James Willard Schultz

My Life as an Indian (Expanded, Annotated) James Willard Schultz

Beautiful, tender, haunting, and extremely exciting This is the memoir of famed author, explorer, guide, trader, and historian of the Blackfoot Indians, James Willard Schultz. Here he tells of his life with the Blackfeet and his marriage to a Blackfoot woman, whom he deeply loved. From 1880 to 1903, Schultz lived the life of a Blackfoot Indian with Nat-ah'-ki and her people. During this time, he began writing for magazines, at times running a trading post, and working as a guide in the West. He met historian, writer, and naturalist, George Bird Grinnell, who encouraged him to write this heartfelt and important memoir. As an ethnography of a people and a time it is invaluable. Though he would marry again after Nat-ah'-ki's death, Schultz eventually went back to live near the Native peoples he'd come to love and is buried in the traditional ground of Nat-ah-ki's people. You won't read another memoir like it. Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of the migration that changed the country forever.