Laughing Boy by Oliver LaFarge

             Laughing Boy is another of the great novels that I would never have heard of if I had not been collecting and reading the works that won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  Laughing Boy can, perhaps, be described as “A Navajo Tragedy.”  Written in 1929 by La Farge who had been an anthropologist among the Navajo and other tribes of the Southwest, the book struck me as a rather authentic story of the impact of American culture on the Navajo people.  It was told by a white man living among the Indians and may have many inaccuracies and misinterpretations.  I have read some critiques of Laughing Boy that express the opinion that no white man can ever understand Indian culture.  Be that as it may, La Farge made a good effort and tells a story that was honored with a Pulitzer Prize and is well worth reading. 

I had strong feelings for the young Navajo man, Laughing Boy, as he encountered for the first time some of most damaging aspects of the Americans who had come to live in the Southwest.  The story tells of his meeting Slim Girl, a Navajo woman who had been taken from her family as a young girl and sent to a school for Indians in California.  When she finally made her way back to Navajo country, she found that she was neither American or Navajo.  She enticed Laughing Boy, a traditional Navajo, into marriage in order to help her find a way back to the Navajo way of life.  Instead, she led him into some of the worst aspects of American life.  With Slim Girl mixing drinks, Laughing Boy has his first taste of whiskey.  It’s a poignant moment when you realize how often this must have happened to Indian people who would become slaves to alcohol and ruined by its influence. 

Slim Girl tries to live in two worlds: the Navajo world with Laughing Boy and the American world with a man who pays her for sleeping with him.  She goes off during the day to clean house for the minister’s wife, as she tells Laughing Boy, but actually goes to meet her wealthy American.  Slim Girl justifies this by believing that she is getting even with the Americans who took her life away from her.  Laughing Boy eventually finds out about her double life, catches her with the American, and then reacts.  This is where real trouble begins. 
I won't give away anymore of the story but it has a  tragic ending.  Laughing Boy's faith and religious conviction from his Navajo upbringing and way of life help him go through what he has to face. Laughing Boy is a strong statement about how much good is in the traditional Navajo way of life.  Even if there are inaccuracies, Laughing Boy conveys the evil that was brought to the Navajos because of the Americans encroaching into their world and way of life.  This is an important book to read, especially by Americans who have grown up believing that the Indians were just savages who deserved to be run off their lands and herded onto reservations.