BIG HORSE WOMAN

Salvatore offers an illustrated, series-starting novel about the origin of a gifted 19th-century Indigenous Ponca healer.

In this book’s foreword, poet Clifford Taylor notes that the author had a dream of two women, one Native American and one White, who inspired the characters in this series. In this first book, Salvatore tells the story of Big Horse Woman’s early life, set against the backdrop of real-life Ponca history. Born in 1833, the protagonist is first known as Water Willow. By age 4, she begins to have premonitions of danger that those around her heed. She learns to hunt, sew, cook, find uses for plants, ride horses, and tell her people’s stories. Her idyllic childhood at Planting Creek, west of the Missouri River, is cut short by a smallpox epidemic, which sickens her in 1843. Her grandmother nurses her back to health, but the rest of her family dies. Her village moves to a new location, and she gains a loyal dog companion named Ears Up. Soon, her people start interacting with White settlers, but she avoids them. When she starts menstruating in 1847, she begins hearing the voice of her guiding spirit, which leads her to save a colt from drowning; the animal comes to be called Big Horse, and she becomes known as Big Horse Woman. Her childhood friend unadvisedly steals horses from the Crow people to impress her, which leads to tragedy. Overall, this is an enjoyable story with appealing elements of magical realism. This novel’s plot is a complex one, but there’s much more to this publication, as Salvatore illustrates it with her own original artwork, as well as real-life public-domain images; she also includes Ponca language pronunciation guides. The informative text features ethnographic information and an extensive annotated bibliography of sources about Ponca history during the 1800s, showing the author’s extensive research. Salvatore isn’t Ponca herself, but she includes supporting testimonials from nearly a dozen members of the Ponca nation who vouch for the accuracy of the details of this fictional story.

An intriguing historical novel that effectively sketches out elements of Ponca traditions.