Wynema: A Child of the Forest, by S. Alice Callahan, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1997, $20 cloth, $9.95 paperback.
Although a novel–a sentimental domestic romance at that–this book should interest most anyone intrigued by the history and culture of American Indians. For one thing, Wynema is probably the first novel written by a woman of Indian descent. Sophia Alice Callahan (186894) was the daughter of Samuel Benton Callahan, who was one-eighth Muscogee (Creek) and a member of the Muscogee aristocracy. The book deals with the struggles of a Muscogee Indian named Wynema Harjo and a Methodist teacher named Genevieve Weir to overcome prejudices and injustices against women and Indians in the late 19th century. A publisher’s preface explains the book’s original publishing in the spring of 1891: “The fact that an Indian, one of the oppressed, desires to plead her cause at a tribunal where judge and jury are chosen from among the oppressors is our warrant for publishing this little volume.” Callahan’s teaching career was cut short by an attack of pleurisy, and she died at age 26, less than three years after Wynema was published.
