Who is the "Indian Killer"?

Who is the Indian Killer? To figure this out I think we have to distinguish first whether the Indian killer is a real person, an ancient spirit, if it stands for a concept or all of these. We have evidence in a way that the Indian Killer is a real person from the chapters involving the kidnapped boy. There is evidence that the killer is flesh and blood from the fact that he carries the child, cares for the child for a period of days, and then returns the child. I do not think it is John as the only evidence we have of John’s violence is when he goes after Wilson. We have proof of this insanity, his mental dialog of wanting to kill a white man. I think Alexie starts out making you assume it will be John. We do have a lot of proof of Reggie’s violence and Aaron’s violence and also verbal hate from Truck. I think Alexie has a deep purpose for everything he writes. So, I think the fact that he feeds us information for each character is to make you ponder the plot, but to also ponder the meaning of the bigger picture. I think this part of it is superficial, like people have commented that the identity of the Indian killer doesn’t matter. The bigger picture or more significant point is the concept that it all stands for. The story is a mix of character traits for each character involving hate, discrimation, lack of indentity, insanity, and violence. We are fed so much of these things about each character that it leaves you wondering. I think the most likely candidate is Reggie, as I think there is a reason that Alexie shows us his pension for violence, hate, abusive background by a white father, his past filled with discrimination, especially his hate for the collection of tapes; really everything that would probably make someone a serial killer or in this case the “Indian Killer”. As the whole point of the book is to show us that white people don’t know what Indians go through, that collections are one sided; I think that Alexie would have an indigenous (cultural; native) purpose for making the Indian Killer an Indian. The article “The violence of Collection” explains that the purpose of the book is for us to see the irony of the role reversal involving the collections taken by white man and how inaccurate they are. The reversal is that the Indian killer is taking collections, this time it is collections of the “white man”. I think Alexie has a purpose for making the last 2 of three chapters about Reggie moving on to a new town. Moving on to the next area to take more collections. He uses Marie’s dialog to give us a further idea as to the reasons and concept behind it and the 500 years that discrimination and ignorance has existed.