D'Arcy McNickle (1904-1977) was an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes of Montana, an anthropologist, historian and ethnologist, and an effective administrator with the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1936 to 1952.

From 1972 to his death on October 18, 1977, he served as founding Program Director for the Center for the History of the American Indian at the Newberry Library; the Center was renamed in his honor as the D'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian. He was also a lifelong and distinguished writer, publishing three novels, a number of short stories, five booklength nonfiction works, and forty-five articles. In both his fiction and nonfiction, he explored with profound sensitivity and understanding the issues and problems facing Native Americans as a result of the European conquest. He explored these problems on many levels, studying the disruption, if not destruction, of Native-American families, the survival...