John Joseph Mathews (1894-1979) is one of Oklahoma's most revered twentieth-century authors. An Osage Indian, he was also one of the first Indigenous authors to gain national renown. Yet fame did not come easily to Mathews, and his personality was full of contradictions. In this captivating biography, Michael Snyder provides the first book-length account of this fascinating figure. Known as ""Jo"" to all his friends, Mathews had a multifaceted identity. A novelist, naturalist, biographer, historian, and tribal preservationist, he was a true ""man of letters."" Snyder draws on a wealth of sources, many of them previously untapped, to narrate Mathews's story. Much of the writer's family life - especially his two marriages and his relationships with his two children and two stepchildren - is explored here for the first time. Born in the town of Pawhuska in Indian Territory, Mathews attended the University of Oklahoma before venturing abroad and earning a second degree from Oxford. He served as a flight instructor during World War I, traveled across Europe and northern Africa, and bought and sold land in California. A proud Osage who devoted himself to preserving Osage culture, Mathews also served as tribal councilman and cultural historian for the Osage Nation. Like many gifted artists, Mathews was not without flaws. And perhaps in the eyes of some critics, he occupies a nebulous space in literary history. Through insightful analysis of his major works, especially his semiautobiographical novel Sundown and his meditative Talking to the Moon, Snyder revises this impression. The story he tells, of one remarkable individual, is also the story of the Osage Nation, the state of Oklahoma, and Native America in the twentieth century.

Our Osage Hills presents an exciting portrait of the Wahzhazhe (Osage) people and their prairie homelands in the early twentieth century and beyond, this book presents excellent lost work by the charismatic Osage author and naturalist, John Joseph Mathews, plus a wealth of contextual stories and Osage history. Dr. Michael Snyder discovered, compiled, and edited Mathews's captivating articles, and crafted researched commentaries; these articles and commentaries interweave to form an Osage-centric chronicle of the Great Depression. Using Mathews's articles as a cue, a prompt to move through a vast memory palace, Snyder's pieces tell a broader story of Osage cultural survivance, continuity, and the political struggle for sovereignty; the involvement of Osages in high culture performance and music; the special contributions of Osage women; the novel of the West and novelists in the West; Hollywood as a reflection, however distorted, of the Osage Nation and the surrounding nation; Indian athletics, especially baseball; and crucially, birds, animals, and the beginning of ecological understanding and the emergence of environmental protection. The essays also offer new discoveries on the Osage murders of the 1920s, and show the continued white exploitation and violence against Osages during the 1930s. Through this entertaining and wide-ranging study, the reader will gain a new and fuller understanding of the Wahzhazhe people and their homeland.

This revealing book presents a selection of lost articles from "Our Osage Hills," a newspaper column by the renowned Osage writer, naturalist, and historian, John Joseph Mathews. Signed only with the initials "J.J.M.," Mathews's column featured regularly in the Pawhuska Daily Journal-Capital during the early 1930s. While Mathews is best known for his novel Sundown (1934), the pieces gathered in this volume reveal him to be a compelling essayist. Marked by wit and erudition, Mathews's column not only evokes the unique beauty of the Osage prairie, but also takes on urgent political issues, such as ecological conservation and Osage sovereignty. In Our Osage Hills, Michael Snyder interweaves Mathews's writings with original essays that illuminate their relevant historical and cultural contexts. The result is an Osage-centric chronicle of the Great Depression, a time of environmental and economic crisis for the Osage Nation and country as a whole. Drawing on new historical and biographical research, Snyder's commentaries highlight the larger stakes of Mathews's reflections on nature and culture and situate them within a fascinating story about Osage, Native American, and American life in the early twentieth century. In treating topics that range from sports, art, film, and literature to the realities and legacies of violence against the Osages, Snyder conveys the broad spectrum of Osage familial, social, and cultural history.