The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, racism, child death, and animal cruelty and death.

In The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Jones uses Good Stab’s transformation from a Pikuni man into a vampire to explore how his cultural identity erodes under colonial influence, ultimately showing that survival in a colonized world threatens one’s morality. Jones develops Good Stab’s internal conflict around the conditions of his vampirism. Good Stab can feed on animals and white settlers, but the more he feeds on them, the more he becomes like them, shedding parts of his Pikuni identity. This drives a quandary within Good Stab and raises the question of what defines a person. Good Stab has been a Pikuni hunter all his life, but to remain a Pikuni, he will need to feed on his people. If he is contributing to the destruction of the Pikuni, then he is no better than the white settlers who came to claim the land from the Pikuni. The novel affirms this by the irony that he comes to look more like a white man as he hunts down the buffalo hunters who encroach on the Pikuni territory.