The following version of this story was used to create this guide: Alexie, Sherman. "Happy Trails." The New Yorker, 2013. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/06/10/happy-trails.

Note that all parenthetical citations refer to the page number on which the quotation appears.

"Happy Trails" is a story about a male speaker's reckoning with his family's past and status in an America still tainted by racism. Sherman Alexie is a notable Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-Native American writer whose work is often autobiographical. In his poems, short stories, and novels, Alexie explores the experiences of his Indigenous American ancestry, often challenging his readers to recognize the way displays of racism have evolved over the years. He writes typically from the perspective of Native American male speakers who find themselves straddling the line between their tribal identity and their modern American lifestyle. "Happy trails" is no exception, and it presents a protagonist who grapples with the disappearance of a family member and what it means for his own identity as a middle-aged man.

The story begins with the speaker explaining that his uncle Hector disappeared forty-one years ago, after leaving the reservation and announcing that he was hitchhiking to Spokane. The speaker admits that his uncle was "a randomly-employed blue-collar reservation alcoholic" but imagines that he would have eventually become an influential member of the tribe (1). He thinks that if his uncle was still alive, they might even look alike. The speaker explains that he has lost many family members to disease.

Four decades after his uncle's disappearance, the speaker told his mother that they should bury him. After arguing whether it was appropriate given Hector's disappearance, they agreed to have a funeral. The speaker thinks about the way his uncle would have died. At the funeral, he explains that they had an empty open casket and buried the coffin in the Catholic cemetery. His mother sang a funeral song while he thought about Hector's life.

Upon reflection, he realizes that it was always likely his uncle would die violently because he was born into a world tainted by the violence of white men against Native Americans. But the speaker admits that his uncle likely was not killed by white men but instead by fellow Native American men he likely upset in some way. The speaker wishes one of his uncle's killers would tell him where his uncle is buried so he could retrieve his remains. As the story concludes, the speaker asserts that "I was alive, damn it, and I planned to live longer than every other Indian in the world" (4).