Across the Spectrum:The Interdisciplinary Life and Letters of John G. Neihardt (‘Flaming Rainbow’)

This is in reply to yours of March 23.

You must have learned by this time that Long Lance committed suicide in Los Angeles several days ago. Too bad, but I was suspicious as to the future of Long Lance so far as any genuine significance is concerned. His New York life was certain to be fatal to the Indian in him, and it was the Indian in him that mattered, if anything did. The manner of his going seems to have been of a piece with the New York folly.

Don't worry about doing the right thing by reviewing BLACK ELK. As a matter of fact, nothing is needed but the statement of your own feelings about the book. You struck the key-note in something you said about it in a recent letter, and you will not of course overlook the social implications of the vision.

I have recently received a letter from Miss Deloria of the Department of Anthropology in Columbia University. Her grandfather was a chief and medicine man of the Yankton Sioux and her father was the same. Both by birth and training she is an authority, and I have known of her as such for many years. She seems to have been bowled over by the Black Elk Book, and said that she had not hoped that there could really be a white man who could get on the inside of the Indian religion as it had been taught to her in her childhood. I do not care to "use" Miss Deloria, though I have asked her if she could help in some way, and I think a Morrow representative will have her out to lunch to see what can be done.

The reviews of the book from all over the country have been excellent in intention, and sometimes actually excellent. THere have been only two or three exceptions so far.

I am amused to note with what naive faith reviewers accept, in a literal sense, the statement that I am letting Black Elk do all the speaking. I need not tell you how this is, and I am hoping that this may go so far as to give Black Elk a Pulitzer prize for autobiography! This would be a masterpiece of unconscious humor. The book is absolutely true to Black Elk's spirit and meaning, far more true than anything Black Elk could ever say could possibly be. Do you

get this, or is it confusing to you? I think it is not likely to confuse you in the least. If you could spend a day with Enid's stenographic report, out of which the book was mined, the whole thing would be made clear. But don't tell anybody about this.

Waiting until April will in no way lessen the effect of what you may do for the book.

Better see that medium the next time you go to N. Y. Really, I wish you would