Sam Blowsnake

Sam Blowsnake (a.k.a., Crashing Thunder, Big Winnebego; born 1875) was a Winnebago Indian best known as the attributed author of the autobiography Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of an American Indian.

Life Blowsnake was born in Black River Falls, Wisconsin in 1875 to a father of the Thunder clan and a mother, named Bends the Boughs, of the Eagle Clan; his parents were later known in English as Charles Blowsnake and Lucy Goodvillage. Sam Blowsnake was their fifth child.

Finally, in 1926, Radin published Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of an American Indian. In this work, as in all his previous works concerning Blowsnake with the exception of the chapter in American Indian Life, Radin insisted that he had not influenced Blowsnake's telling in any way. However, Radin notes in the preface to Crashing Thunder that Blowsnake was reluctant to tell his autobiography at all, and that it was only at Radin's insistence that he did so. Furthermore, in his reworking of the 92-page "The Autobiography of an American Indian" into the 203-page Crashing Thunder, Radin silently rephrased, re-arrangeed, and in some cases, added to the narrative attributed to Blowsnake in the earlier work. There has therefore been extensive debate as to whether Crashing Thunder should be read primarily as an autobiography written by Blowsnake which Radin merely edited, or as an original creation of Radin's merely inspired by Blowsnake's life. In any case, there is consensus that Radin's claims to scientific objectivity in the work are contradicted by his methods.