Long Lance

New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1929. 1st ed. Hardcover. Good/Good. frontis (portrait), xv, [3], 278p. Original cloth. dj. 20 cm. Jacket has quite a bit of chipping and wear along edges as well as a couple of extra vertical creases. Cover joints and other extremities heavily rubbed with loss or cloth. Corner bumped. INSCRIBED by the author to an female acquaintance or friend ("For Atalie, a fine, wholesome Indian girl of whom we are all very proud Buffalo Child Long Lance -- June 1, '29"). Laid is a typed and signed ("Long Lance") three page letter (envelope not present) to Atalie [no last name given) dated 6 months before the inscription in the book. Long Lance celebrates the election of Herbert Hoover and mentions that they both were supporters. Much of the letter describes Long Lance's involvement in a part sound movie then being shot. Long Lance's return address on the letter is The Burden Expedition, Rabbit Chute Camp, Northern Canada, via Temagami, Ont." Long Lance speaks of danger from scenes involving wild animals and of nearly perishing when he and another Indian got lost for two days without "food, blankets or axe. He reassures Atalie, writing "But really, Atalie, there is no need for apprehension; for if the odds were really against me they could not afford to allow me to go through them; as a fatality to me would spoil the whole sequence of the picture, though it could still be run since the "shots" coming afterwards would already have been taken." Near the end of the letter he says that he looks forward to seeing her in the Spring. The movie premiered in New York about two weeks before the date of the inscription in this book. Unfortunately, Long Lance was born as Sylvester Clark Long in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where his father was a school janitor with some African heritage, rather than an Indian Chief. Long passed initially as a Cherokee when he applied to and attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1909-1912, graduating at the top of his class with Jim Thorpe as one of his classmates. He went to Canada around 1919 claiming to have been awarded the Croix de Guere during service in World War I. He worked as a reporter for the Calgary Times, may have coached football (Calgary Canucks) and was even a press representative for the Canadian Pacific Railway. At some point while in Canada he evolved into being a Blackfoot Indian rather than Cherokee. Chief Yellow Robe, the lead actor in the film, became suspicious of Long Lance's ethnic heritage. Rumors spread. When Long Lance died of a gunshot wound in 1932, his death was ruled a suicide. Long Lance now seems to be regarded as having been a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, an Indian tribe with limited federal recognition and a complicated tri-racial heritage. We know nothing specfic about Atalie although we think there is a good chance that she was Atalie Unkalunt, 1895-1954, a talented Cherokee singer and activist. (Inventory #: 95163)