Sam Blowsnake (a.k.a., Crashing Thunder, Big Winnebego; born 1875) was a
Winnebago Indian best known as the attributed author of the autobiography ''Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of an American Indian.''
Life
Blowsnake was born in 1875 to a father of the Thunder clan and a mother, named Bends the Boughs, of the Eagle Clan; his parents were later known in English as Charles Blowsnake and Lucy Goodvillage. Sam Blowsnake was their fifth child.
Early in life, he was initiated into
ceremonial dance practice. He performed in
Wild West shows
Wild West shows were traveling vaudeville performances in the United States and Europe that existed around 1870–1920. The shows began as theatrical stage productions and evolved into open-air shows that depicted romanticized stereotypes of co ...
, and was imprisoned for some time for his role in the murder of a
Potawatomi
The Potawatomi (), also spelled Pottawatomi and Pottawatomie (among many variations), are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains, upper Mississippi River, and western Great Lakes region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, ...
man. After a long period of spiritual dissatisfaction, Blowsnake converted into the
Peyote Religion (or Native American Church); following his conversion, he was baptised, married, and had a child.
The date of Blowsnake's death is unknown, but he was still alive in 1958, when his sister's autobiography was published.
Autobiography
The earliest form of the narrative which would become ''Crashing Thunder'' was published in 1913, as part of
Paul Radin
Paul Radin (April 2, 1883 – February 21, 1959) was an American cultural anthropologist and folklorist of the early twentieth century specializing in Native American languages and cultures. The noted legal scholar Max Radin was his older brothe ...
's comprehensive study of Winnebago native society, ''The Winnebego Tribe.'' Blowsnake is referenced in this work only as S.B., and his brother, Jim Blowsnake, is also given the name Crashing Thunder. In 1920, Radin published "The Autobiography of an American Indian" as an article in the ''University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology'', which was a substantially different text covering the same events, once again identifying its subject only as S.B. In 1922, Radin wrote a chapter for
Elsie Clews Parson's book ''American Indian Life'', entitled "Thunder-Cloud, a Winnebego Shaman, Relates and Prays" - although the book was advertised as a collection of fictional narratives written by anthropologists, Radin's contribution was mostly a composite of two chapters from ''The Winnebego Tribe'', one of them that concerning Sam Blowsnake.
Finally, in 1926, Radin published ''Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of an American Indian''. In this work, as in all his previous works concerning Blowsnake with the exception of the chapter in ''American Indian Life'', Radin insisted that he had not influenced Blowsnake's telling in any way. However, Radin notes in the preface to ''Crashing Thunder'' that Blowsnake was reluctant to tell his autobiography at all, and that it was only at Radin's insistence that he did so. Furthermore, in his reworking of the 92-page "The Autobiography of an American Indian" into the 203-page ''Crashing Thunder'', Radin silently rephrased, re-arrangeed, and in some cases, added to the narrative attributed to Blowsnake in the earlier work. There has therefore been extensive debate as to whether ''Crashing Thunder'' should be read primarily as an autobiography written by Blowsnake which Radin merely edited, or as an original creation of Radin's merely inspired by Blowsnake's life.
In any case, there is consensus that Radin's claims to scientific objectivity in the work are contradicted by his methods.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blowsnake, Sam
Ho-Chunk people
1875 births
Year of death missing
19th-century Native American people
20th-century Native American writers
Native American people from Nebraska