McNickle is now acknowledged as one of the originators of modern Native-American literature, but only two Native-American writers preceded him: Mourning Dove, whose novel Cogewea appeared in 1927, and John Joseph Mathews, whose novel Sundown appeared in 1934. However, the views reflected in their novels were focused on assimilation and thus were unlike McNickle's.

His literary indebtedness to the Victorian novelists, especially Thomas Hardy, seems probable since he certainly studied these authors as an English major at the University of Montana and at Oxford University, which he attended without, however, taking a degree. Of the Moderns, most scholars ascribe elements of McNickle's techniques to Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein.