"Pueblo" in Shoulders and Brannen's THE ABC BOOK OF AMERICAN HOMES

This morning, I am looking (online) at the "P" page in Michael Shoulders and Sarah S. Brannen's picture book, The ABC Book of American Homes.

The text reads:

P is for Pueblo. These communal homes were invented by the Pueblo Indians of America's Southwest. Pueblos are apartment-like dwellings with thick walls of adobe, a mixture of dirt, clay, and straw. Since pueblos are made of earthen materials, rain can damage them. For that reason, pueblos are built in very dry places. Although some pueblos are painted, many owners leave them their natural color. These pueblos blend into their surroundings as if they sprang from the earth.

Reading that Pueblo Indians "invented" this style of dwelling sounds odd. Is that word used to describe the structures cultures of the world created? Maybe so. I have to look into it.

Shoulders and Brannen's description of adobe walls is not wrong, but it isn't right either. The walls are made of dirt, clay, and straw. But how? These are raw materials, but just how do they become walls?

I know the answer to that question because I helped my father and grandfather make adobe bricks. We made thousands for the home that my parents live in today. "Dirt, clay, and straw" is only partially correct. The "dirt" in New Mexico has a lot of clay in it. We use dirt, sand, and straw. I know the straw makes the adobe brick hold together better, much like rebar strengthens cement. I assume the sand does the same thing, but I'd have to ask my dad. (Regular readers of American Indians in Children's Literature know that I am tribally enrolled at Nambe Pueblo in northern New Mexico. Nambe is a couple of hours away from Taos.)

Because the adobe brick (and the walls) have a lot of clay in them, they are actually quite resistant to water. New Mexico is considered to be a dry place, but it does rain and snow a lot. The adobe brick walls are plastered with an adobe plaster. Though rain does erode the plaster and it can get to the adobe bricks beneath, repairs are simple.

Shoulders and Brannen say that, due to the problems of rain, pueblos are built in 'very dry places.' That doesn't make sense. It suggests that the pueblo people tried to build adobe homes in other places but decided they could only be built in a dry place, so, they (Pueblo people), wanting to make homes out of adobe, had to look for a dry place to build them. That's backwards. Any culture, any people, anywhere around the world, builds with resources at-hand.

The text says "some pueblos are painted."  As I read the text, the use of "pueblos" is incorrect. Its used indiscriminately. A more correct use would be "some pueblo homes" are painted. Pueblo is the entire village, not just the structure. The book is showing Taos Pueblo. Most of the structures like the one they show are hundreds of years old and generally speaking they have an adobe mud plaster that cannot be painted. Walls that are painted today are those that are plastered with a cement-based stucco.


As I study the illustration, it is obvious that the illustrator is depicting Taos Pueblo, located in northern New Mexico. Cues are the mountains in the background, and the blue doors and windows on some of the homes.  Errors in the illustration include:

• If you study photographs of Taos, you will see that most of those blue doors are screendoors, not front doors. The homes have both---screen doors, and front doors, and windows with glass and screens over those glass windows. One might argue that it is a small distinction, but, the illustration in ABC Book of American Homes also includes children in present-day clothing, so, it is reasonable to show the screen doors. I notice this particular aspect of the doors because in a lot of tourist brochures, items like screens, glass windows, telephone wires and the like are photo-shopped out of the image in order to portray a more "untouched by civilization" image.

• The logs that protrude from the upper section of the walls are vigas (beams) that support the roof. The home in the foreground on the "P" page has tiny logs protruding, and most of the ones in the background have none at all.

• The illustrator put way too many ladders in the illustrations. One way I can interpret that is that Shoulders/Brannen thought that every family would have a ladder all their own rather than sharing one ladder amongst several families. The idea of 'community' is lost.

My analysis of this page might seem picky, but these small details add up, on this page, and to the already-massive body of misinformation about American Indians.

It would not have been difficult to get these items right. I don't have the book itself, so my comments are specific to a single page in the book.

Who is "Mary Whitebird"

Who is Mary Whitebird?

A post to LM_NET prompted my search to see what I could find out about Mary Whitebird and a story called "Ta-Na-E-Ka." The person using that name (Mary Whitebird) wrote the story. From what I am able to determine, the story was first published in 1972 in Scholastic Voices. Since then, the short story has been published in reading textbooks for use in schools. I've found many references to the story.

For example, Carl A. Grant and Christine E. Sleeter reference it in their Turning on Learning: Five Approaches for Multicultural Teaching Plans for Race, Class, Gender and Disability, published in 2006. At the end of chapter six, "Multicultural and Social Justice Education" is a list of suggested procedures. The first item reads "Choose multicultural selections from the literature text Elements of Literature (Anderson, 2005) that highlight issues of social class and power in the United States--for example, Ta-Na-E-Ka, by Mary Whitebird" (p. 280). Later in the paragraph, they write "Each week throughout the quarter, the students will read, discuss, and explore these stories using the textbook's critical reading questions and exercises that highlight marginalized peoples' experiences with injustice. For possible extension, students could research a marginalized culture's history such as the Kaw Indians, introduced in the story Ta-Na-E-Ka, by Mary Whitebird." (p. 280).

I found the story itself on a worksheet published (and copyrighted) by the International Baccalaureate Organization in 2006.

Set in the present day, the story is about a soon-to-be eleven year old Kaw girl named Mary and her eleven year old cousin, Roger. Eleven is "a magic word" among the Kaws, because that is the year when children go through a test of endurance and survival called Ta-Na-E-Ka by which they become adults. Mary does not want to go through this ritual. She complains to her mom and her schoolteacher. Her mother tells her she'll be proud she did it, and her teacher tells her not to look down on her heritage.

According to Mary's grandfather, they should spend five days in the wilderness, naked and barefoot, living off the land. Mary's grandfather puts them through one month of training that includes how to eat grasshoppers.  Mary and Roger's parents object to the naked part, so, the children get to wear bathing suits. This all takes place somewhere along the Missouri River, in the springtime.

As I read the story, I had a lot of questions, and, like the post on LM_NET, I wondered about the author. One individual emailed me, saying that there is no biographical information in the textbook for this author. That sort of information is provided for all the other authors in the textbook. I'm hoping to get a copy of the textbook so I can see how the story is presented.

So far, all roads-of-research on 'who is Mary Whitebird' lead to the Wikipedia site that says Mary Whitebird is a pseudonym for "a writer who has long had an interest in the life of the American Indian in the late 20th century." This writer is "In reality, [...] a very private writer and film-maker who was born in Arizona." That information is followed by an explanation on why someone might assume a pen name and write Indian stories. In reply is a quote attributed to the person who writes as "Mary Whitebird."

Ever since I could remember, I've been interested in the American Indian. I went to high school with a number of Seneca and Onondaga Indians, who lived in Rochester, New York. While I was in the army, I was stationed in west Texas. I was the editor of the post newspaper, and had more free time than most soldiers and more access on and off the military base. One of my friends was a Sac and Fox Indian from Oklahoma. With him, we drove to all the neighboring reservations (mostly Apache) and I saw firsthand some of the injustices (this was in the early 50s) accorded he Indians. I wrote some letters about it to the local newspaper. Since the army did not look kindly toward soldiers getting involved in controversial public issues, I signed my letters M. Whitebird. It was just a name that sounded generally Indian to me.

I met a teenage Navajo girl who was having a hard time balancing her desire to explore the greater world and her allegiance to Navajo customs. From Jenny (whose Navajo name was Granddaughter-of-he-who-Sings) I got the character of Mary Whitebird. 

Of the story, he says:

Ta-Na-E-Ka is based on a ceremony of the Kaw Indians. My wife comes from Nebraska. My father-in-law visits the Omaha and Winnebago reservations in Nebraska regularly, and there are few Indians there of Kaw ancestry. Almost no full-blooded Kaw exist; they were a subtribe of the Kansas. Tuburculosis and cholera wiped them out about 70 years ago. But I learned of the ceremony from my father-in-law. And, I wrote the story.

The Wikipedia page on "Mary Whitebird" ends with two quotes from letters the author of Ta-Na-E-Ka has received. The first is from a Cherokee girl in Oklahoma (no name is provided) who writes "Only an Indian could have written this." The last line is "Of course, the author was pleased" with the letter because he is not Indian.

Though this is not a folktale, we can pose Betsy Hearne's source note questions to "Mary Whitebird's" notes about this story.

• He went to high school with Seneca and Onondaga students.
• One of his friends (while in the army) was Sac and Fox.
• He and his Sac and Fox friend visited Apache reservations.
• He met a Navajo girl.
• His wife is from Nebraska.
• His father-in-law visits Omaha and Winnebago reservations, where there are a few Kaw Indians.
  
• His father in law told him about the Ta-Na-E-Ka ceremony.
  

Apparently, that set of facts are meant to tell his readers that he knows what he is talking about. But does he? 

When he does talk about the Kaw people, he speaks of them in the past tense because, he says, they were wiped out 70 years ago.  But...

When did he say all that? In 1972? Is it with the story, somewhere, maybe in Scholastic Voice?

You can go to the Kaw Nation's website. Their site says they have 3,039 tribal members "scattered across the United States." It is possible, then, that "Mary Whitebird's" father-in-law came across some in Nebraska...   The website also includes a lot of Kaw language materials. I can't find any of the words "Mary Whitebird" uses on their site.

All in all, "Mary Whitebird's" background info (source note) sounds odd. Unreliable. Stereotypical. Exotic.

And, WHY, is that story STILL being printed in the textbook? WHY has the publisher not looked for a story by a KNOWN NATIVE AUTHOR? And WHY are Grant and Sleeter referencing it so uncritically?

It is disheartening, how much we (Americans, generally speaking) STILL DO NOT KNOW about American Indians.

I'm still thinking about this story, and will continue to research it and its author...