Margaret Coel
Arapahos, the Spirituality of a Plains Indian Tribe

July 11 - 17, 2010 

I grew up with all the stereotypical images of American Indians, but gained an inkling of understanding into American Indian spirituality even before I knew what “spirituality” meant. As often happens, my awakening came through a friend and inadvertently. During the summers while I was in high school, I worked as a counselor at a Boy Scout camp in the Ozark Mountains. One of my friends was part Chickasaw and part Cherokee, a university student, and an award-winning dancer at pow-wows. We would end each week with a bonfire, an awards ceremony, and Steve would dance. He had lost his drummer and asked me to fill in. He taught me patiently.

Even though I could not articulate it then – or now – when I drummed and he danced – whether the hoop dance or corn dance – I intuited that Steve and I had gone to a different space, a space in tune with the mountains, the Spring River – an ancient place, a holy place. Because of that experience long ago, over the years I have tried to learn more about American Indian spirituality both through non-fiction books like those of Tink Tinker who lead a retreat at the Ranch in 2008 and in fiction like the books of N. Scott Momaday, Linda Hogan, Tony Hillerman, Louise Erdrich, and Margaret Coel.

So I am delighted that Margaret is returning to the Ranch to share her insights into the spirituality of our neighbors, the Arapahos. We have much to learn. – Carl Koch

For a brief overview of Margaret’s work and to get an idea about why this will be an informative and fascinating session, here are some excerpts from Mary Jo Dangel’s article “Margaret Coel: Best-Selling Author of Arapaho Mysteries” for St. Anthony Messenger.

Margaret Coel has joined the list of popular Catholic mystery writers who blend morals with murders. Like G. K. Chesterton, William Kienzle and Ralph McInerny, Coel's whodunits feature a priest who saves souls and solves murders. Her clergyman's assignment is a mission on the Wind River Arapaho Reservation in central Wyoming.

"Her lively style and Western settings, awash in Native Americana, evoke Tony Hillerman's work," says Booklist, Hillerman, who was featured in St. Anthony Messenger in June 1991, doesn't seem to mind the competition: His praise graces Coel's book jackets. Regarding Coel's nationally best-selling first novel, The Eagle Catcher, published in 1995, Hillerman writes that it "shouldn't be missed by anyone interested in either new trends in mystery writing or contemporary American Indian culture. She's a master at both."

Coel, a former journalist, has also written nonfiction books, including the award-winning Chief Left Hand, Southern Arapaho, which recently was called "a classic" by The Denver Post.

Her fictional sleuths are John O'Malley, S.J., a recovering alcoholic from Boston who's sent to the Wind River Reservation, and Vicky Holden, an Arapaho attorney whose ex-husband was an alcoholic. . . .

Father John and Margaret Coel share some of the same traits: They're both outsiders who are Irish-American and opera lovers, and they have had lots of Jesuit influence in their lives. "I wanted someone who came to the culture not knowing anything about it," explains Coel. "As my sleuth learns about the culture and appreciates it, then readers will, too." Not only is Father John an outsider, he's an Easterner, transplanted to the fictional St. Francis Mission.

In many ways, Father John is a typical parish priest: He struggles over how to pay the bills and keep his vows, plans to start new programs and religion classes, administers sacraments. But there are some differences, too. In The Dream Stalker, when Father John rushes out of the rectory late at night to minister to a man who says he's dying, the priest finds the man already dead, from unnatural causes. Later, after he celebrates the victim's funeral Mass, tribal elders perform a Native American ritual. At the grave site, Father John prays, "May you go on your way to the ancestors, Gabriel Many Horses. May your spirit live in the Spirit of the kind and loving Lord Jesus who understands the human heart and accepts us as we are."

Regarding her female sleuth, Coel explains that she created Vicky Holden because she didn't want a "white man coming in and fixing everything for the Indians. I thought, I've got to have a strong Arapaho character."

She was somewhat familiar with the Arapahos, who once roamed in search of buffalo over the area where she lived. She learns more about their world by heading northwest a few hundred miles each year to visit the Wind River Reservation. One especially moving experience was witnessing a Sun Dance powwow, she says, explaining that visitors are welcome but are asked to be respectful. Her fictional characters have become so real to her that she almost expects to meet them when she's at the reservation.

She always has her manuscripts read before publication by an Arapaho friend to ensure "that I haven't said anything that would be offensive to them or that's just wrong." And she has Jesuit friends who are great resources, including Father Anthony Short, who spent many years at St. Stephen's Indian Mission on the Wind River Reservation and now is in Denver. "Sometimes I'll call him and say, 'Would a priest do that?'" She's pleased that the answer is usually in the affirmative.

She sums up her motivation for writing Western: "As a Westerner, I've always had a strong sense of place. You could say the West itself, with its colorful past and unique cast of characters, inspired me to tell some of its stories."

The entire article, other reviews, interviews with Margaret, more information about all of her books and lots more may be found on her great website: www.margaretcoel.com.

Some of Margaret’s books --

Chief Left Hand: Southern Arapaho by Margaret Coel

"Left Hand has been eclipsed in history by the great warrior chiefs of the Plains tribes. He was a man of peace, noted for his fluency in English, who realized from early contacts that the whites had come to stay. He was respected by frontier settlers of good will, avoided or ignored by villains intent on extermination of the Indian. Margaret Coel, using primary sources, tells the story of Left Hand and his tribe through the turbulent years of the Colorado Gold Strike to the tragedy at San Creek.

She unravels the mystery of Left Hand at the massacre (mortally wounded, he escaped the field and died a few days later) and a later appearance of a man with the same name (a different, younger man). Coel also traces the careers of the notorious Col. Chivington and Gov. Evans; she documents the events that led to Sand Creek and reports on the subsequent investigation. It’s a chilling, gripping story." - Publisher’s Weekly.

"This is a beautiful book. It tells its story in a readable way, based on thorough scholarship and intimate acquaintance with the scenes described. . . ." - The Journal of American History.

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