Most scholars cite John Joseph Mathews's Sundown (1934), with its mixed-blood protagonist and its emphasis on the problems of being Native in a largely non-Native world, as the first modern Native American novel. The Osage writer's nonfiction books have, however, received more critical acclaim and a wider readership than his single novel. All five volumes of his prose exhibit two notable characteristics: an elegant and erudite style and a respect and affection for the author's tribal people and their twentieth-century home, Oklahoma.

The eldest of five children, Mathews was born on 16 November 1894 in Pawhuska, Indian Territory. His father, William Shirley Mathews, was a quarter-blood Osage married to a non-Native woman when he arrived in 1874 at the tribe's last reservation, located in the northeastern part of what became the state of Oklahoma in 1907. The family occupied a large stone house perched on Agency Hill overlooking the burgeoning frontier community of...