Devon A. Mihesuah is bringing us a new kind of horror story in The Bone Picker: Native Stories, Alternate Histories. This collection of Indigenous short stories is based on real-life horrors — with a twist. But we’re getting slightly ahead of ourselves here. Let’s take it from the beginning.
Mihesuah, an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, tells us “Choctaws really did utilize Pickers. Those special people were called in to pick the flesh from the bones of the deceased after they had laid on a scaffold for several months.” As for the process of bone picking, Mihesuah explains: “The bones were then put into a box and put in a bone house. After the house became full, it was covered, and a mound created. Bone Pickers are described as having long nails, wild, stiff hair, and clothes of dried blood. They fell out of favor before the removals in the 1830s because of the missionary influence, but it could be that traditionalists continued to use them after they arrived in Indian Territory. There has always been a mystique about them.”
This is a wonderful introduction to what awaits readers between the covers of Mihesuah’s collection, a work of alternative fiction. The Bone Picker is just one of the entities within. As a Native writing Native horror, the author digs into her personal history and her expertise as a lauded historian to bring these stories to life.
“Alternate Histories means modifying a real-life event into the story you prefer. American Horror Story did it with Elizabeth Short (aka The Black Dahlia) in the Murder House and Apocalypse seasons, and Michael Connelly devoted a good portion of his recent book, The Waiting, to Short. Tarantino changed Sharon Tate’s bleak story into a hopeful one in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I’m a historian who researches, writes, and teaches about Native/white relations, which means most of the endings are horrible for tribes.”
While the real-life endings tend to veer into terrible territory, Mihesuah finds catharsis in the control she has on the page.
“I write and teach about topics that are of personal concern to me. Honest Native writers live with social, political, economic, religious and health issues 24/7. I don’t leave my work at the office. I write horror because I can acknowledge the realities of our lives, but for stress relief, I write endings that I can control.”
Beyond a sort of wish fulfillment, the stories allow a space for justice to be served on the page in ways evaded in reality.
“In the chapter ‘Justice,’ I used a Choctaw entity to alter the fate of the men who shot and bludgeoned my great-great-grandfather to death in 1884. He was a Choctaw Lighthorseman and the sheriff of Sugar Loaf County in the Moshulatubbee District of the Choctaw Nation. The killers were exonerated by the Choctaw judge and jury, who were the perps’ business partners and political rivals of my ancestor. The exception was the lone Black man in the gang who was hanged at Fort Smith. In my version of that history, I made sure that the other killers felt distressed.”
Aside from dishing out justice as it should have been, Mihesuah also uses the work as an antithesis of the prevailing depiction of Natives in fiction.
“Non-Native readers usually want ‘trauma porn’ when they read about us and those books are often the ones that sell. I am not down with that type of writing to make money. I can write about awful, real scenarios and have won awards for doing so, but I temper my fiction with hopefulness and strong female characters who refuse to be victims. They might become hurt or die, but they do not behave stupidly. The premise of time-traveling Choctaw assassins who kill to make a more promising future for tribes in my novel Dance of the Returned is something I want to explore again.”
In The Bone Picker, Mihesuah also altered histories in the “Ned Christie” and “Insane Indian” chapters. “The first concerns Christie–one of the imagined outlaws of the “Wild West”- as a shapeshifter, and the other is about his young relative Arch Wolfe who died at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians—which is about as horrible a fate as you can imagine. Both men suffered greatly at the hands of the white settlers and newspapermen who created images of them as outlaw reprobates.” says Mihesuah.
“I wanted Arch to have a tolerable send-off and in the Christie chapter, I wanted to acknowledge how the truth came out about him. One of Ned’s medicine men relatives performed a ceremony after his death to keep outsiders from knowing anything about the family for 100 years. After that time was up, important information about Ned emerged.”
This is not the first time Mihesuah has broached the topic of Ned. “I had permission from Ned’s family to write my book Ned Christie which came out in 2018. I know that topic and area where he lived very well because Ned’s story overlaps with what happened to my ancestor just south of Cherokee Land. And I wrote the book about the Cherokee Female Seminary.”
Asking an author to pick a favorite, especially when the material is so closely tied to their own history, is sort of a ratty question, but Mihesuah has an easy answer for that one.
“Besides ‘Justice,’ I really like ‘Tenure.’ I have had it with Pretendians–those people who claim to be American Indian/Native American and are not. Self-identification is not appropriate. Pretendians, and the people who use them and defend them, are raking in money. They take book contracts, grants, fellowships, and jobs that are reserved for citizens of federally recognized tribes and provable descendants, and they disseminate dishonest writings. Many bona fide Natives who call them out have been threatened, slandered, and lost their positions. Pretendian and Defendian behavior is purposeful, planned, and abhorrent. In ‘Tenure‘ Chad got exactly what was coming to him.”
Authenticity and writing from a place of well-researched experience are of utmost importance to Mihesuah. Regarding her own work, Mihesuah says: “I write what I know. My books are about topics that personally affect and concern me. Racism, genocide, boarding schools, stereotypes, burial site desecration, fake news, missing and murdered Native women and boys, and so on.
“I firmly believe that Native horror should be informed by our cultural knowledge, in addition to the places, people, and natural world that we know. Just because a person with Native blood writes a horror story does not automatically make their work “Native horror.” Without genuine cultural knowledge and experiences to pull from, it’s just another story that could have been written by the guy down the street or by a writer pretending to be Native and is giving you dishonest cultural stories and situations.“
Readers may be unfamiliar with Mihesuah’s work, but this is our opportunity to change that and spread the word. For readers interested in exploring more about the stories presented here, Mihesuah has good news: “I have a horror book in the works that utilizes one of the entities in The Bone Picker. I’m excited about that one because I pull from my expertise in Indigenous foodways. It’s unlike anything I have read before.”
The good news continues: Mihesuah recently signed up with Bantam/Random House to create a new detective series. The first in that series is Blood Relay, which deals with a missing female Indian horse relay rider slated to be released next October. The second (Doaksville) is due out the following year, exploring “how Oklahoma legends can lead one astray.” In addition, Mihesuah’s paranormal detective series featuring Choctaw detective Monique Blue Hawk (Document of Expectations, Hatak Witches, Dance of the Returned) is optioned for film and streaming by Lucky Wolf Productions.
In the meantime, pick up your copy of The Bone Picker from the University of Oklahoma Press.