Title: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Author: Stephen Graham Jones

Genre: Historical Fiction, Horror, Gothic Western

Rating: 4.5/5

Stephen Graham Jones’ “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter” tells the almost-forgotten story of the Marias Massacre of 1870 through the eyes of a Pikuni, whose eventual encounter with a Nachzehrer enabled him to embark on an interminable quest for revenge driven by systematic vengeance. 

It was the year 2012. A dayworker reaches into the wall of a parsonage his crew was revamping and extracts a hidden, hundred-year-old journal of a Lutheran pastor by the name of Arthur Beaucarne. The pages, scrawled in ink and dated 1912, recount the pastor’s weekly confessionals with a Pikuni named Good Stab. What started out as a typical and lengthy account of his life transformed into a prodding of a haunted past, one that had taken decades to muffle and bury beneath layers of guilt and regret. It tells the tale about how the absolution of one’s sins can come at a price—one that has long been overdue and can never be paid in full. 

A sin that sharpens a knife

To err is to be human, but at what point does a mistake stop being a careless human error and become an unforgivable act that defies the rules of concord? 

Molded in a small chapel with nothing but a wardrobe of black billowy robes and the sole protection of the Most High, Arthur Beaucarne hoped that taking his place at a pulpit and carrying out the duties of being God’s shepherd to the residents of Miles City, Montana, would be sufficient enough to reclaim his honor. He drowns himself in self-proclaimed reverence, admonishing those around him while hiding a grave sin of his own—one that became a catalyst for history’s biggest examples of human folly.

Once a respected member of the Small Robes Band, Good Stab—after being driven by a wave of pride and selfish desire—encounters an ancient creature in the guise of a man. An innocent temptation for mortal riches resulted in a binding, deathless death—immortality. Forever trapped in this unwanted and endless cycle of rebirth, Good Stab traverses the length and scale of Montana and The Rocky Mountains, watching the world progress around him with a lonely and heavy-laden heart. 

After discovering the colonial intent behind the unjustified massacre of his people, Good Stab took it upon himself to become the harbinger of justice. He goes on a decades-long spree of eradicating the colonizers who dared to step on native soil. When he uncovers Arthur's connection to the tragedy that occurred on the morning of Jan. 23, 1870, he comes to him in the guise of an Indian in need of a confession, when in truth, he had come seeking nothing but revenge. He came with the violent intent to haunt him until buried histories were resurfaced and confronted once and for all. 

The story of Good Stab and Arthur Beaucarne ponders the question of whether some sins can actually be absolved. Are honesty and forgiveness ever truly enough when the dead are already buried, and the land you once called yours had already left you to be forgotten in the leaves of history? Is absolution a form of resolution? Does a life lived in penance restore your measure of goodness? 

Remember, lest we forget

“In ten years, maybe even but five, details and peculiarities such as this will have evaporated into the mists of history, and become irretrievable in this forward march of progress.”

Jones penned a striking story set in a time that fought to be remembered for what it had been, rather than what it was presented as. By looking at the Marias Massacre through a fictional horror lens, we are forced to confront its atrocities and to walk through the same gouges and cutbanks that once witnessed the violation of all that is good and proper. 

Good Stab’s character symbolizes the grievances of those who are no longer with us. Their lives helped shape the world we find ourselves living in today. Corporeality may be temporary, but they still linger. 

The novel ends with an image of Good Stab astride a horse in 2013. He no longer bears moccasins and the parfleches that once made a Blackfoot member recognizable, but rather, appears in construction-worker attire to blend in with the new generation. Cursed to live a life without a certain conclusion, he will forever remain and return to his homeland again and again, until the day comes when he becomes the last Pikuni alive. This becomes an allegory for the fact that history is not only a reminder, but also a testimony. Good Stab’s continued existence becomes a living record of what happened to the Pikuni. The massacre may be over, but its consequences, memories, guilt, and trauma continue even to this day. 

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is an exceptional novel that tells history’s inability to stay in the past. As a people, it is one of our foremost duties to remember, lest we forget.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is available for purchase online through Amazon.