Trailblazing Women You May Not Know (But Should): Mourning Dove
Each week, the Lean In tumblr will spotlight women who made a lasting mark on the world — yet didn’t always end up in the history books. This week we celebrate Mourning Dove, the Founding Mother of Native American literature and one of the first Native women to publish a novel.
According to her own retelling, Christal Quintasket was born in a canoe crossing the Koontenai River in Idaho. It was a fitting start for a woman who would travel the country throughout her life to collect Native stories.
Quintasket grew up on the Kettle Falls reservation in the 1890s, learning her tribe’s history from her maternal grandmother. When she grew older she worked as a housekeeper and fruit picker to support herself and eventually, to save up for a typewriter. In 1927 she released her first book, Cogewea, The Half-Blood, about ahalf-blood girl caught between the worlds of Anglo ranchers and full-blood reservation Indians, under the name Mourning Dove. It was one of the first known novels ever published by a Native American woman.
