A Curious Slice of American History : SHADOW CATCHER, <i> By Charles Fergus (Soho Press: $19.95; 308 pp.)</i>

When the first photographers traveled West to photograph the American Indian, their subjects called them “shadow catchers” for the way they could steal a man’s soul and preserve it on a glass plate. Charles Fergus has called his first novel “Shadow Catcher” as well, and he preserves a curious slice of American history between hard covers. “Shadow Catcher” is a book about the West in 1913 and the clash of Indian and Anglo cultures. It is a book about remembering the West and discovering the West and inventing the West. And it is a book about photography and photographers.

On the third Rodman Wanamaker Expedition to the North American Indian there were two official photographers working out of the darkroom in Wanamaker’s private rail car. This is fact, and Fergus tells us about them. He also tells us about young Ansel Fry, Indian Bureau stenographer and secret amateur photographer with the instincts and pretensions of an artist. This is where fiction intrudes, bringing fact to literate life.

Fry hides a newly invented miniature camera beneath his suit waistcoat and takes candid photos of unsuspecting subjects. As the expedition rolls from one Indian reservation to another, from east to west, then into the northern plains, Fry pays attention to the shadows of the West that others overlook or ignore. He becomes determined to reveal the way the Indians have been forced to live while at the same time publicly deflating the paternalistic fervor of the expedition.

While the official photographers record feather-headdress-wearing Indians signing a pledge of allegiance to the American Flag in a staged, if not fraudulent ceremony, Fry secretly photographs a young Indian boy in a government school. The boy’s head has been shaved. He has been forced to wear a dress. And to prevent him from running back home, he has been shackled with a ball and chain. Even more debasing, he is neither allowed to use his native language nor attest to faith in any religion but that of a Christian nature.

It is to the great dismay and consternation of the Indian Bureau (precursor of the Bureau of Indian Affairs) and the organizers of the Wanamaker Expedition that these secret photos keep appearing in a Washington, D.C., newspaper where they catch everyone’s attention both for their subject matter and for being a new kind of photo. Unposed. Unrehearsed. Real.

As the expedition proceeds through the West, the search is on for the culprit, the secret shadow catcher. Tension in the text is provided by Ansel (no intended connection with Ansel Adams) Fry’s anxieties about being caught by his employers. If that doesn’t sound like a lot, it isn’t. But the book offers a pleasant excursion through one of many possible American Wests, the considerable skills of Charles Fergus making palpable life in a Navajo hogan or plains Indian reservation shack.

Rodman Wanamaker, a department-store heir, had bankrolled two earlier expeditions that crisscrossed the country by private rail car to preserve on film and in photos images of the Noble Red Man who enlightened philanthropists such as Wanamaker felt was disappearing. Some of these photos have been used to illustrate the text of “Shadow Catcher,” which adds an eerie overlay of reality to a piece of fiction.

Besides the struggles of Ansel Fry, “Shadow Catcher” explores the moral ruminations of James McLaughlin, an old Indian Bureau agent and Fry’s boss. The third expedition was something of a promotional hustle, and McLaughlin was sent along by the government to be certain that the Indians didn’t think they were being promised anything by signing the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Author Fergus slowly drags McLaughlin’s version of how Sitting Bull was killed out of the old Indian agent. Fry is there to take down the dictation.

In the course of the expedition, McLaughlin’s adopted daughter, Annie Owns the Fire, a fictitious Sioux character, makes an appearance and represents the Indian determination to preserve American Indian heritage. Mr. Fry and Ms. Owns The Fire take a fancy to each other by the end of the book, which culminates at the spot where Sitting Bull was killed so many years before. It is only fitting that Buffalo Bill, the old drunk, showman and blowhard is there recreating a history that never happened for the movie cameras.

There is no more convoluted a state of American mind than the one generated by the West: what it is; what it was; what it may have been. Where does historic fact start, and where does it stop, giving way to fantastic notion? Academic types are currently re-examining the history of the West and presenting a none-too-pretty picture of Anglo greed and knuckle-dragging consciousness, with the land and its autochthonous inhabitants the tragic victims. It is a continuing tragedy. Alcoholism, disease and poverty dog the tracks of the American Indian. And land in the West is now so polluted in some places no one really knows where or how to begin to clean it up. It may not be possible.

Looking, seeing, interpreting: These are constant drumbeats within the text of “Shadow Catcher.” With the 1913 setting of the text, World War I fast approaches. It is a time of transition for the Indian in the West, for the West in America, for America in the world. The old--agent McLaughlin--and the new--Ansel Fry and Annie Owns The Fire--meet on common ground in “Shadow Catcher.” They size each other up, record their own histories, and go their own ways.

In “Shadow Catcher,” Charles Fergus gives the reader new and old ways of witnessing the West. He touches on both what was regretably true as well as what may hopefully come to pass. In the end, the West remains as elusive as ever, a shadow open to anyone’s interpretation.