DATE: Sunday, November 23, 1997             TAG: 9711130675

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BILL RUEHLMANN

                                            LENGTH:   73 lines

NATIVE AMERICAN CHIEF TELLS HIS SIDE OF STORY

Our national vision of the Native American has changed over recent years from the savage predator of cowboy movies to the social victim of modern scholarship. But some individuals survived the decimation of systematic genocide and reservation confinement. One was author, showman and guide, Chief Henry Red Eagle (1885-1972), the last full-blooded Algonquin Indian of the Maliseet tribe.

In a 1952 foreword to a thoughtful Indian history by the Maine Writers Research Club, Chief Red Eagle wrote: ``This tome should make it obvious that the Indian of yesterday is gradually being replaced by men and women of the Red race who are taking advantage of what modern civilization offers, that they may be able to take their places in the American regime."

He also wrote, during a long and productive career, scores of free-lance pieces for woodlore, western and children's publications such as Outdoors, Argosy and the Sportsman's Review.

Now, thanks to a surviving granddaughter, a niece and Portsmouth teacher-editor Eleanor P. Williamson, he is represented by a volume dedicated to his colorful and informative work - Aboriginally Yours, Chief Henry Red Eagle (Moosehead Communications, 208 pp., $13.95).

The book, like the man, is a find. Red Eagle was not only a writer but also a performer with the Barnum and Bailey Circus, Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Texas Ranch 99. He entertained at the Chicago World's Fair and barkered at Long Island's Dreamland. He played in silent films alongside the likes of Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish.

He could also write, and did.

Get a load of this passage from "Night Riders of Arrowhead," first published in All West Magazine, April 1933:

"Count, Lacey."

He sheathed his gun and stepped back, crouching a little, his claw-like fingers hovering over the black butt, while into his eyes sprang an unholy light, deadly, ophidian - the eyes of a man in the throes of reckless disregard of consequence.

Ophidian!

Means snakelike.

And makes you want to back off about 10 paces and vamoose.

Here's more, from "The Last Arrow-Maker," first published in All-Story Weekly, May 27, 1916:

Stokes kicked a burning branch into the dying coals, and as a shower of sparks shot into the air to light up the night, there was a whir that culminated into a vicious spat as a flint-tipped arrow buried itself into the cedar and hung quivering in the gentle breeze.

A yell, ear-piercing in its shrillness, blood-curdling in its weirdness, clove the quiet of the forest. . . .

All-Story Weekly was where Tarzan got his start. But Red Eagle was already in business. After becoming valedictorian and president of his class at Greenville High in Maine, he went on to a varied career as a lumberjack, band musician, rider of bucking horses, lecturer, trapeze artist and camp counselor.

The man was versatile.

Long after his death, former Old Dominion University English instructor Eleanor Williamson's family purchased a camp on Moosehead Lake in Maine once frequented by Red Eagle. She learned about him and, captivated, she contacted knowledgeable relatives - Juana B. Perley, a computer scientist, and Madaline F. Burnham, a bookkeeper. Together they compiled this beguiling anthology.

Revealingly, many of Red Eagle's stories, are about revenge - particularly, a wronged Native American's social vindication, as in "Injun Yaller" and "The Indian's Way." One can only guess at the routine humiliations these tales sought to square. Many other stories are about woodcraft and remain illuminating - how to cook game, handle a canoe, outfit a journey.

"I'd like to be one of the Good Guys just once," the Chief is reported to have confided to an associate.

And so he is at last, lovingly preserved in the pages of this book. MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia

Wesleyan College.

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