Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance. Rev. ed.

J.R. Miller, a professor of history, is Canada Research Chair at the
University of Saskatchewan. He is the author of Skyscrapers Hide in the
Heavens: A History of Indian-White Relations in Canada and co-editor of
the Canadian Historical Review.

First published in 1982, this revised biography provides much greater
insight into and detail about the man University of Calgary historian
Donald Smith labels “the glorious impostor.” Sylvester Long, of
mixed African-American and Native American ancestry, was born in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 1890, at the height of virulent
discriminatory practices known as the “Jim Crow” regime. He began a
lifelong campaign to escape the sting of racism by attending a famous
residential school, the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
Thereafter he went to a military academy in New York state and secured a
presidential nomination to West Point, although he never attended the
prestigious academy. Then, during the First World War, Long enlisted in
the Canadian Forces and served overseas with distinction. After his
return, he migrated to Blood country in southern Alberta, soon embarking
on a career as reporter, columnist, and writer that took him into movie
making and American high society. While he traversed the path from
Winston-Salem to the heights of society in New York and Hollywood, he
altered his identity from Cherokee to Apache to Blackfoot, all in an
effort to escape the label of African-American. His increasingly
troubled personal journey, symbolized by his shift from being Sylvester
Long to claiming to be Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance, ended in suicide
in Los Angeles in 1932.

Donald Smith’s well-written and profusely illustrated biography
describes Long’s (or Long Lance’s) journey effectively and
engagingly. More than one tortured man’s story, it is also a study in
race and racism, identity and impersonation, individual and society. As
Smith puts it, “His life provides a wonderful vehicle to tell the
story of early twentieth-century racial attitudes in both the United
States and Canada.” Implicit in the account is a reality painful to
smug Canadians: their treatment of racial minorities was little, if any,
better than that of their white, American neighbors.

Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance is highly recommended to anyone
interested in biography, the history of Native Americans, or the history
of Native–newcomer relations in Canada.