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The June Rise: The Apocryphal Letters of Joseph Antoine Janis
The June Rise brings to life the true story of Joseph Antoine Janis's visionary transformation from a Missouri farmboy to an advisor to Lakota chief, Red Cloud.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1994
15 people want to read
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May 31, 2019
In 1884, northern Colorado historian Ansel Watrous (love that name!) asked Colorado fur trapper Antoine Janis to tell his life story. Janis demurred, claiming his health was too poor to allow him to give a full account of the period between the 1840s and 1880 as settlers were overwhelming the Colorado wilderness. Janis had married an Oglala holy woman, First Elk Woman, and he had served as a mediator between whites and Sioux during the Plains wars. He had also envisioned creating a utopian community where whites and Native Americans could live peaceably together. Late in life, as settlers continued to swarm Colorado’s Front Range, Janis was given an ultimatum by the federal government: divorce his Native American wife to preserve his homestead at the mouth of the Cache la Poudre River or give up his homestead and relocate with his wife to the Pine Ridge Reservation; Janis chose to move to North Dakota.
Though Janis declined Watrous’s request to provide details about his life, author William Tremblay pondered, “What would Janis have written if his health had disposed him to answer?” Tremblay has written 17 fictional letters from Janis to Watrous that revisit many of the troubling themes, historical actors, and decisive events of the period 1840-80 in Colorado and Wyoming.
Asked to comment on the book, Robert Bly wrote, “ ’The June Rise’ is a daring piece…It stays in the senses; it absorbs massive amounts of savvy, songs, gossip, and disciplines of Janis’s time.” With these comments, I agree with Bly. However, Bly continues, “The book is valuable and a deep pleasure.” Here, I disagree.
First, the book’s title: the June rise is a reference to the meltoff of snow that causes the water level in the rivers draining from the mountains to rise in the spring and early summer. It’s a compelling and lyric image which Tremblay references at least three times throughout the book. In fact, much of the book is lyric and beautifully written; I suspect that Tremblay is a poet.
The book’s conceit is intriguing and original; for that, Tremblay deserves kudos. However, the execution of the concept falls short.
Janis (as conceived in the book) is far too articulate and erudite for a Missouri boy whose formal schooling ended at the elementary level. Every once in a while Tremblay inserts a misspelled word or a colloquialism to remind his readers that Janis is just a humble everyman, but Janis’s language belays that point to a fault. His character just doesn’t “ring true.”
Even more troubling, though, is Tremblay’s incorporation of Native American spirituality. Because Tremblay wants his readers to understand that Janis thoroughly straddled both the white and Oglala worlds, Tremblay incorporates significant references to Native American beliefs and mythology. For this reader unfamiliar with the Indian belief system, the account was mostly a confusing jumble of spirituality, difficult to navigate and parse. This is the book’s biggest failing, and it’s a major part of the narrative. In addition, because Janis’s father was French, there are quite a few untranslated French songs and poems reproduced in the book; for those who don’t read French fluently, these songs and poems are opaque. Is Tremblay just “showing off”?
Finally, because Tremblay did not include any sort of map in his book, I believe he has limited its appeal and audience. The book is set generally in the Rocky Mountains in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming, and in the plains just to the east. However, much of Janis’s life was focused on the Cache la Poudre River drainage in northern Colorado and around Fort Laramie in southeast Wyoming, so Tremblay makes many very specific geographic references to locations in the Cache la Poudre watershed and around Laramie. Because this reviewer lives in the area, he is familiar with these references. To readers coming to the book unfamiliar with the geographic references, though, Tremblay may as well be talking about places on the moon. One or two maps (a general map of Colorado and Wyoming, and a detailed map of northeast Colorado and southeast Wyoming highlighting places mentioned in the narrative) would have gone a long way in broadening the appeal and audience for this book.
I wish I could have liked this book more because the concept is appealing, the language often soars, and the history is compelling. But, for the three reasons detailed above, I can’t strongly recommend the book.
Though Janis declined Watrous’s request to provide details about his life, author William Tremblay pondered, “What would Janis have written if his health had disposed him to answer?” Tremblay has written 17 fictional letters from Janis to Watrous that revisit many of the troubling themes, historical actors, and decisive events of the period 1840-80 in Colorado and Wyoming.
Asked to comment on the book, Robert Bly wrote, “ ’The June Rise’ is a daring piece…It stays in the senses; it absorbs massive amounts of savvy, songs, gossip, and disciplines of Janis’s time.” With these comments, I agree with Bly. However, Bly continues, “The book is valuable and a deep pleasure.” Here, I disagree.
First, the book’s title: the June rise is a reference to the meltoff of snow that causes the water level in the rivers draining from the mountains to rise in the spring and early summer. It’s a compelling and lyric image which Tremblay references at least three times throughout the book. In fact, much of the book is lyric and beautifully written; I suspect that Tremblay is a poet.
The book’s conceit is intriguing and original; for that, Tremblay deserves kudos. However, the execution of the concept falls short.
Janis (as conceived in the book) is far too articulate and erudite for a Missouri boy whose formal schooling ended at the elementary level. Every once in a while Tremblay inserts a misspelled word or a colloquialism to remind his readers that Janis is just a humble everyman, but Janis’s language belays that point to a fault. His character just doesn’t “ring true.”
Even more troubling, though, is Tremblay’s incorporation of Native American spirituality. Because Tremblay wants his readers to understand that Janis thoroughly straddled both the white and Oglala worlds, Tremblay incorporates significant references to Native American beliefs and mythology. For this reader unfamiliar with the Indian belief system, the account was mostly a confusing jumble of spirituality, difficult to navigate and parse. This is the book’s biggest failing, and it’s a major part of the narrative. In addition, because Janis’s father was French, there are quite a few untranslated French songs and poems reproduced in the book; for those who don’t read French fluently, these songs and poems are opaque. Is Tremblay just “showing off”?
Finally, because Tremblay did not include any sort of map in his book, I believe he has limited its appeal and audience. The book is set generally in the Rocky Mountains in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming, and in the plains just to the east. However, much of Janis’s life was focused on the Cache la Poudre River drainage in northern Colorado and around Fort Laramie in southeast Wyoming, so Tremblay makes many very specific geographic references to locations in the Cache la Poudre watershed and around Laramie. Because this reviewer lives in the area, he is familiar with these references. To readers coming to the book unfamiliar with the geographic references, though, Tremblay may as well be talking about places on the moon. One or two maps (a general map of Colorado and Wyoming, and a detailed map of northeast Colorado and southeast Wyoming highlighting places mentioned in the narrative) would have gone a long way in broadening the appeal and audience for this book.
I wish I could have liked this book more because the concept is appealing, the language often soars, and the history is compelling. But, for the three reasons detailed above, I can’t strongly recommend the book.
August 24, 2024
I've been trying to get to the end of this since July. Enough is evidently enough--I'm just calling it finished, after about 100 pages.
This is a story that involves the history of the nearest town to where I live, a small historically significant crossroads village on the pre-railroad way West during the great 19th century migration.
The gimmick the author uses to tell the story only gets more muddled the longer he writes. Is this pure fiction, or are there elements of documented, commonly agreed-upon historical events and people being featured? I simply can't tell, and to whatever degree it's fiction, is this what today is considered cultural appropriation? The author, a professor of creative writing, is clearly not a native American.
The anecdotes portrayed evidently are not captivating enough to hold my attention. And it is admittedly difficult to hold onto to full meanings when the pidgin English and idioms are factored in.
So the book will go on my library shelves under local history, but I doubt it will be opened much in the future.
This is a story that involves the history of the nearest town to where I live, a small historically significant crossroads village on the pre-railroad way West during the great 19th century migration.
The gimmick the author uses to tell the story only gets more muddled the longer he writes. Is this pure fiction, or are there elements of documented, commonly agreed-upon historical events and people being featured? I simply can't tell, and to whatever degree it's fiction, is this what today is considered cultural appropriation? The author, a professor of creative writing, is clearly not a native American.
The anecdotes portrayed evidently are not captivating enough to hold my attention. And it is admittedly difficult to hold onto to full meanings when the pidgin English and idioms are factored in.
So the book will go on my library shelves under local history, but I doubt it will be opened much in the future.
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