In 1879, a Canadian Blackfoot known as Spopee, or Turtle, shot
and killed a white man. Captured as a fugitive, Spopee narrowly
escaped execution, instead landing in an insane asylum in
Washington, D.C., where he fell silent. Spopee thus "disappeared"
for more than thirty years, until a delegation of American
Blackfeet discovered him and, aided by the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs, exacted a pardon from President Woodrow Wilson. After
re-emerging into society like a modern-day Rip Van Winkle, Spopee
spent the final year of his life on the Blackfeet Reservation in
Montana, in a world that had changed irrevocably from the one he
had known before his confinement.
"Blackfoot Redemption" is the riveting account of Spopee's
unusual and haunting story. To reconstruct the events of Spopee's
life--at first traceable only through bits and pieces of
information--William E. Farr conducted exhaustive archival
research, digging deeply into government documents and
institutional reports to build a coherent and accurate narrative
and, through this reconstruction, win back one Indian's life and
identity.
In revealing both certainties and ambiguities in Spopee's story,
Farr relates a larger story about racial dynamics and prejudice,
while poignantly evoking the turbulent final days of the
buffalo-hunting Indians before their confinement, loss of freedom,
and confusion that came with the wrenching transition to
reservation life.
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