This has exploded into a Big Honking Deal, mainly due to Edward's publisher's initial response (no big deal) which has since been amended to 'We're looking into it.' Powerhouse author and plagiarism victim Nora Roberts has weighed in on this, calling it plagiarism and condemning Edwards. Other individuals have decried the Smart Bitches' actions, basically calling them mean and nasty and accusing them of willfully trashing Cassie Edwards' career.
A disclosure: I actually have some Cassie Edwards books lying around here. The condo complex where my mother lives has what they call a 'free bench' which is, as the name implies, a bench in a common area. People who live there put out things they don't want, but are still fine to use. Books are a popular item, and because of Mom's free bench I have a complete set of Tony Hillerman Navajo novels and a few Cassie Edwards tomes.
I've definitely read better. But that's not the point of this post. The point is, in the author blurbs in all of her books that I've seen, it's stated that her grandmother was "a full-blood Cheyenne." However, in a recent quote, Edwards states that it's actually a paternal great-grandmother. From romantictimes.com:
"Along the way, Edwards learned she had a very personal connection to the Native American community when her father casually revealed that one of his grandmothers had been a full-blooded Cheyenne named Snow Deer. Stunned that he didn't tell her when she launched her Savage series, Edwards never actually learned much about Snow Deer from her father beyond the story of how she came to marry a white man. That became the inspiration for a novel, Savage Longings, and a photo of Snow Deer appears in the back of Savage Secrets. "Knowing about her truly didn't influence my writing, but I am very proud of my Native American heritage," Edwards says. "
That's nice, or it would be if this were true. I don't think it is.
One of my interests is genealogy, and once the plagiarism mess began, I fired up my Ancestry account and Google and started digging. Savage Longings stars 'Snow Deer' and 'Charles Cline.' Through obituaries and census records, I established that Cassie Edwards' great-grandfather was indeed a Charles C. Cline. But her great-grandmother was almost certainly not a Cheyenne named Snow Deer. She appears to have been a white woman named Mamie Bolinger (alternate names Mary, Mame, Mayme, and Bolling, Bolner, Bollinger). Illinois marriage records show that Charles C. Cline and Mamie Bolinger were married on 30 October 1884 in Clark County Illinois. Mamie Bolinger is the daughter of Hiram and Nancy Bolinger (Bolling in the census, Bolner on other records). The 1870 Census lists Hiram and Nancy as white. I have traced her maternal and paternal ancestry back several generations, and none of her ancestors are listed as any kind of Indigenous.
So, what does this mean? Am I right? Did she lie about her ancestry? Or was it an innocent mistake?
I don't know. I could, of course, be wrong but I haven't found anything yet that convinces me that I am. I have multiple sources to verify her lineage, and despite what a lot of people would like to think, full-blood Indigenous people rarely passed for white on census records. It is entirely possible that Cassie Edwards was told her great-grandmother was a Cheyenne. Certainly she would not be the first person to be told that her family had Indian blood (usually a great-grandmother, invariably a princess) and she has more reason than most to want to take such a statement at face value, given what she writes about for a living. I haven't seen this alleged picture of Snow Deer, but if Kimkins proved anything, it's that pictures lie all the time.
So, there it is for what it's worth. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe she is part Cheyenne. But given recent revelations, I'd certainly want to see some proof of that.
There is an old song called Snow Deer though. I think the lyrics are quite interesting since it's about an Indian Maiden and her Cowboy Lover.
Here are some pix of the records. I am not including anything about living people (in so far as I know whether or not they are living.)
Here is the Cline Family Tree. I still have some work to do on it. Cassie Edwards' birth name is Kathryn Cline.
Here is the the 1920 US Census. Cassie Edwards' father, Virgil F. is listed on this as the son of Hiram F. and Hannah Cline.
Here is the 1910 US Census. Cassie Edwards' probable grandfather is listed here as Frank, son of Charles C. and Mamie (Mame) Cline.
Here is the 1900 US Census. Cassie Edwards' probable grandfather is listed here as Hyram F. son of Charles and Mamie (Mayme) Cline.
Here is the marriage record of Charles C. Cline and Mamie Bolinger, retrieved from ancestry.com
Here is the 1870 US Census. Cassie Edwards' probable great-grandmother Mamie Bolinger is listed as Mary Bolinger (Mamie was a common nickname for Mary), and her parents are listed as Hiram and Nancy Bolinger.
Keep in mind, these are just records. I could be wrong about my conclusions. Let me also make it clear that I am not basing these conclusions on the names proper. Many Indigenous people adopted English- or non-Indigenous surnames. I am basing these conclusions on the racial designations on the census racial designations. Are those always correct? No. But contrary to what some people would like to think, full-blood Indigenous were generally listed as Indian.
Here's another little something. This review of Savage Longings (the book allegedly based on Cassie Edwards' Cheyenne great-grandmother) from romantictimes.com points out the following:
"If the stated date of Cassie Edwards' story is correct, her history puts the proud, fanatically brave Cheyenne in Kentucky villages 30 years after the northern group moved to Montana, the southern group settled in Oklahoma and nearly 20 years after the notorious massacre at Sand Creek, Colorado."
Elle
PS: I dug out my CE books, and within five minutes found another instance of plagiarism. She literally just changed a single comma:
Savage Passions
By Cassie Edwards
Published 1996
Dorchester Publishing
Company, Incorporated
Romance
ISBN 0843939028
By Charles Godfrey Leland
Published 1884
Houghton, Mifflin and
Company
p. 339
And here's another:
Savage Passions, p.206
“But I will tell you this now – that the highest ambition of an Ottawa Indian is to become mequomoowessoo, a mystical being who enjoys all highest privileges of humanity allied to the supernatural.”
Algonquin Legends of“The highest ambition of an Indian was to become a Megummoowessoo, a mystical being, which is explained differently as a fairy, faun, sylvan deity, but which means one who enjoys all the highest privileges of humanity allied to the supernatural.”
And goodness! It looks like she lifted something from yet another book which is presumably still copyrighted. I am using Google Books for this, and this book offers only a 'snippet view' which you can see here.From Savage Passions, p.206
“A bearwalker was a man or a woman who, with herbs and special words which only they knew, could instantly transform themselves into balls of fire, or assume animal forms. Anthony had explained that once the person was transformed, they were able to travel great distances quickly, and go unrecognized.”
And from:
The Tree that Never Dies: Oral History of the
By Pamela J. DobsonPublished 1978
Grand Rapids Public
Library
“man-doz-it to the Potawatomi, can with herbs and special words which only they know, instantly transform themselves into balls of fire or assume animal forms. Once transformed, they are able to travel great distances quickly and go unrecog-“
That's the only text available from the snippet view. Not as egregious, but pretty damn similar:Savage Passions
p.344
“But we must remember always the belief of our people, that the eye of our Great Spirit is the sun by day, and by night the moon and the stars, and therefore the Great Spirit sees all things everywhere, night and day. It is impossible to hide any action, either good or bad, from the eye of the Great Spirit. When no human eye can observe a criminal’s evildoings, the criminal action will be revealed at some future time, to his disgrace and shame.”
History of the
By Andrew J. Blackbird
Published 1887
The Ypsilantian job
printing house
p.13
11 Kerfuffles:
If it turns out to be true, that not only did CE take any prose not nailed down so she could crank out 4 books a year, but that she LIED about being part Cheyenne to hewlp sell her books...
well, that's just beyond LOW!
Eesh!
Bolling?
The Bolling family is a well-known one in the state of Virginia. They're all descended from Col John Bolling...the great-grandson of Pocahontas.
So maybe that's where it comes from.
Charlene,
That's always possible. As someone else pointed out in another forum, if you go back far enough you find all kinds of interesting things in your genealogy.
However, she has been specifically claiming to have a grandmother, or great-grandmother, who was a full Cheyenne. Cassie Edwards may be descended from Pocahontas for all I know, but it's extremely unlikely she's Cheyenne at all.
Elle
wow! you are good.
hope you enjoy your break from the Kimkins.com battle.
Thanks 2big :) Back to Kimkins now ... the CE thing has about run its course. There's tons of questionable passages that have been found etc. and her publisher is taking it seriously now. Regardless of what happens with it, plagiarism isn't likely to kill anyone. Unlike Kimmer, of course.
Hi
I'm not here to defend plagiarism, but a bunch of the cited examples aren't plagiarism. Works before the early 1900's are almost always in the public domain, meaning anyone can use them anyhow they want. for works still under copyright there are a host of complex and vague "fair use" allowances, esp. for nonfiction research sources. Quoting a factoid verbatim isn't considered plagiarism in many cases. I don't know if C.E. did anything deliberate or not, but the public attacks (some of which are very ignorant and very hateful) are definitely unwarranted at this point in the investigation. What scares me, as an author, is that the bloggers who launched this public hanging already had a well-known vendetta against C.E. They seem way too happy to find a reason to go public in a big way. btw, I think they have a book of their own coming out. Publicity motivations, maybe?
Hey Deb,
Thanks for your input. I don't fully agree with you on the public domain works. There is no legal barrier to using these works, however, it's still possible to plagiarize public domain works. There are also instances where it appears works that are still under copyright may be affected. As for the bloggers -- I don't know them, I can't speak to their motives. But from what I've seen, I really wouldn't characterize it as a vendetta. They reviewed some of her work, they made fun of it, but she's not the chew-toy over there that some have suggested. If you search for her name on that blog, you actually come up with very few references to her (recent events excepted, of course).
In the end, it will be her publisher who decides. As a person who occasionally participates in education, my standard is this -- would I turn in a student for something like this? Yes. Even if the work plagiarized was in the public domain, it cannot be passed off as your own work when it isn't. But that's me.
Thanks for your well-written and reasonable comments :)
Lisa
I don't know if you're still looking at Cassie Edwards' genealogy, but unless somebody got the dates screwed up, Mary Kathryn Girot is probably her step-mother, not her mother.
According to her obit, Mary Kathryn married Virgil Cline in 1940, but Cassie was born in 1936. Plus, with a birth date of Dec. 29, 1921, MK would have been 14 when Cassie was born in March or April of 1936 (don't know the day, but she says she's an Aries on her MySpace page). Not physically impossible, but less likely.
So, if anyone wants to figure out if Cassie has Native American blood through her mother's side (yes, I know, she said her father's side, but still), they'd still have to figure for sure whether her birth mother was Mary Kathryn Girot or someone else entirely.
I agree though, that plenty of families have the "Indian Princess" myth, so it's quite possible that Cassie was told some such story and believes it in good faith.
Thanks MJ -- I am ashamed to admit, I didn't really look at MKG's information beyond verifying who she was married to etc. as I was focused on the paternal lineage. I seem to recall looking at the Illinois marriage index and seeing an earlier marriage date for her and VC than 1940, but ancestry is down right now so I can't double check. Thanks for the catch -- if you find anything else, please let me know.
Deb, you seem to be confusing plagiarism and copyright infringement. Plagiarism is solely an ethical issue (it's not illegal), and consists of "taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own", according to my computer's dictionary.
One can plagiarize anything, whether it was never copyrighted, has an expired copyright, or was never eligible for copyright. In academia it is assumed that a student's writing is wholly their own work unless otherwise stated- that is, they both came up with all of the ideas and the phrasing. Any ideas or phrasing that are not the student's original work are supposed to be cited in the text. This assumption is not especially different in fiction writing, except that it's considered acceptable to cite research sources in the acknowledgments, instead of using actual in-text citations.
You are right that, in most of these cases, Edwards has not committed a copyright violation which is a legal as well as ethical matter. Anything published in the United States before 1923 is in the public domain, as is anything published by the United States federal government or anything that does not constitute an original expression of an idea.
Ideas, concepts, and theories are not copyrightable, but passing off an idea as one's own work is considered plagiarism. For example, Darwin's Origin of the Species was copyrighted when it was published, but the copyright does not extend to the idea of natural selection or evolution. However, it is still considered plagiarism to write out an explanation of Darwin's theories without crediting Darwin with first developing the theory.
Interesting work, Elle! When I get my bonus check, I'm getting an Ancestry account for my mother 'cause she would absolutely love it!
This Deb (Smith) person has been posting all over the place about the Edwards Big Honking Deal, always with the same bogus information about 'fair use' and plagiarism. She posted about it on her Amazon profile page too. A tad obsessed, it seems.
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