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Winter in the Blood | Introduction

Winter in the Blood (1974), the first novel by James Welch, is set on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana, which is located forty miles south of the Canadian border and twenty miles north of the Missouri River. It is the fourth largest Indian reservation in Montana; more than five thousand people live there. The protagonist and narrator of the novel is a thirty-two-year-old Blackfeet Indian whose name is never revealed. He lives on a cattle ranch with his mother and stepfather, but he is an alienated individual who feels little affection for his family. The narrator seems to have no purpose or direction in life, and when he visits the small towns that border the reservation in search of his girlfriend, he gets drunk in bars and indulges in meaningless sex with women he picks up there. However, the narrator also has significant encounters with an old Indian named Yellow Calf, through which he learns more of his family heritage.

With its sharp poetic imagery and its realistic portrayal of life on a Montana reservation, Winter in the Blood is considered one of the most important works of the movement known as the Native American Renaissance. This refers to works published from the late-1960s onwards, when Native American writers began to become more prominent in the American literary landscape.

Winter in the Blood Summary

Part One

Winter in the Blood begins on an Indian reservation in Montana sometime in the 1960s. It is summer. The narrator, a thirty-two-year-old Blackfeet Indian, comes home after a drinking spree in town, where he got into a fight with a white man in a bar. When he arrives at the cattle ranch where he lives—with his mother, Teresa, and his grandmother—he finds that Agnes, his Cree girlfriend, who had been living with them for three weeks, has left. She has taken his gun and electric razor.

The narrator goes fishing and comes home with Teresa's friend, Lame Bull. After supper, he reads and listens to the radio with his grandmother. Lame Bull and Teresa go away for three days. When they return, they report that they got married in Malta, one of the small towns that border the reservation.

The next day, the narrator helps Lame Bull on the ranch. In conversation with Teresa, he recalls events from his childhood, such as the day he accidentally drowned five ducks he had won at a fair and the death of his father ten years ago, who froze to death returning home drunk one winter's night.

Lame Bull hires Raymond Long Knife to work on the ranch, but Raymond is dissatisfied with the pay. Lame Bull punches him on the nose and takes him back to town.

After a night in which the narrator recalls stories told by his grandmother and his dead brother, Lame Bull gives the narrator a ride to Dodson. The narrator then takes a bus to Malta, fifty miles from his home, to find Agnes, even though he claims she is not worth the trouble. In a bar, he meets Dougie, Agnes's brother. Dougie gets the narrator to help him rob a white man who is drunk and passed out.

At a bar in a hotel, the narrator meets a man from New York, who tells him he has left his wife and intended to fly to the Middle East but instead drove out west. He tells the narrator he wants to go fishing and insists on it even when he is told there are no fish in the river. The man talks to the barmaid, thinking he knows her. She tells the narrator that she used to be a dancer, and the man paid her to dance for him. He recognizes her and rushes out of the bar.

The narrator wakes up the next morning with a... » Complete Winter in the Blood Summary