Alex Posey: Creek Poet, Journalist, and Humorist.

Alex Posey: Creek Poet, Journalist, and Humorist. Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. 330 pages. $16.95 paper.

In Alex Posey, the complicated subject of being an educated and a "progressive" Creek during the turn of the century unfolds as the author examines the personal and political life of Alexander (Alex) Posey. Born in 1873, Posey grew up in Indian Territory, which had undergone rapid social, political, and economical transformation during his lifetime. The Creeks, along with the Choctaws, Seminoles, Chickasaws, and Cherokees, had fought the Dawes Commission to resist the dissolution of tribal land to individual allotments; changes in land tenure also brought Euro-Americans into Oklahoma and Indian Territories and thereby accelerated the deterioration of tribal lifestyles. By the time of Posey's death in 1907, Indian nations in the two territories had been terminated by the government, Congress had placed restrictions on land ownership, and largely Anglo-operated real estate companies, usurping enormous sections of tribal land, had sprung up in the two territories' towns and cities.

Raised by his mother Nancy Posey, a full-blood Creek of the Wind Clan and his father Lewis Henderson (Hence) Posey of Scotch-Irish descent, Alex, early in childhood, acquired the specific interests and skills that would be influential in his writings and in the development of his political career. His mother taught him Creek verbal traditions, which he would remember and later write about, while his father encouraged him to speak English and to attend school. Posey's struggle to embrace two worlds, the Euro-American and the Creek, is evidenced in his writings and his multifarious career in Indian Territory: he served as representative of the Creek House of Warriors, superintendent of the Creek Orphan Asylum and the Eufaula boarding school, fieldworker for the Dawes Commission, editor and owner of the Eufaula Indian Journal, and employee for a short time for the International Land Company, a real estate company with a disreputable reputation.

Alex Posey follows a chronological framework, which traces Posey's multi-faceted activities and his frequent controversial opinions about Indian territorial politics. Littlefield establishes what he believes to be the forces that propelled Posey's literary career--his firm belief that Indian people should assimilate Euro-American cultural values and his own deep reverence for the Indian territorial landscape. The author examines Posey's early childhood experiences of growing up in Indian Territory, how his family and friends and his rural environment influence his identity as a writer. Littlefield asserts that "the wedge of land between the north and main branches of the Canadian River west of Eufaula, near where the rivers met" made a profound impression on Posey that throughout his life he repeatedly would return to this setting to write about the Indian landscape. As a young student, he wrote for the Bacone Indian University's B.I.A. Instructor, where he invented his literary persona Chinnubbie and where he also gained invaluable journalistic training. Posey's experimentations as a writer became crucial to his development as an important Indian humorist and journalist. Even as a relatively inexperienced writer, Posey combined humor and sarcasm to record social events that occurred at school--literary strategies he would later adapt to his Fus Fixico letters. Chinnubbie always found a humorous perspective as he described school activities that relieved the monotony of college life. Along with his newspaper writings, Posey began writing verse while at school, continuing both while he served as a Creek public servant and during his later profession as a poet-farmer at Possum Flat. Littlefield's thorough historical scholarship of Posey's life provides insight into the shifting political arena of Indian Territory during this time and illuminates Posey's struggle to become a writer. The author's emphasis is less concerned with analyzing Posey's thematic concerns or the aesthetic sensibilities of his writings than documenting the diversity of his work and its relation to his political career.

Posey's Fus Fixico letters, which gained him national recognition, are the focus of chapter seven. Posey wrote seventy-two letters that circulated in local newspapers and appeared in newspapers outside the territory, including such prestigious papers as the New York Times. The Fus Fixico letters appeal to all readers as Fus Fixico, Hotgun, Wacache, and Tookpafka Micco, full-blood Creek characters, playfully satirize politicians, including President Roosevelt and the notorious Dawes Commission politicians. For instance, Fus Fixico says:

   Wacache he says he was had a talk with God and knows lots of things like
   wise mens of old times in the Bible. He says the Creeks was not live right
   now like before Columbus and Dawes commission. So God was tell them to made
   medicine for Creeks, and make them wash off in the branch, too, and rub
   lots of sand on their hides, and dance stomp dance and play ball game. This
   way they was get strong and quit renting land to white folks and let the
   country get wild and have lots of game like long time ago.

Wacache comes up with a plan to eliminate the whites from Indian Territory. Thus readers are presented with an Indian perspective on the settlement of Indian Territory. Sometimes with humor, but more often packing a powerful sardonic bite, the Fus Fixico letters reflect Posey's full-blood Creek characters' opinions about their battle to resist the federal government's termination of tribal sovereignty, their perspective on the issue of Oklahoma statehood, and their beliefs about other equally controversial subjects that drew Posey's attention. By expressing Creek public opinion through his characters, Posey became an influential spokesperson who described the changing socio-economical conditions in Indian Territory.

Littlefield discusses the various political orientations of the letters by contextualizing the events transpiring in Indian Territory that enable readers to appreciate the divergent political tones that Posey renders in his Fus Fixico letters. The author's methodology allows readers to appreciate the political commentary that centers on issues occurring in Indian Territory as well as the wit and humor of Posey's Creek characters.

Littlefield's deftness at historical scholarship, along with his skill at telling a fascinating story, makes this book an important text for readers of American Indian history and early American Indian literature. Alex Posey reveals the paradoxical stance of Posey's writings and also the conflicted nature of the author: a man whose poetry laments the passing of Creek tribal life but in the same breath criticizes full-blood Creeks for refusing to accept land allotment as a means to become more like Euro-Americans. The life that the author draws in his work is a realistic and sensitive portrayal of a man expressing his opinions about tribal sovereignty and Indian identity during a tumultuous time in American Indian history.

Alexia Kosmider University of Rhode Island, Providence

Alexia Kosmider teaches literature at the University of Rhode Island (Providence Campus). She is the author of Tricky Tribal Discourse: The Poetry, Short Stories and Fus Fixico Letters of Creek Writer Alex Posey.