SOURCE: "Gerald Vizenor's Indian Gothic," in MELUS, Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring, 1991–92, pp. 75-85.

In the following essay, Velie argues that Vizenor has adapted the traditional "frontier gothic" into an "Indian gothic" which portrays changes in the West from the Native American perspective.

Much of American literature is concerned with conquering the hostile wilderness and "winning the West." For a long time Americans read little Indian literature, and so we learned almost nothing from the people who "lost" the West, and who considered the wilderness not hostile, but home.

In the past fifteen years, however, there has been an efflorescence of Indian literature. The best known of the Indian writers not only have strong tribal identities, but as they are or have been English professors (Scott Momaday at Berkeley, Stanford, and Arizona, James Welch at Montana, Leslie Silko at New Mexico and Arizona, Paula Gunn Allen at Berkeley, and Gerald...