The Monsters We Hide: Nachzehrer, Indigenous Decimation, and America’s History in Stephen Graham Jones’s The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
Stephen Graham Jones’s The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (paperback, 2026) is a slow burn of a novel, unraveling as deliberately as its central reckoning— a fictionalized horror of retribution for the real-life historical atrocity of January 1870, when U.S. troops slaughtered over 200 Blackfeet people along the Marias River in Northern Montana. While the plot anchors itself to the events of a single winter morning, its true target is far broader— the systemic decimation, erasure, and lingering haunting of the Indigenous population on American soil.
Guided not by traditional chapters but by entries from a 1912 journal, the narrative forces us to view the past through the unsettling lens of Pastor Arthur Beaucarne, a minister at Trinity Lutheran Church in Miles City, Montana. In his sanctuary, Arthur is visited by Good Stab, a mysterious traveler who sits with the pastor to recount his story. For over a hundred pages, experiencing Good Stab from Arthur’s perspective left me in a state of hyper-vigilant anxiety, constantly asking: “But what is Good Stab exactly? No, seriously! Is he some kind of animal? A feline? Is he human? Definitely, at some point, he was human! But wait…is he a vampire? Is he even real?” Weeks after finishing the book, the question still strikes me out of nowhere in the middle of loading the dishwasher or a long run: “Damn! What is he? A vampire, right?”
Attempting to classify Good Stab is parallel to the novel's core themes— transfiguration and the terrifying ability of human beings to be more than one thing at once, to be more than what they present at face value. While I struggle alongside Arthur to neatly box and solidify who or what Good Stab is, Good Stab steadily pokes at (See what I did there?) Arthur’s perceived identity as somewhat more complex, repeatedly referring to the pastor as Three-Persons. At first, I assumed it represents Arthur’s profession and connection with the Holy Trinity. Yet as the narrative unfolds, the moniker becomes an accusation. Three-Persons reflects a fractured identity; a holy title masking an inherently corrupted history. It subtly exposes the pastor’s hidden hypocrisy. Beneath Arthur’s pastoral robes lies a man defined by terrible, unspeakable past deeds. Why does this (individuals with questionable characters using Christianity as a moral veil) sound soooooo familiar? Oh, wait…
The story reaches a harrowing peak in the journal entry titled “The Absolution of Three Persons - April 23, 1912” (228). The chapter introduces Frieda Zimmerman, a German immigrant and local parishioner, “one of the flock who remember and depend upon the superstitious ways of the Old Country” (229). Frieda approaches the church to ask Arthur about eggs she left for him, but she refuses to cross the threshold. For several years, Trinity Lutheran has been Frieda's sanctuary, but now the physical building, traditionally a space of peace, quietude, and respite, has morphed into something deeply unsettling for her. Arthur notes with blind hubris, “I couldn’t convince her to step over the threshold into this chapel she’s been in every Sunday for the last two years,” naively assuming that reminding her “we’re still in God’s house” would soothe her unease (228, 229). It does not, and for good reason. Frieda’s dread is deeply intuitive, and when an unnerving incident unfolds during the visit, Frieda does not look toward the wilderness or the Native landscape for the source of evil; she looks at Arthur and utters a single word, “Nachzehrer” (232). “WHOA! Is she speaking about the incident or is that directed at Arthur?” I’ve reread that section of the novel several times, and given how the novel unfolds…yeah! She’s definitely speaking directly to Arthur.
In German folklore, a Nachzehrer is a distinct type of vampire; an entity who devours after death or drains the life force of its own community. And Pastor Arthur takes a great deal from the community, depending on women in the community like Frieda to provide his daily meals. And God, can the man eat! Arthur’s immense, almost bottomless, hunger is recurring imagery, “Is this gluttony? Maybe not. He truly appears to be starving!” Yet, by invoking the Nachzehrer, Frieda shatters the colonial illusion of American settler colonialism seeking to paint Indigenous populations as the primitive monsters, the wild beasts, the bloodthirsty "others" lurking beyond constructed colonizer walls. Frieda’s instinct recognizes where the real rot resides (that’s some good alliteration!). The true parasite isn't Good Stab or the surrounding wilderness. It is Arthur, and by extension, the “civilized” institution he represents.
Arthur embodies a settler population that consumes the land, the culture, and the bodies of Native people while claiming the moral high ground. His presence (in the church and on the land) is inherently vampiric, a force that drains life under the guise of salvation. The horror of April 23, 1912 is not that a parishioner discovers the inhumane invading the community chapel, but that the church itself becomes its lair.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is historical fiction laying bare the hauntedness of American history. The anxiety of not knowing what Good Stab is eventually gives way to a far more disturbing realization— the real monsters of the American frontier did not hide in dark, unmapped places. Some of them wore clerical collars, wrote tidy journal entries, and invited you to step inside [insert any church established during Manifest Destiny here]. Revisionists attempt to rewrite and erase wrongs as a form of redemption; a do-over for human error and shame. Yet, history does not overlook nor forget. It is permanent, and so unforgiving.
Sources:
Brown, Dee. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. (New York: Holt, 2000), 177-178.
Endres, Johannes. "Vampires and the Orient in Goethe's 'Die Braut Von Corinth'." German Quarterly 93, no. 2 (Spring, 2020): 204-220.
Jones, Stephen Graham. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. New York: Saga Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, 2026.
Montana Historical Society. Marias (Bear Creek) Massacre. https://mhs.mt.gov/education/IEFA/IEFALessonPlans/Marias-Massacre.