“I have made a footprint, through it the blades push upward.” Marking the Land while Talking to the Moon

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyse the representation of nature that John Joseph Mathews published in 1945, in Talking to the Moon, a book commonly referred to as a Native American Walden. In the 1930s and 1940s, Mathews (1895-1979), a member of the Osage tribe, spent ten years in the Blackjacks, an isolated spot a dozen miles away from Pawhuska, Osage County, Oklahoma, named after the oak trees that cover the hills. In Talking to the Moon, Mathews observes his environment, writes down his reflections on the human impact on nature, but also the impact nature has on men, and on the Osages in particular.

Keywords

• Native American literature
• environment
• representation of nature
• autobiography