Cogewea, the Half-Blood by Mourning Dove

Name: Cogewea, the Half-Blood
Author: Mourning Dove

Cogewea, a mixed-blood "breed" woman raised in part by her Okanogan grandmother (Stemteemä) and educated at the Carlisle Indian School, lives on her sister Julia Carter's Horseshoe Bend Ranch on the Flathead Reservation, where she rides, works cattle, and is courted by the ranch foreman James LaGrinder, a fellow half-blood who loves her deeply. During a horse roundup, Cogewea is thrown by her horse Wanawish after it spooks at a rattlesnake; she kills the snake, is found by LaGrinder, and swears him to secrecy about the fall. She and ranch hand Silent Bob later meet the steamer bringing Stemteemä and her sister Mary to visit, along with Alfred Densmore, a fortune-seeking Easterner who hires on at the ranch as a greenhorn rider after Cogewea mischievously puts him to work. The cowboys, egged on by Jim's jealousy, saddle Densmore on the outlaw horse Croppy; he is thrown and badly injured, and Cogewea nurses him, feeling responsible. At the Fourth of July celebration in Polson, Cogewea races and wins both the ladies' race (on Diamond, against a white rival, Verona Webster, who strikes her with a quirt) and the squaw race (on White Star), but the race judge, exploiting her mixed blood, pays her only for the "squaw" race and threatens to arrest LaGrinder when he protests; Cogewea flings the prize money back in the judge's face. LaGrinder later wins the bronc-riding contest on Croppy, and the day closes with a traditional dance where gifts are exchanged between tribes. As Densmore recovers, Cogewea visits and nurses him, and he privately dismisses his growing attraction to her as unsuitable given his family and status, though he schemes that she might have hidden wealth through her long-absent father, who left for the Alaska gold rush. Cogewea reads a novel that stereotypes "breed" characters and reacts with anger, sparking a debate with Densmore and LaGrinder about how whites misrepresent Indian life. She and Densmore visit Stemteemä's teepee, where the old woman warns Cogewea against trusting the Easterner, sensing his insincerity, but Cogewea defends him. Stemteemä then narrates a tribal legend about a medicine man's vision foretelling the coming of white missionaries and the destruction of the buffalo-hunting way of life, and the arrival of the first "Black Robe" priest among her people. Afterward, Cogewea and Densmore debate religion, Indian policy, and the injustices of the reservation and Indian Bureau system, with Cogewea delivering passionate indictments of federal mismanagement and broken treaties. On a ride to Buffalo Butte, Cogewea's favored retreat overlooking the old buffalo grounds, Densmore declares his love for her and presses her about the old tribal marriage custom; she remains guarded but does not fully rebuff him. Meanwhile, LaGrinder proposes marriage to Cogewea outright; she tells him she loves him only as a brother and warns she will never marry outside her own "breed" kind, though she refuses to name any rival, deepening Jim's jealous suspicion of Densmore. As the ranch prepares for the fall beef roundup, two newcomers, a French tenderfoot named Eugene "Frenchy" La Fleur and a cook, Jaquis "Jake" De Mont, are hired on and quickly become targets of the cowboys' rough camp humor.

By Mourning Dove · First published 1927 · Genre: Western, Romance, Native American Literature · 31 chapters · 104,744 words

First lines

Grew up like the prairie lilies, / Grew a tall and slender maiden, / With the beauty of the moonlight, / With the beauty of the starlight. / Hiawatha

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Cogewea, the Half-Blood is listed on Textopian as a novel by Mourning Dove, dated 1927 CE.

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Work type: Novel
Author: Mourning Dove
Date: 1927 CE
Language: English
Genres: Western, Romance, Native American Literature, Social Commentary, Bildungsroman
Length: 104,744 words
Structure: 31 chapters, 1,655 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

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Genres

Western — Set on the Flathead Reservation ranch with cowboys, horses, ranching culture, rodeos, and frontier landscapes as central to the narrative structure and daily life
Romance — Cogewea's romantic entanglements with Jim LaGrinder and Densmore drive significant plot developments and emotional tension throughout the narrative
Native American Literature — Written by Mourning Dove, an Okanagan author, centering Indigenous perspectives, tribal traditions, and the experiences of mixed-race Native Americans
Social Commentary — Extensive critique of systemic racism and discrimination against 'breeds' (mixed-race people) who are rejected by both white and Indigenous societies

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