The Fus Fixico Letters: A Creek Humorist in Early Oklahoma Book

At the time that Carol A. Petty Hunter first compiled the Fus Fixico papers, Alexander Posey was only viewed as a historical figure, because he served as secretary of the Sequoyah Convention in 1905. She observes that scholars have overlooked his literary contribution as a poet, satirist, and a newspaper editor. This book, made possible by a post-doctoral fellowship from the American Indian Studies Center from the American Studies Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, was unable to be completed until after her death. Before her anticipated passing, Daniel F. Littlefield Jr. agreed to finish her work, out of which he published two books. Littlefield and Hunter introduce the Fus Fixico Letters with a 48-page introduction which is followed by the 218 pages of letters themselves, the Key to Names in the Fus Fixico Letters, notes, sources, a bibliography, and an index.

Alexander Posey was a Muscogee Creek author from Eufaula, Oklahoma, and Carol A. Petty Hunter was an Osage Assistant Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma from Gray Horse, Oklahoma. Hunter admits that she feels connected to Posey because they share indigenous roots, ties to the state of Oklahoma, and a devotion to the English language.

Posey wrote the Fus Fixico papers in the Indian Journal between 1902-1908, the time that he served as its editor. The authors give a historical background of Oklahoma, Creek Nation, and the author to give context to his writings, which is necessary to understand the rhetorical use of humor in his papers. For all indigenous people in Oklahoma, the first decade of the twentieth century proved a trying period. "The General Allotment Act of 1887 provided for the breakup of the common titles and for the allotment of land in severalty to tribal members" (3). These allotments allowed the government to seize the largest portions of land from Native people which caused economic and emotional hardship among Posey's readers. Humor is an often-used indigenous coping mechanism, and Posey employed it in the form of a serial.

Though the radio was invented in 1895, the first regular transmission did not occur until the 1920s, so print was the preferred vehicle for the distribution of humor at the time that the Fus Fixico Papers came out. Like the book Sex in the City that started out as a serial in the New Yorker, Posey slowly authored his characters over a period of time and garnered a wide readership. Perhaps Posey's greatest contribution by writing Fus Fixico is that he was able to circulate a humorous story that was written in Native American dialects that was read by both Native, and non-Native Americans. In some ways, he was like the 1491s, a current Native American comedy troupe, or Sherman Alexie, who also wrote and produced films using a reservation dialect. Posey writes, "The Kwestion struk me all ov a suddin (and almost knoct me crank sided with its force.) What cud I ever du without Miranda? And wer she cut off bi ole remorsles time, who wood pivid for the Unakah household?" (24) The author was fluent in white American English and Reservation English, but he also wrote in the kind of stereotypical injun English that was employed in the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Shows and later by John Ford. In the book he intermittently employed the three in order to achieve different rhetorical effects.
Within the letters themselves, the author hides many little gems that often reflect Posey's resentment towards allotment, the establishment, and the treatment of Native Americans. They often come across as anticolonial. One of the tools that he uses to offset the racism is his usage of the stereotypical Injin accent. He writes,

"Well, so Big Man at Washington was made another rule for him like that one about making the Injin cut his hair off short like a prize fighter or saloon keeper. Big Man he was say this time the Injin was had to change his name just like if the marshal was had to a writ. So, if the Injin's name is Wolf Warrior, he was had to call himself John Smith, or maybe so Bill Jones, so nobody else could get his mail out of the postoffice (87).

This excerpt exemplifies the biting sarcasm of Fus Fixico. In context, Alexander Posey did not speak in this vernacular, nor did his readership. His usage of the word "injin," which is now a racial slur, and has for good reason gone out of use, allows him to purposefully misappropriate racist language to belittle it. By overemphasizing the characterization of Fus Fixico he points out the ridiculousness of the stereotype in general. Charlie Hill and other indigenous comedians have famously employed the same tactic by switching from their "normal" to their "injin" voices to achieve the same rhetorical effect.

There are certainly limitations to writing a compilation of sources, and the reader's weakness is that by reproducing the Fus Fixico letters it does not fully support fundamental research questions, such as what were the Fixico Letters? and why were they important? The first forty-eight pages give a broad overview of the papers themselves, but the author does not give any particular thesis, perhaps by design. The strength of The Fus Fixico Letters is that the editors do give ample biographical data on Alexander Posey himself, they do give a one-to-three paragraph contextual introduction to each letter, and they reproduce the letters in full. Ultimately, this compilation serves as a source guide for scholars who are interested in the history of Native American humor, which is an increasing topic for academic study.