Cassie Edwards Plagiarized THE WAY TO RAINY MOUNTAIN

Some of you may recall that Cassie Edwards, author of romance novels (including the "SAVAGE" Indian series) was caught plagiarizing last year. The site "Smart Bitches" catalogued a lot of the plagiarized passages.

I didn't follow all of it carefully last year, and missed this:

Edwards plagiarized from N. Scott Momaday's The Way To Rainy Mountain. The novel is read in a lot of high school English/Lit courses, which makes me think that teachers who teach it might want to add a segment on plagiarism to their unit.

Cassie Edwards, Savage Whispers is a passage-by-passage comparison of Edwards' novel and Momaday's writings. It is astounding. It's on a LiveJournal that belongs to "wombat" dated Feb. 29, 2008. (Note: I've got an LJ, too, under my name, Debbie Reese. When you click on the hyperlink, you might get an "Are you 14?" page. If that happens answer the question and you'll then go to the correct page. At that point, I'm not sure how the page will look on your screen. My computer defaults to my LJ, and it plops wombat's analysis on my page. Maybe if you do not have an LJ, you'll go right to wombat's LJ.)

Here's wombat's opening paragraph, followed by the paragraph where she says what was plagiarized, followed by one example. Do go to wombat's page and read the entire thing. Wombat writes:

This is one of Edwards' older books, and it shows: presumably she wasn't yet able to coast on her reputation (and was twenty years younger), so the prose actually has some description and flow, and the plot is noticeably more complex-- compared to her recent routine, it's almost mindbogglingly frenetic.

...

Edwards makes extensive use of Momaday's book (abbreviated below as WRM), as well as his article/essay "A First American Views His Land", first published with various photos as pp 13-19 National Geographic, Vol. 150 No.1, July 1976, and later reprinted (text-only) in his anthology The Man Made of Words, McMillan 1998 (abbreviated below as FAVL; page #s are via antho MMW or magazine NG).

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SW p 2 (author's note):

After a bloody fight at Palo Duro Canyon, the Kiowa came in, a few at a time, to surrender at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. Their horses and weapons were confiscated and they were imprisoned. In a field just west of the post, the Indian ponies were destroyed. Nearly eight hundred horses were killed outright. Two thousand more were sold, stolen, and given away.

Momaday, WRM p. 67:

After the fight at Palo Duro Canyon, the Kiowas came in, a few at a time, to surrender at Fort Sill. Their horses and weapons were confiscated, and they were imprisoned. In a field just west of the post, the Indian ponies were destroyed. Nearly 800 horses were killed outright; two thousand more were sold, stolen, given away.

I'm grateful to wombat for doing this analysis and letting me know about it. Momaday and the UNM Press have been informed. If there's any news on action, I'll let you know.