Native Peoples and the Zane Grey Museum
What are the lasting effects of the myths of the American West and the myths of Native peoples in the United States?
The Center of the American West has teamed up with the National Park Service to facilitate Indigenous responses to the Zane Grey House Museum in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania. The "Native Peoples and the Zane Grey Museum" project seeks to engage Native peoples’ perspectives of, experiences with, and creative responses to Zane Grey’s myths about the western United States and beyond.
Before relocating to California for filmmaking, Zane Grey's literary career took off in his home in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania. This structure is now both a museum to his life and a vistor's center for the larger Upper Delaware Scenic & Recreational River which is admistered by the National Park Service. The NPS is looking to update the museum to include Indigenous interpretive expertise from the western American people and places of Zane Grey's legacy.
Zane Grey was a very popular writer of Western novels, where he traveled through and wrote extensively about the Southwest. Grey wrote many one-dimensional Nativecharacters, including some Hopi, Paiute, and Navajo characters. These characters were loosely based on real people Grey met in his travels.
CAW Research Trips
In late April 2023, representatives from the Center of the American West and the National Park Service traveled to Arizona and the Navajo Nation to meet with Navajo and Paiute people who have connections with Zane Grey’s work. Here are some photo highlights from the trip.
In October 2022, representatives from the Center of the American West, Brooke Neely and Ashlyn Barnett traveled to Lackawaxen, Pennsylvannia to meet our NPS partners at the Zane Grey Museum and join the 2022 meeting of the Zane Grey West Society. It was an illuminating and valuable kickoff to this project. Refer to the gallery to the right to see the moments that caught our eye, and stay tuned for more.
Zane Grey has been considered by many as the greatest western story writer who ever lived. Indeed, his thrilling novels about the pioneer settlers, the cowboys, and the frontier gunmen are among the most exciting ever written.
- Loren Grey, son of Zane Grey