Killer-of-Death by Betty Baker

First published: 1963

Type of work: Historical fiction

Themes: Race and ethnicity, coming-of-age, family, and friendship

Time of work: The late nineteenth century

Recommended Ages: 10-15

Locale: The southwestern United States, especially southern Arizona and New Mexico

Principal Characters:

• Killer-of-Death, an Apache Indian boy in his fourteenth harvest, who becomes a man through various traditional ceremonies and unforeseen tragedies
• Lazy Legs, Killer-of-Death’s adopted brother, who was taken by their father from a Mexican village
• Gian-Nah-Tah, the shaman’s son, who is at first Killer-of-Death’s rival and later, his enemy
• Shy Maiden, the arrowmaker’s granddaughter, who is the cause of rivalry between Killer-of-Death and Gian-nah-tah
• Killer-of-death’s Father, the local chief
• Little One, Killer-of-Death’s little sister
• Mangas Colorado (Red Sleeves), the great Apache warrior, who named his cousin “Killer-of-Death” from a dream

The Story

Killer-of-Death is a story of initiation, a tale of a fourteen-year-old Apache boy’s coming-of-age during a difficult period in American history. While he frolics with his good-natured brother Lazy Legs and tries his skill against Gian-nah-tah, the shaman’s son, he anticipates the tests he must soon undergo to prove himself a man and a warrior. A foolish prank unearths Gian-nah-tah’s disguised hatred of Killer-of-Death’s position as the chief’s son and jealousy over the lovely Shy Maiden, thus initiating a bitter rivalry.

When Killer-of-Death’s father goes to a council, Gian-nah-tah scares away the game that Killer-of-Death needs to feed his family. One night, however, Killer-of-Death and Lazy Legs discover a large number of rabbits dancing beneath a full moon, a scene that foreshadows the tragic climax of the book. Killer-of-Death remembers the old story about rabbits gathering to dance for Usen, the Giver of Life, but his need to provide for his family and appear important to Shy Maiden provokes him to kill the rabbits.

Gian-nah-tah soon makes his first large kill and gives the deerskin to Shy Maiden’s grandfather. With his father’s support, Killer-of-Death kills his own deer and takes the skin to his cousin, Mangas Colorado, the great warrior who named him. Killer-of-Death’s father explains that Mangas Colorado’s dream foretold that he “would never lead his people. The leader of the people would be slain and my son would return him to life.” During the visit, Killer-of-Death’s father compares the land that nurtures and protects the People to a great blanket and warns that, like lice in a blanket, the Mexicans must be sent away before they become so numerous that they destroy the land and the people, as lice would destroy the blanket.

When Killer-of-Death returns, he discovers that Gian-nah-tah has been in the dry country for two days of the fourteen-day survival test required to prove himself a man and a warrior. Then, on a duck hunt arranged by Lazy Legs to reveal Gian-nah-tah’s cowardice and dishonesty, Killer-of-Death discovers and destroys his rival’s hidden stores, an action that elicits from Gian-nah-tah such hatred that he stalks Killer-of-Death in his own ritual test.

This survival test is the formal rite-of-passage for the boys. To become warriors, however, they are also required to go on three raids as apprentices. Killer-of-Death’s first raid—which is Gian-nah-tah’s third raid—is an attack upon a Mexican wagon train. On this raid, Gian-nah-tah reveals a smoldering hatred for Killer-of-Death and a thirst for killing. Killer-of-Death, however, at first feels sympathy for a Mexican boy who reminds him of his brother, but then acts quickly and bravely to capture their horses—an act that gains for him a prize mare.

On the next raid, Gian-nah-tah, now a warrior, tries to murder Killer-of-Death and then claim that he has run away. Killer-of-Death survives, however, and on the way back to his village observes a Mexican soldier apparently bring a comrade back to life by removing a bullet with his knife. He also undergoes another experience that illustrates his deep sensitivity toward other human beings: At a river, he encounters a young girl from an enemy tribe but, remembering his own little sister, cannot kill her even though it endangers his own life.

Killer-of-Death returns to his village to discover Gian-nah-tah’s lie and, seeking a way to prove the truth, accompanies his father to a feast given by the Mexicans. Shamed, he stays in his hut, where Gian-nah-tah challenges him. Aware that the confrontation is pointless, Killer-of-Death refuses the challenge. Little One runs in and innocently reveals the presence of a big gun at the feast. Before the boys can act, the Mexicans massacre Gian-nah-tah’s family, Shy Maiden and her family, and all of Killer-of-Death’s family but Little One.

With Gian-nah-tah and Mangas Colorado, Killer-of-Death seeks vengeance for the deaths of his family, but later he makes a new life for himself and his family on a reservation, where a missionary helps his son gain an education to succeed in the new world.

Context

Along with Walk the World’s Rim (1965), Killer-of-Death represents the culmination of Betty Baker’s achievement. It is one of the two Baker books recognized by the Western Heritage Award, the other being And One Was a Wooden Indian (1970). Each of these works, like most of Baker’s fiction, focuses on Native American Indian life and history.

Killer-of-Death occupies a quiet place in the center of Baker’s canon, for it focuses on a young Apache boy’s achievement of his personal and cultural identity at the time when historical forces are beginning to erase his culture. By the time of the events in And One Was a Wooden Indian, which begins chronologically when Killer-of-Death ends, the peace of the old way of life is gone, and its protagonist, Hatilshay, is required from the start to consider accommodating to the ways of the white man.

Stylistically, Killer-of-Death is comparable to And One Was a Wooden Indian, for both works incorporate symbolism: the wooden carving in And One Was a Wooden Indian represents the stolid, unbendable quality of the shaman’s nephew, Turtlehead; the dancing rabbits in Killer-of-Death symbolize the massacred People. Walk the World’s Rim, which follows the historical trek of Esteban and his companions as seen by the Indian boy Chakoh, is fictionalized history; Killer-of-Death, however, with brief references to historical characters such as Mangus Colorado, allows Baker the freedom to develop fully her fictional protagonist.

Baker’s interest in the history of the southwestern United States and its Native American and Mexican populations opens a door for the reader to Navajo life and history as many of Baker’s books do for tribes such as the Iroquois and Apache. An Easterner by birth, Baker has adopted the Southwest as her homeland and its people as her people. In this vein, she has commented that Killer-of-Death “needs no dedication. It is one.”