Believing the Native American history had no voice in American literature, author Ruth Beebe Hill set out to publish her epic historical novel which she had been researching since 1951.
By her own admission, Ruth conceded, "The day I began my book was the day I gave up car, keys, license… After three years of living at the UCLA library — my typed notes covered 1,000 square feet of living room space."
When her book, Hanta Yo was published, it became a best-seller. It was also the most controversial book of 1979. Hanta Yo told a story about the lives of a small tribe - the Lakota Sioux - over three generations, between 1750 to 1834.
"Hanta Yo" translated to mean "clear the way" but her critics claimed the word was an English—equivalent of "scram."
One Lakota Sioux student who was studying for her Ph.D. in anthropology at the time argued, "No one's objecting to what did happen — we tortured, we ate dogs. What we're objecting to is what didn't happen."
What Ruth's critics felt "didn't happen" but got chronicled in her book were references to their sexual practices such as oral sex been part of a marriage ceremony; one woman who after given birth devoured some of the afterbirth; war prisoners who were subjected to sodomy; and homosexuals (winkte in Lakota) were allowed ritual status in Sioux society.
One Sioux anthropologist proclaimed, "The Lakota, next to the Cheyenne, were one of the most sexually restrained native societies that have been documented."
Ruth was aghast by her detractors' outcries, "Don't tell me the placenta thing puts down Indians. It's a beautiful ceremony symbolic of the life force."
The Smithsonian Magazine observed, "The author, Ruth Beebe Hill, is not Indian but white. She tells a story that is true as an understanding of the ancient language and history can make it, for it is nowhere recorded.
"Ruth Hill put 30 years into the undertaking, the last 14 of them with the help of a bilingual Indian. She was so intent on making her book not only accurate but a reflection of what she calls the Indian ‘altitude of the mind’ that she translated her words into archaic Dakotah and then back into the English of the 1806 Webster’s dictionary."
Sioux author Vine Deloria Jr. wondered, "How in hell do you type up a manuscript in an ancient language that has never been written down and apparently has no symbols or alphabet?"
One commentator noted, "It seems that Ruth Beebe Hill was treading on thin ice when, as a white woman, she attempted to create an historical fiction of Dakotah Sioux Native Americans."
By her own admission, Ruth conceded, "The day I began my book was the day I gave up car, keys, license… After three years of living at the UCLA library — my typed notes covered 1,000 square feet of living room space."
When her book, Hanta Yo was published, it became a best-seller. It was also the most controversial book of 1979. Hanta Yo told a story about the lives of a small tribe - the Lakota Sioux - over three generations, between 1750 to 1834.
"Hanta Yo" translated to mean "clear the way" but her critics claimed the word was an English—equivalent of "scram."
One Lakota Sioux student who was studying for her Ph.D. in anthropology at the time argued, "No one's objecting to what did happen — we tortured, we ate dogs. What we're objecting to is what didn't happen."
What Ruth's critics felt "didn't happen" but got chronicled in her book were references to their sexual practices such as oral sex been part of a marriage ceremony; one woman who after given birth devoured some of the afterbirth; war prisoners who were subjected to sodomy; and homosexuals (winkte in Lakota) were allowed ritual status in Sioux society.
One Sioux anthropologist proclaimed, "The Lakota, next to the Cheyenne, were one of the most sexually restrained native societies that have been documented."
Ruth was aghast by her detractors' outcries, "Don't tell me the placenta thing puts down Indians. It's a beautiful ceremony symbolic of the life force."
The Smithsonian Magazine observed, "The author, Ruth Beebe Hill, is not Indian but white. She tells a story that is true as an understanding of the ancient language and history can make it, for it is nowhere recorded.
"Ruth Hill put 30 years into the undertaking, the last 14 of them with the help of a bilingual Indian. She was so intent on making her book not only accurate but a reflection of what she calls the Indian ‘altitude of the mind’ that she translated her words into archaic Dakotah and then back into the English of the 1806 Webster’s dictionary."
Sioux author Vine Deloria Jr. wondered, "How in hell do you type up a manuscript in an ancient language that has never been written down and apparently has no symbols or alphabet?"
One commentator noted, "It seems that Ruth Beebe Hill was treading on thin ice when, as a white woman, she attempted to create an historical fiction of Dakotah Sioux Native Americans."
