American Indian Culture and Research Journal

For forty years, D’Arcy McNickle wrote about Indians. His novel, The Surrounded, published in 1936, was the first of a variety of publications that marked his distinguished career in Indian affairs. Two more novels, several short stories, a biography, three historical monographs, and numerous articles and book reviews all reveal the extent of his concerns. He is best known today for his novels, but his other articles, examined in the context of his life, provide a more immediate and intimate insight into the development of his thinking. D’Arcy McNickle (1904-1977) was one of a handful of people employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) under John Collier who continued to work for and write about Indian affairs for decades after the ”Indian New Deal” of the 1930s and 1940s. McNickle, an enrolled member of the Flathead tribe of northwestern Montana, was hired under Collier’s “Indian Civil Service” policy in 1936. At the time of his resignation from the bureau in 1952, he was head of the Tribal Organization Division. By that time, he had written his first historical monograph and a number of articles for the BIA’s house organ, Indians at Work, and other articles as well.