Literary Horror Writer Stephen Graham Jones Sinks His Teeth Into U.S. History

SGJ: I guess just doing more and more art, doing more and more writing. Because I know I've just got one vote to cast. I know we're bombing Iran now, and there's such wackiness happening everywhere. "Wackiness" is probably not really the right word: such terrible things happening. And I know that horror thrives in times of duress like this, but as much as I love horror, I'd rather not have the duress.

SGJ: One way it functions in society is it serves as a sort of funhouse mirror for our current set of anxieties, fears, concerns, all that. So the past 10 years, horror has really been invited into the big tent. And I think it's because we feel like we've been in strife since about 2016.

SGJ: Came to understand it. And I've been publishing horror since about '06, maybe '05. I've been a horror fan for my whole life. So it's neat that it is getting more attention now. But I never really expected it. 

SGJ: What happened then was the Bear Creek Massacre, the Marias Massacre, the Baker Massacre: It goes by a lot of different names. But in short: The American Cavalry came for the Blackfeet. They were looking for this one guy, Owl Child, who they wanted for having killed this rancher, Malcolm Clark, called Four Bears by the Blackfeet. [Owl Child had joined Mountain Chief's band of Blackfeet, but the Cavalry instead] found Heavy Runner's band, not Mountain Chief's band. And they said, "One Blackfeet's as good as another." 

So the soldiers just laid up on the ridge and poured lead down into [the wrong] camp. And turns out that camp was, number one, beset with smallpox at the time. And number two, all the men who were capable were out hunting. And so who they shot up were the elders and the children and the women. And we don't really have a real count of how many people there were, but it was well over 200 for sure. And a lot of people are just hearing about this for the first time in The Buffalo Hunter Hunter.

SGJ: It's always been part of what I've known happened. I think when you grow up Blackfeet, you're taught certain things. I was taught early on to not say we're a tribe. I was always taught to say we're a nation, because nations deal with nations in a sovereign fashion instead of getting subjugated. 

What I wanted to do was document some of what I consider to be the most tumultuous times for the Blackfeet, and that would be between 1870, that massacre, and 1884, our starvation winter, when 600-plus of us died because rations didn't come in. And so those to me seemed like two good boundaries for this vampire to live through and live beyond. I mean, between 1870 and 1884 is when the buffalo disappeared from the north Plains, and we had to retreat to reservations and the life pattern just completely altered.

SGJ: My original title was Where the Old Ones Go. Then, we sold the novel as Elkhead Woman. My suggestion was Duck Lake Massacre, and my editor said, "Duck Lake Massacre isn't bad, but if you put 'massacre' in the title, this novel stays on the horror shelf." So, I had the bright idea to move the title of the middle section to the outside for the title.

But I had to come up with a title for that middle section, and that's the section in which a lot of people die. I thought it might be kind of fun and jokey to call it The Only Good Indians. And [the editor] said, "I think that's the title of this book." And I was like, "Whoa, whoa, that's a dangerous thing to put back in the world: 'The only good Indian is a dead Indian.'" 

I was really concerned that I might be in a room of 200 people at a book event, and 199 of them might get what I was doing, but there might be one person there who was kind of rubbing their hands together and saying, "Yes, I can say this again."

SGJ: It's been probably 95 percent good, but I am very concerned about that 5 percent. I've had other Indigenous people be a little bit unhappy with me putting "Indian" in the title, because that's not really the term we traffic in so much anymore. 

Probably the worst interaction I've had is: I was on tour recently, in New Mexico, and they had set up a little table and a stack of my books. I was sitting there signing, signing, signing, and this gentleman walks by, and he takes note of the stack of The Only Good Indians, and he kind of nods to himself and keeps walking. He comes back 30 seconds later, and he says, "That title got me thinking. It reminded me of this joke." And he proceeded to tell me the most insulting, racially charged joke. I don't even remember it anymore — I repressed it immediately — but that title gave him permission to say that. And that is what I was afraid of.

SGJ: I think very first I have to satisfy the horror audience, so I can't flinch. I have to just go all in with both feet, which really I think is the job of the horror writer. And my default setting is always the Indigenous audience. I don't have to do things like decode this or put a footnote to that. I didn't want the book to have to conform to a non-Indigenous audience. I wanted the audience to have to conform to the book, which is why Buffalo Hunter Hunter has no glossary, has no timeline.

SGJ: That's always been a big issue with Indigenous fiction, maybe Indigenous writing: Do I tell the clan stories, or do I keep the clan stories back? 

SGJ: Just like the secret stories, the inner-circle stories that you only know if you're part of the Nation. I'm not sure about what danger other people feel, [but] the danger I feel when I do it is: "Are you trading in your culture? Are you selling your culture to sell books?" That's always the fear for me, and I don't ever want to do that. I don't ever want people to come into my work for the exotic flavor, but at the same time, I do like to dance close to the edge.

SGJ: I've seen it a few times.

SGJ: What I saw was people — where is this? It might be New Zealand, when non-Native people first started showing up, the people there had stories about these giant, mean eagles, and everybody was like, "Oh, that's just storytelling. They're making things big and scary." Then, 50 years later, people started digging up bones of those big eagles, and they realized that these big eagles evolved to hunt the moas, which were these giant, ostrich-like birds. [Editor's Note: Indeed, the extinct adult Haast's eagles of New Zealand weighed roughly 30 pounds and preyed on moas.] And it's the same thing in Sinners to me: If people will just listen to Indigenous stories, they could not suffer the consequences that those stories are supposed to warn you away from. 

SGJ: It is for sure. And as far as the United States goes — and it could be this way for every modern country, I'm not sure — history is a horror story, depending on which side you look at it from. And from the Indigenous side, yes, American history is a terrible, terrible horror story.

SGJ: The current, I don't know, regime, I guess I would call it, wants to pretend the path here didn't leave bloody footprints, it was all roses and happiness, but it wasn't. It's been a terrible process to get to 2026, and there's a lot of stuff that needs to be righted.