| This is John Joseph Mathews' Walden. It is a book that a Thoreau or a Muir might write, but it is a Walden of the plains and prairies, of the 1930s and 1940s, by a Native American. |
| The book was first published in 1945 and "lost" to most readers, who were occupied with war. It is a book that may be more meaningful to today's more knowledgeable readers than it was during the war years. Yet it needs some introduction. I am pleased that the book is being reissued and that the publisher has asked me to write this brief foreword. |
| The author was born in Pawhuska, Indian Territory, in what is now northeastern Oklahoma, in 1894, and died there last year. By any measure, John Joseph Mathews was an exceptional manOxford educated, well traveled, widely read, a pilot in World War I, student of his people, long-time member of the Osage Tribal Council, gifted writer, and brilliant conversationalist. A visit from or to his friendsGeorge Milburn, J. Frank Dobie, Paul Sears, Joseph Brandt, for examplemight lead to a conversation that would continue for hours, days, weeks. Out of one such visit developed his first book, Wah'Kon-Tah, Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1932. That same year he "returned" home to stay. |
| "I have come to the blackjacks to live, as one climbs out of the roaring stream of civilization onto an island, to rest and to watch," he explains in these pages. On his ranch among the blackjack trees in his beloved Osage country, he built a sandstone house and lived in solitude for ten years. |
| "I wasn't attempting to escape anything," he says, "when I came to |
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