The Way of an Indian

Frederic Remington, whose paintings and sculptures defined the American West in the popular imagination, turns novelist in this 1906 portrait of a young warrior's painful search for honor. White Otter is a Crows warrior plagued by inadequacy. He watches his companions ride to battle while he remains behind, consumed by longing for the glory that has eluded him. In a desperate night of prayer and fasting, he receives a mystical sign: a bat becomes his medicine, promising strength and guidance. What follows is White Otter's journey through a world where the old ways are dying and the warrior's path grows increasingly tragic. Remington captures the physical and spiritual landscape of the Plains with the eye of an artist who spent decades observing it firsthand. The book is a product of its era, yet it offers a rare glimpse into Indigenous interiority from a time when Native voices were largely silenced in American literature. White Otter's struggle for recognition resonates across time: the universal ache of the young warrior seeking to prove himself against ancestors who set an impossible standard.