The Toughest Indian in the World

The Toughest Indian in the World (2000), a short story collection by Sherman Alexie, portrays Native Americans, not as mythic figures or other stereotypes, but as regular people trying to care for their family, pay their bills, and get by in life. A Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, Alexie is an award-winning author who grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. He's best known for his works The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

In The Toughest Indian in the World, Alexie uses the term Indian rather than Native American, and so this summary will do the same. The book contains nine short stories.

In "Assimilation," Mary Lynn is a Coeur d'Alene Indian married to a white man; she is bored with their sex life. One night, she takes a random Indian man to a hotel. Later, she meets her husband, Jeremiah, at a restaurant. As they wait for a table, they say little. The narration explores the nature of their relationship. It's revealed that Mary Lynn knows Jeremiah is still in love with an old girlfriend. On the way home, they encounter a suicide: a white woman has jumped off a bridge. Jeremiah vows to never leave his wife.

In "The Toughest Indian in the World," the Indian narrator picks up an Indian hitchhiker. The man explains that he makes his living as a fighter. He tells the story of his last fight against a young Flathead nicknamed "The Toughest Indian in the World." Realizing that the Flathead intends to die rather than lose, the old fighter forfeits. Seeking a deeper connection to his heritage, the narrator invites the fighter to share his hotel room and allows the man to have sex with him. In the morning, the narrator leaves his car behind and begins walking in bare feet "toward the place where I was born and will someday die."

In "Class," a Spokane Indian named Edgar Eagle Runner marries Susan, a white woman. Three years later, they have a son who dies just after birth. Susan is lost in her grief; realizing that she no longer loves him, Edgar escapes to an Indian bar. Quickly, he earns the wrath of Junior, a street fighter who hates "urban Indians" like him. Edgar fights Junior and is quickly knocked out. When he awakes, the bartender berates him for trying to hide from his nice life in a world where Indians like she and Junior barely have enough to eat. Edgar returns home.

In "South by Southwest," Seymour, a broken-hearted white man, steals a pistol and holds up a restaurant. He demands just one dollar from each patron before announcing that he intends to go to Arizona on a "nonviolent killing spree" but needs someone to go along who will fall in love with him. A fat Indian man volunteers, and Seymour names him Salmon Boy. The pair race away in Seymour's car, telling each other secrets and discussing whether they should kiss. Days pass, and they continue running south as if in a dream, wondering if they are falling in love.

In "The Sin Eaters," the narrator, Jonah, recounts being a twelve-year-old boy on the Spokane Indian Reservation. One morning, soldiers arrive at the reservation. They take Jonah and twenty other kids away to a military base where they join hundreds of other Indians, sorted according to the darkness of their skin. John, a small Indian man in Jonah's cell, says they are to be Sin Eaters for dead white people. The next day, soldiers lock Jonah in a white room. They send in a naked Indian woman and command them to have sex. She refuses, saying Jonah is only a boy. They are punished with electric prods until they comply. He reveals that his entire life has been nothing but white rooms and naked Indian women.

In "Indian Country," Low Man, a Coeur d'Alene Indian, flies to Montana for a romantic visit with a woman named Carlotta. However, when he arrives, finds Carlotta has just been married. Stranded and alone, he calls Tracy, a friend from college. He has long been in love with Tracy, but she's a lesbian and now engaged to an Indian woman named Sara. He has dinner with the couple and Sara's religious parents, who are there to force their daughter to come home. Low Man tells Sara's father, "These women don't need us. They never did."

In "Saint Junior," Roman Gabriel Fury is the best basketball player on the Spokane Indian Reservation and the last of his family. He and his wife, Grace, both scored nearly perfectly on the Colonial Aptitude Test and attended St. Jerome the Second University, nicknamed "Saint Junior." He'd had NBA dreams, but they never panned out, and now he is forty years old and forty pounds overweight. But he loves his wife and is happy with his life on the reservation.

"Dear John Wayne" is formatted as an interview in which author Spencer Cox is asking questions of 118- year-old Etta Joseph, "the Last of the Spokane Indians" (which she calls herself because it sounds romantic). Spencer is writing a book on Native American culture, but Etta believes he has actually come to discuss John Wayne. Etta explains that she lost her virginity to John while she was playing an extra in the movie The Searchers and tells the story of their relationship.

In "One Good Man," the narrator prepares his home on the Spokane Indian Reservation for the return of his father. His father has only six months to live, so the narrator searches the home for things that might kill him faster: namely the donuts and candy his father has hidden around the house. As he cares for his father, he reflects on his life and their relationship, asking what it means to be an Indian.