Good Indian

Good Indian is a novel by B. M. Bower (1871–1940), an American writer of Western fiction, published in 1912. The first edition was issued in Boston by Little, Brown & Co. The book is now in the public domain and can be read free of charge on platforms such as Project Gutenberg (ebook no. 938). The story is set in the Snake River country of Idaho from the 1870s onward. Old prospector "Peaceful" Hart, his joints crippled by rheumatism, has given up his mining tools and taken up ranching on the banks of the Snake, where he works the land with his wife, Phoebe, and their five combative sons, gradually forming a relationship with the neighboring Native American tribe that is by turns distant and mutually dependent. The protagonist, Grant Imsen, is a young man born to a white father and a mixed-race mother. Accepted fully by neither side, he is called "Good Indian" by the Harts and the local people—a name that comes from a cruel saying of the Old West. Raised on the Hart ranch, he regards himself as one of the family, yet remains haunted by the loneliness and bitterness of his identity. Centering on the Hart ranch, the novel involves a band of claim jumpers trying to seize the land through mineral rights, a cunning lawyer, several sharply drawn women, and visits and conflicts with the Native American tribe, developing into a Western tale of love, suspicion, gunfire, and a trial. With her characteristic attention to ranch-life detail, dialect dialogue, and landscape description, Bower has written a work that, beyond adventure and romance, probes questions of prejudice and belonging.