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Sundown (Novel)
Sundown  was first published in 1934 shortly after the period of the Osage murders. The novel, written by John Joseph Mathews, retells the Osage Nation's trials and triumphs through the mind of a mixed-blood Osage boy as he navigates the changes in youth and adulthood.

Plot
Sundown introduces Challenge, a mixed-blood Osage child growing up in the early 1900s among new intruders on Osage territory in Oklahoma upon the discovery of oil. Challenge is born with the burden of his father’s, John Windzer, prophecy as he is to become “a challenge to the disinheritors of his people.” During Challenge’s formative years, John teaches Challenge how to treat school bullies and fellow Osage people from his position on the council. As Challenge heads to college, he is accompanied by Running Elk and Sun-on-His-Wings from back home. Their journey together does not last long. Challenge broadens his circle with Blossoms Daubeney and the campus’ Greek chapters. New people and places bring anxieties calling on Challenge to confront what he has been hiding from everyone he knows.

After graduating, Challenge joins the military. One day, he suddenly receives a telegram to come home. Challenge's mind continues to unravel as Osage people around him are murdered by White people living among them.

Historical Context
Sundown begins in Osage County around 1900. At this time, it was standard for the Osage to have control and ownership of their land. In 1904 and 1905, large amounts of oil were discovered on Osage land, and the Osage Allotment Act soon followed in 1906. The Osage Allotment Act ensured that each legal member of the Osage Tribe would be entitled to a headright share in the distribution of funds from the Osage mineral estate, with the intention of protecting the interests of the Osage. As a result, the Osage became the richest people per capita in the 1920s. Challenge, the protagonist of Sundown, inherits large amounts of wealth when his father is murdered during a time period commonly known as the "Reign of Terror. During this time, the Osage Nation was plagued by schemes and murders committed by White opportunists who were attempting to swindle headrights and gain control of the wealth held by certain enrolled members of the Osage Tribe. It is reported that 1 to 3 percent of the Osage were murdered from 1918 to 1931.

Modernism and Modernity
Sundown is a semi-autobiographical novel where the main character, Challenge Windzer, closely mirrors the author, John Joseph Mathews. Christopher Schedler describes it as a mix of “high” and “border” modernist aesthetics to create Native American modernism. With “high” modernism’s focus on the individual and distance from the world outside of the subject, Mathews uses Chal as a “high” modernist figure to show how this “identity” is incompatible with traditional, communal Osage culture. Mathews combines this “high” modernist subject with a “border” modernist setting, which puts emphasis on historical context and the external world. Schedler states that Mathews uses Euro-American modernist themes and Native American storytelling conventions to form Native American modernism.

The production of oil provided stability to Americans, yet both destruction to Osage culture and reconstruction to Osage wealth. In "Sundown and 'Liquid Modernity' in Pawhuska, Oklahoma", Hanna Musiol calls out the discovery of oil for its destabilizing effects on Osage reservation culture in favor of forced modernization. Musiol states that "Sundown emphasizes the transnational, colonial conditions of Osage oil culture, which, paradoxically, financially enriched the Osage oil in the early twentieth century.” The complexity in the Osage People's relationship with oil within Sundown showcases a shift into modernity.

Individualism
Sundown takes place during the Allotment Era following the Dawes Act of 1887. The purpose of the Act was to assimilate Native Americans into American society by trading their communal culture for an individualist lifestyle. Although capitalism and individualism were heavily imposed on the Osage, they maintained “collectivist modes of wealth distribution.” Jennifer Gillian suggests that the Osage of Mathews’ novel sought to compensate for their loss of tribal power with the acquisition of luxury goods using their individual wealth. Chal Windzer enjoys the perks of the middle class, but lacks any actual power. Gillian stresses Mathews' depictions of mass consumption only offers figurative power to the Osage.

Race and Identity
Carol Hunter makes the claim that John Joseph Mathews is one of the first authors to portray an assimilated mixed-blood Osage protagonist as an outcast. “Mixed-bloods,” as characterized by John Windzer in the novel, advocated for assimilation and progress. “Full-bloods” were seen as “backwards” or “uncivilized” for rejecting settler culture, as portrayed by Chal’s mother. Hunter claims that clan lineage is passed on patrilineally; therefore, Chal's father’s rejection of Osage tradition leaves Chal clanless.

Gender and Queerness
The “detribalization” of the Osage during the Allotment Era caused a subversion of gender roles in Osage society, as claimed by Jennifer Gillian. The push for a nuclear family removed the traditional tribal roles of men and women. Sean Teuton asserts that Euro-American notions of gender roles preserve many roles that Native women performed, but “deprived men of their traditional masculinity.” According to Teuton, Mathews portrays this in Chal as he escapes into a “mystified Osage masculinity”and develops homo-social male relationships. Michael Snyder claims that Mathews’ use of the word “queer” and Chal’s feelings of peculiarity and alienation in the novel implies that the protagonist has same-sex desires.

Space and Time
Alexander Steele describes the differences between colonial and Indigenous perceptions of time and how Challenge Windzer interacts with his sacred spaces. The way both groups view time is dependent on their “statuses of land” and interaction with the ecospaces, which have sustained Indigenous tribes for generations. The cultural significance of space and time in Sundown is shown in Chal’s disorientation when he returns from university and sees how much the landscape has changed since the oil frenzy.

Steele highlights how Mathews was able to overlap themes throughout his novel. He asserts that the novel “lays bare the irreconcilability of multiple embodied historical consciousness at the odds with and overlapping on another" and points out how Mathew’s Sundown was able to set historical consciousness with a fictional character and setting.

Reception
April Anson compares Mathews’ Sundown with David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon. To Anson, both texts "regard the Osage Reign of Terror as a gruesome example in a long history of structural violence linking the settler state to land theft and resource extraction.” However, Sundown offers readers a different story "beyond the tragic history of Grann’s vital study to articulate –quietly profoundly –with Indigenous resistance today." The novel's ability to draw from resistance attitudes for environmental protection in the name of "Indigenous sovereignty and survivance" proves the text to be timeless.

Robert F. Gish holds similar sentiments. In his book review in "American Indian Quarterly", Gish paints D'arcy Nickle's Wind from an Enemy Sky and Sundown by John Joseph Mathews as necessary reads due to their portrayals on "how pervasive and mind-preying the myth of 'the vanishing American' really is." Mathews' takes on "modern angst and despair" continues to hold true in our current time.