Mourning Dove, the author of Cogewea, was an Okanogan of eastern Washington. She lived as a migrant farmworker and, after ten-hour days in the hop fields and apple orchards, faithfully returned to the battered typewriter in her tent. Lucullus Virgil McWhorter, a respected and sympathetic student of Indian lore and history, encouraged her in her ambition to be a writer; finally she made her book a record of the folklore of the Okanogan tribe, a plea for the welfare of the half-blood, and above all the testimony to her own singleminded dedication.
