought somewhat too full of simple goodness and civilized understanding, Mr. Sperlin has followed his sources closely in his representation of the lives of the Indians in general.
For the purpose of representing in English the native speech and, mode of thought, Mr. Sperlin has adopted a style of writing which combines native words and jargon with complicated English. This mixture forms a sizeable barrier between the reader and the meaning to be conveyed, and the result of the whole is not altogether a happy one, in the mind of this reviewer.
The vocabulary of Indian words at the end of the book is helpful (indeed, necessary to the understanding of the text) and, of large enough scope to be generally useful for reference. The materials gathered at first hand from the natives, and the identifications made by Francois Saxa, mentioned by Mr. Sperlin in his acknowledgments, might have been made more useful to students by means of an introduction or the use of footnotes. The book is attractively printed and bound by the Metropolitan Press.