The Only Good Indians

Stephen Graham Jones’s The Only Good Indians is a 2020 horror novel about a slain cow elk who returns as a spirit to exact her revenge on the four men who killed her while pregnant. The novel is set in and around the Blackfoot reservation, Jones’s tribal home, and depicts the struggle between honoring traditional practices and surviving in the modern world through a recontextualization of Blackfoot legends.

It should be noted that this novel depicts many acts of horrific violence to people and animals. The guide will use the specific tribal identities of Blackfoot and Crow to refer to Indigenous people, as the book makes it clear that the characters consider these their chosen terms, and some explicitly reject the terms Native American or Indigenous. It will use the pejorative misnomer “Indian” when characters specifically claim or comment upon that identity marker and to discuss the title of the book’s thematic meaning. This guide uses the 2021 Saga Press paperback edition.

Plot Summary

The prologue of the novel takes place in Williston, North Dakota, as Richard “Ricky” Boss Ribs is drinking at a bar after leaving his reservation and taking a job with an oil crew. He has recently had his hunting privileges revoked after he and three friends killed several elk on land reserved for the elders, including a pregnant elk cow. While urinating outside, he encounters an elk that charges him, damaging the cars in the parking lot. The patrons of the bar think he is to blame and give chase. He escapes only to find himself surrounded by a herd of elk. He is found dead, and the newspaper presumes he was beaten to death by the men.

A decade later, Lewis Clarke has married Peta, a white woman, and moved to Great Falls with her, where he is a postal employee. At work, he is lumped together by his coworkers with a Crow woman, Shaney Holds, who flirts with him, which he knows is trouble. While trying to fix a faulty overhead light in his home, Lewis looks down through the fan and sees the image of the cow elk that he killed on the ground. He topples off the ladder and is saved at the last moment by his wife.

When Shaney and several other co-workers come over to see how Lewis’s dog Harley has learned to jump his fence, they find the dog hung by its chain. One of Lewis’s coworkers tries to take the dog down, but it wakes and bites him viciously. Thinking Harley’s attempted escape was caused by the cow elk’s spirit, Lewis tapes out an outline of what he saw in his living room while Peta looks after the dying dog. He climbs the ladder again to recreate the scene; this time he sees Elk Head Woman, the vengeful spirit that haunts him.

The next day, Shaney shows up at Lewis’s house on the pretense of borrowing a fantasy novel. They play basketball and flirt; when they go inside, Shaney sees the elk depiction and changes it, making it look more accurate. She asks Lewis what it represents, and he tells her about the hunting incident: He and his friends Ricky, Cassidy “Cass” Sees Elk, and Gabriel “Gabe” Cross Guns went out hunting on land reserved for the elders, and they stumbled onto a herd of elk. In their excitement, they killed indiscriminately. After realizing that they wouldn’t be able to bring the elk out in their truck, they decide to just take the haunches, but Lewis sees that a cow elk is still struggling to survive. He shoots it in the face, and it rises again, forcing him to shoot it a third time. He discovers that it is pregnant, and he buries the fetus, vowing to use every part of the mother to honor her. Denny Pease, the game warden, arrives and bans them all from hunting. Now Lewis believes the cow elk is after revenge. When Peta arrives home during this story, Lewis gives Shaney a whole series of books to prove that they weren’t engaged in any indiscretion.

That night, Lewis wakes up to see that something has stomped Harley to death in the garage. Peta is there crying, and he begins to suspect that she may be possessed by the elk spirit. He buries Harley while Peta rips up his elk depiction. He stops going to work, sinking further into paranoia that his wife is secretly plotting against him. Police visit and warn him they need to see Harley’s body, and he begins to find volumes of the fantasy series left in strange places around his house and yard. Shaney has written notes about Lewis’s story in one of the books, notably that elk have ivory canine teeth. Lewis dismisses his wife as a suspect of possession and begins to focus on Shaney.

He invites her over on a pretense and recreates the scene in which he first saw the Elk Head Woman. When she arrives, she doesn’t follow Lewis’s plan to see her through the fan blades, arousing further suspicion. Instead, she shows him how to finally fix the light that has been bothering him. He becomes sure she is the spirit and convinces her to come check out the motorcycle he is rebuilding. He uses the bike’s wheel to catch her hair, killing her instantly and scalping her. He digs out her teeth to check for elk ivory and sees that they are normal.

He hears his wife coming home, covers the body, and heads inside. She is on the ladder looking at the fixed light, and when she sees blood on his hands, she slips off and hits her head on the brick hearth, which kills her. Lewis removes her teeth as well, and when he sees something moving in her stomach, he cuts her open to find a newborn elk calf. He flees with it back to the reservation, but he is shot along the way by vigilantes.

In Part II, Elk Head Woman, now reincarnated from the elk calf into a teenage girl, hitches a ride into town on the Blackfeet reservation. She goes to the middle school to spy on Denorah, the estranged daughter of Gabriel and a star basketball player for the junior high team. Denorah is happy with her new stepfather, game warden Denny Pease, and Gabe has been barred from seeing her or attending her basketball games due to a violent, drunken outburst.

Gabe, meanwhile, swipes an antique gun from his father’s house, intending to trade it to Cass as payment for the sweat lodge Cass has agreed to set up. They are intending it to honor Lewis’s death, and they have arranged to have a local teen, Nathan Yellow Tail, join them on his police officer father Victor’s request. Gabe thinks to stop by his daughter’s school on the way to the cemetery to visit Ricky. On the way, he sees Elk Head Woman walking in the cold and thinks to stop for her until she makes eye contact with him. Across the reservation, Cassidy “Cass” Sees Elk sets up the sweat lodge on his property using a makeshift tent frame and dog blankets. He has taken up with Jolene, a Crow woman, and the cousin of Shaney Holds, and this has brought him stability and love for the first time.

Before heading to Cass’s place, Gabe drinks several beers at the cemetery and goes to see Denorah at her home, where she is practicing free throws. He doesn’t know that Elk Head Woman slipped into his truck bed on the roadside and has been watching him. Denorah is not happy to see her father, but they chat, and she bets him $40 that she can’t make ten in a row, which she does easily. He promises her he’ll have the money for her in the morning.

He heads to Cass’s property, and they talk about Nathan, who is a troubled teen who recently ran away from home, and they think the sweat will be good for him. He offers Cass the rifle in payment, and Cass mentions that there are probably some old shells for it in the truck up on blocks in the yard (the same truck they went hunting in a decade ago). Gabe asks Cass if he still keeps his money tucked in a thermos in the exhaust pipe, which Cass didn’t know Gabe knew.

Nathan and Victor arrive in Victor’s police car while Elk Head Woman watches; she has killed Cass’s three dogs. Victor tells Nate that Cass and Gabe were him 20 years ago, and now half of their friends are dead. Cass, Gabe, and Nate undress and head into the sweat while Victor agrees to help tend the hot coals from outside. The men lay out the ground rules of the tradition for Nate, making it clear that they aren’t practiced in this, while Victor plays a drumbeat cassette tape from his car’s speakers. When he catches a glimpse of Elk Head Woman, he goes to investigate, and she bites him viciously on the throat, seemingly killing him.

In the sweat lodge, the men discuss their ancestors and the dead, then Cass tells Gabe that the elk cow they killed was pregnant, which Gabe never knew. Gabe begins to get too hot and needs water, but when he opens the flap, he sees that Jolene is outside, so Cass goes out instead. She reveals that Shaney Holds was her cousin and she just found out about her death. Cass tells her to take the money from the truck if she needs it and that he will make sure her work schedule is covered so she can go to the Crow reservation.

Cass returns to the sweat lodge, and soon after, Gabe has a vision of Ricky and Lewis that frightens him. He rushes outside to urinate. As he does, he grabs a beer from his truck and discovers Cass’s murdered dogs. He decides he won’t say anything, as they won’t be found until morning otherwise and it won’t be his problem. He finishes another beer and takes the cooler of melted ice back to the sweat lodge, along with a thermos he finds in his truck’s floorboards.

When Cass sees the thermos, he rushes outside to check on it and finds Jolene under his truck looking for it. He knows it isn’t there, and when Gabe comes out, he accuses him of theft. Gabe turns out his pants pockets, revealing an engagement ring that Cass intended for Jolene. In anger, Cass uses the thermos to smash the windshield of Gabe’s truck. Gabe retaliates by charging at the old truck up on blocks, and before Cass can stop him, he has crashed into it, causing the cement blocks to crumble under the shifting weight, which kills Jolene. In rage and grief, Cass retrieves the antique rifle and begins searching for a shell to fit it. Gabe is shocked and ready to accept his fate, but movement behind Gabe makes Cass flinch. He pulls the trigger, clipping Gabe’s ear but putting a bullet into who the men believe to be Denorah, Gabe’s daughter.

In the darkness, Gabe falls to his knees, and Cass falls next to him. Gabe takes up the thermos and intends to kill Cass with it. When he drops it, Cass picks it up and gives it back to him so he can finish. After murdering Cass, Gabe intends to use the rifle to kill himself. His resolve wanes, and he goes to check on Denorah and realizes it’s Nate Yellow Tail, who scrambles away from him and is seemingly trampled by the horses. Gabe also discovers Victor in the outhouse, believing him dead as well.

Gabe knows he will take the blame for all of this. Elk Head Woman emerges, pleased that her plan has worked. She tells him he must kill himself, or else she will go after Denorah. He puts Cass’s finger on the trigger of the rifle and takes his own life.

Part III begins the next morning with Denorah’s arrival at the scene. She sees the broken windshield and the sweat lodge in a heap and believes it to be the results of drunken debauchery after the sweat. Elk Head Woman emerges, looking now like Shaney Holds, and tells Denorah that the dogs got loose, and the men went after them on the horses. She challenges Denorah to a game of 21.

During the game, Denorah begins to wonder about Shaney, but she is determined to win at all costs, especially once Shaney reveals how good and vicious she is on the court. When Shaney injures herself on the utility pole the hoop is attached to, she begins to change, her yellow elk’s eyes emerging. Denorah realizes she is in danger, but she thinks winning the game will honor whatever bargain she has unintentionally entered. After making an impressive layup that sends her crashing to the ground, Denorah looks up to see Victor soaked in blood. He shoots Shaney, who transforms back into Elk Head Woman’s true form. Victor tells Denorah to run, and she crashes into sweat lodge, which has been piled with the bodies of Elk Head Woman’s victims.

She flees into the snowy wilderness, hoping to reach the vacation homes on Duck Lake. Elk Head Woman kills Victor and follows her at a steady pace. What follows is an all-day, desperate chase as Denorah struggles to make it through the wilderness. She gains a brief respite when she crawls under some abandoned boxcars and sees that Elk Head Woman is afraid of trains, but that is short lived, and she becomes delirious from cold and exhaustion until she finds Nate Yellow Tail on horseback, nearly dead from blood loss. She tells him to go to town and that she will keep leading Elk Head Woman away.

Unknowingly, Denorah leads Elk Head Woman back to the site of the hunting massacre. Denorah collapses amidst the bones of the abandoned animals, and Elk Head Woman goes to the spot where the calf was buried and digs it up. Denny Pease arrives and fires warning shots, but Denorah stands up between Denny and Elk Head Woman and her calf. She makes a sign that indicates that it’s over, which Denny agrees to, as Elk Head Woman transforms fully into an elk and leads her calf into the wilderness.