John joseph mathews critical essays

The Mathews children were one-eighth Osage by ancestry, as well as Anglo-Scots-Irish and French; they all attended local schools in Pawhuska. John had three sisters and one brother. His brother was killed as a child by a mountain lion that attacked him near their family home.

The semi-autobiographical work is about Challenge "Chal" Windzer, a young Osage man of mixed-blood ancestry. After leaving home to study at the University of Oklahoma and serve in the military, Chal feels estranged when he returns to his tribal community.

John Joseph Mathews (November 16, 1894 – June 16, 1979) (Osage) became one of the Osage Nation 's most important spokespeople and writers, and served on the Osage Tribal Council during the 1930s. He studied at the University of Oklahoma, Oxford University, and the University of Geneva after serving as a flight instructor during World War I .

His work Talking to the Moon (1945) is a retrospective account of the ten years he spent in the "blackjacks" of his homeland, observing nature and reflecting on the influence of the environment on Osage culture. He wrote much of this in the stone cabin that he built in the Osage Hills in 1929.