The Eagle Catcher - Wind River Reservation Mystery

Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1995. Assumed First Edition . Hard Back. Fine/Fine. 6 1/4" x 9 1/4. 186 Pages. On the windswept plains of Wyoming's Wind River Reservation, Arapahos have gathered for the Ethete powwow, a time to reaffirm the balance and harmony in life. But balance and harmony quickly give way to fear and confusion when respected tribal chairman Harvey Castle is found murdered at the powwow camp, and the evidence points to the chairman's nephew. Father John O'Malley, S.J., pastor of St. Francis Mission, and Vicky Holden, Arapaho attorney, do not believe that Anthony Castle - one of the most promising young people on the reservation - is capable of murder. Together they set out to find the real criminal and clear Anthony's name. The trail that Father John and Vicky follow winds across the high plains of the Wind River Reservation into Arapaho homes and community centers and the fraud-infested world of Indian oil and land deals. Eventually it leads to the past - the Old Time - when the Arapahos were forced to leave their homes on the central plains and relocate on the reservation. It is through the horrendous crimes committed then that Father John and Vicky discover the motive for the murder of the tribal chairman a century later. But as they close in on the killer, they become the next targets. Except for the fact that Wind River Reservation in Central Wyoming sprawls across two-and-one-half million acres, an area larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined, and except for the fact that the Arapaho and Shoshone people call the Wind River Reservation home, and except for the fad that, for more than a century, Euro-Americans have continued to devise a host of ingenious methods to defraud American Indian tribes across the West, except for all of this, This book is not based on actual events or situations. Nor are the characters based on real people of any time. The people who move through this story are, in the words of Henry James, my dream people.