Sacagawea’s Nickname: Essays On The American West, by Larry McMurty

When one reads a book like this, it is important to know what the purpose of it is, and what the author was trying to accomplish by writing it. I must admit that I do not have a great deal of familiarity with the writing of Larry McMurtry, aside from knowing that he wrote Lonesome Dove, which was a popular television series for many years. I have a slight interest in Westerns but it is by no means a favorite genre of mine (though I hope one day to write at least one story in the genre). In reading this book, I was struck by the author’s self-conscious attempt to appeal to revisionist historians and those who would likely consider themselves to be on the left when it comes to culture within the United States. I am not sure why the author is wasting his effort, as such people hate Westerns anyway and are likely to view the populist but anti-mythical writings of the author with at least some degree of contempt. I must admit that my own view of the author suffered a bit of a hit after reading this book, not because the essays were bad, but because appealing to the left is something that is at least a little bit cringeworthy.

The content of these essays is highly variable in nature. Most of them are rambling and do not reflect well on the author as a scholar, which is really playing to his weak suit given his undoubted popularity as a writer of popular and accessible fiction. If the author is trying to impress the audience with being well-read, the book does not succeed on that front, not least because it is so dismissive of the writing of greats like Louis L’Amour, for example, and openly contemptuous of the popular mythmaking ethos of so many people who have written so profitably about the West. Given that I associate the author far closely with the likes of L’Amour and Zand Gray, for example, than something as obviously scholarly and reflective as The Ox-Bow Incident, which is not even mentioned here, this is not to the author’s credit. Even where the author’s essays are not tedious and seemingly motivated by political considerations, they are awfully inessential. Perhaps the most notable example of this is the titular essay of the book, which points to Sacagawea’s nickname in the context of the greatness of Lewis & Clark’s writing about their travels as a genuine American epic, with the rather deflating reality that the nickname was only used once in all of the writings of both Lewis and Clark, thus making it a trivial oddity rather than something really noteworthy about the West. Considering this book to be a trivial oddity with regards to scholarship about the subject of the American West is probably a fair, if not particularly kind, verdict.

In terms of its contents, this book is a relatively (and mercifully) short collection of a dozen essays that is less than 200 pages in length. The book begins with an introduction that shows the timid and politically correct nature of the author in admitting that he tended to avoid reviewing Westerns because he disliked their mythos. This is followed by a discussion of what the west would be without Chili, which ends up being a celebration of revisionist history (1). The author discusses the invention of the West by various people, in a somewhat negative tone, with the assumption that the author is among those who truly understands it (2). This is followed by an essay that deals with Native American survival and identity (3), bringing up the baleful nature of leftist academia and identity politics. A whole essay is devoted to the obscure Angie Dabo, historian of the dispossession of the Civilized tribes (4). Another is devoted to the Zuni and the periodic popularity they have enjoyed as the subject of research (5). The next essay after this follows the writing of revisionist historian Patricia Nelson Limerick (6). After this, the author at least starts writing about worthwhile subjects, like Powell of Colorado (7), who spent most of his career as an embattled swamp creature in Washington DC. This is followed by an essay on Zane Gray (8) that expresses the author’s unmerited contempt for his pulpy peers. The essay that follows this shows the author writing on the obscure poet Janet Lewis (9). This is followed by the author’s (not unreasonable) praise of the complete Lewis & Clark journals as an American epic (10) and the titular essay on Sacagawea’s nickname– Janey (11), before the book closes with an essay on the Missouri River (12).`