Still Not Recommended: THE SECRET PROJECT by Jonah and Jeanette Winter

Some conversations about my review of Jonah and Jeanette Winter's The Secret Project suggest that I didn't say enough, back in March. I'm back, therefore, to say more. Some of what I wrote in March is being interpreted as innuendo and destructive. In saying more, this review is much longer. I anticipate that some who read it will continue with the "nit picking" charge that has already been leveled. 

Some people read my reviews and think I'm being too picky because I focus on seemingly little or insignificant aspect of a book. The things I pointed out in March were not noted in the starred reviews by the major review journals, but the things I pointed out have incensed people who, apparently, fear that my review will persuade the Caldecott Award Committee that The Secret Project does not merit its award. 

In fact, we'll never know if my review is even discussed by the committee. Their deliberations are confidential. The things I point out matter to me, and they should matter to anyone who is committed to accuracy and inclusivity in any children's books--whether they win awards or not. 

****

The Secret Project, by Jonah and Jeanette Winter, was published in February of 2017 by Simon and Schuster. It is a picture book about the making of the atomic bomb. 

I'm reading and reviewing the book as a Pueblo Indian woman, mother, scholar, and educator who focuses on the ways that Native peoples are depicted in children's and young adult books. 

I spent (and spend) a lot of time in Los Alamos and that area. My tribal nation is Nambé which is located about 30 miles from Los Alamos, which is the setting for The Secret Project. My dad worked in Los Alamos. A sister still does. The first library card I got was from Mesa Public Library. 

Near Los Alamos is Bandelier National Park. It, Chaco Canyon, and Mesa Verde are well known places. There are many sites like them that are less well known. They're all through the southwest. Some are marked, others are not. For a long time, people who wrote about those places said that the Anasazi people lived there, and that they had mysteriously disappeared. Today, what Pueblo people have known for centuries is accepted by others: present-day Pueblo people are descendants of those who once lived there. We didn't disappear. 

What I shared above is what I bring to my reading and review of The Secret Project. Though I'm going to point to several things I see as errors of fact or bias, my greatest concern is the pages about kachina dolls and the depiction of what is now northern New Mexico as a place where "nobody" lived.

"In the beginning"

Here is the first page in The Secret Project:

The words are:  

In the beginning, there was just a peaceful desert mountain landscape, 

The illustration shows a vast and empty space and suggests that pretty much nothing was there. When I see that sort of thing in a children's book, I notice it because it plays into the idea that this continent was big and had plenty of land and resources--for the taking. In fact, it belonged (and some of it still belongs) to Indigenous peoples and our respective Native Nations.

"In the beginning" works for some people. It doesn't work for me because a lot of children's books depict an emptyness that suggests land that is there for the taking, land that wasn't being used in the ways Europeans, and later, US citizens, would use it.

I used the word "erase" in my first review. That word makes a lot of people angry. It implies a deliberate decision to remove something that was there before. Later in the book, Jonah Winter's text refers to Hopi people who had been making kachina dolls "for centuries." His use of "for centuries" tells me that the Winter's knew that the Hopi people pre-date the ranch in Los Alamos. I could say that maybe they didn't know that Pueblo people pre-date the ranch--right there in Los Alamos--and that's why their "in the beginning" worked for them, but a later illustration in the book shows local people, some who could be Pueblo, passing through the security gate.

Ultimately, what the Winter's they knew when they made that page doesn't really matter, because intent does not matter. We have a book, in hand. The impact of the book on readers--Native or not--is what matters.

Back in March, I did an update to my review about a Walking Tour of Los Alamos that shows an Ancestral Pueblo very near Fuller Lodge. Here's a map showing that, and a photo of that site

The building in Jeanette Winter's illustration is meant to be the Big House that scientists moved into when they began work at the Los Alamos site of the Manhattan Project. Here's a juxtaposition of an early photograph and her illustration. Clearly, Jeanette Winter did some research.

In her illustration, the Big House is there, all by itself. In reality, the site didn't look like that in 1943. The school itself was started in 1917 (some sources say that boys started arriving in 1918), but by the time the school was taken over by the US government, there were far more buildings than just that one. Here's a list of them, described at The Atomic Heritage Foundation's website:

The Los Alamos Ranch School comprised 54 buildings: 27 houses, dormitories, and living quarters totaling 46,626 sq. ft., and 27 miscellaneous buildings: a public school, an arts & crafts building, a carpentry shop, a small sawmill, barns, garages, sheds, and an ice house totaling 29,560 sq. ft.

I don't have a precise date for this photograph (below) from the US Department of Energy's The Manhattan Project website. It was taken after the project began. The scope of the project required additional buildings. You see them in the photo, but the photo also shows two of the buildings that were part of the school: the Big House, and Fuller Lodge (for more photos and information see Fuller Lodge). I did not draw those circles or add that text. That is directly from the site.

Here's the second illustration in the book:

The boys who went to the school in 1945 were not from the people whose families lived in that area. An article in the Santa Fe New Mexican says that:

The students came from well-to-do families across the nation, and many went on to Ivy League colleges and prominent careers. Among them were writer Gore Vidal; former Sears, Roebuck and Co. President Arthur Wood; Hudson Motor Co. founder Roy Chapin; Santa Fe Opera founder John Crosby; and John Shedd Reed, president for nearly two decades of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.

The change from a school to a laboratory

Turning to the next double page spread, we see the school principal reading a letter from the US government. The man's name was A. J. Connell, and he was the director of the school. The letter (shown here, to the right) was sent to the director on December 7, 1942, saying the boys would have to leave by Feb. 8, 1943. Facing that page in the book is the scene where the boys had been playing games earlier, but now, there's no boys there. They've left behind a ball and a pair of shoes. 

In his review of The Secret Project, Sam Juliano wrote that this take over was "a kind of eminent domain maneuver." It was, and, as Melissa Green said in a comment at Reading While White's discussion of the book,

In her review Debbie Reese observed an elite boy’s school — Los Alamos Ranch School — whose students were “not from the communities of northern New Mexico at that time.” Of course not: local kids wouldn’t have qualified — local kids wouldn’t be “elite”, because they wouldn’t have been white. The very school whose loss is mourned (at least as I can tell from the reviews: I haven’t yet read the book) is a white school built on lands already stolen from the Pueblo people. And the emptiness of the land, otherwise…? It wasn't empty. But even when Natives are there, we white people have a bad habit — often a willful habit — of not seeing them.

Green put her finger on something I've been trying to articulate. The loss of the school is mourned. The illustration invites that response, for sure, and I understand that emotion. Green notes that the land belonged to Pueblo people before it became the school and then the lab ("the lab" is shorthand used by people who are from there). There's no mourning for our loss in this book. Honestly: I don't want anyone to mourn. Instead, I want more people to speak about accuracy in the ways that Native people are depicted or left out of children's books. 

The Atomic Heritage Organization has a timeline, indicating that people began arriving at Los Alamos in March, 1943. On the next double paged spread of The Secret Project, we see cars of scientists arriving at the site. On the facing page, other workers are brought in, to cook, to clean, and to guard. The workers are definitely from the local population. Some people look at that page and use it to argue that I'm wrong to say that the Winter's erased Pueblo people in those first pages, but the "nobody" framework reappears a few pages later.

By the way, the Manhattan Project Voices site has oral histories you can listen to, like the interview with Lydia Martinez from El Rancho, which is a Spanish community next to San Ildefonso Pueblo. 

The next two pages are about the scientists, working, night and day, on the "Gadget." In my review, I am not looking at the science. In his review, Edward Sullivan (I know his name and work from many discussions in children's literature circles) wrote about some problems with the text of The Secret Project. I'm sharing it here, for your convenience:

There was no "real name" for the bomb called the Gadget. "Gadget" was a euphemism for an implosion-type bomb that contained a plutonium core. Like the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Gadget was officially a Y-1561 device. The text is inaccurate in suggesting work at Site Y involved experimenting with atoms, uranium, or plutonium. The mission of Site Y was to create a bomb that would deliver either a uranium or plutonium core. The plutonium used in Gadget for the Trinity test was manufactured at a massive secret complex in Hanford, Washington. Uranium, used in the Hiroshima bomb, was manufactured at another massive secret complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. There are other factual errors I'm not going to go into here. Winter's audacious ambition to write a picture book story about the first atomic bomb is laudable but there are too many factual errors and omissions here to make this effort anything other than misleading. 

The art of that area...

Turning the page, we next see two outdoor scenes:

The text on those pages is:

Outside the laboratory, nobody knows they are there. Outside, there are just peaceful desert mountains and mesas, cacti, coyotes, prairie dogs. Outside the laboratory, in the faraway nearby, artists are painting beautiful paintings.

In my initial review, I noted the use of "nobody" on that page. Who does "nobody" refer to? I said then, and now, that a lot of people who lived in that area knew the scientists were there. They may not have been able to speak about what the scientists were doing, but they knew they were there. The Winter's use of the word "nobody" fits with a romantic way of thinking about the southwest. Coyotes howling, cactus, prairie dogs, gorgeous scenery--but people were there, too. 

I think the text and illustration on the right are a tribute to Georgia O'Keeffe who lived in Abiquiu. I think Jeanette Winter's illustration is meant to be O'Keeffe, painting Pedernal. That illustration is out of sync, timewise. O'Keeffe painted it in 1941, which is two years prior to when the scientists got started at Los Alamos.  

The next double-paged spread is one that prompted a great deal of discussion at the Reading While White review:

The text reads:

Outside the laboratory, in the faraway nearby, Hopi Indians are carving beautiful dolls out of wood as they have done for centuries. Meanwhile, inside the laboratory, the shadowy figures are getting closer to completing their secret invention.

In my initial review, I said this:

Hopi? That's over 300 miles away in Arizona. Technically, it could be the "faraway" place the Winter's are talking about, but why go all the way there? San Ildefonso Pueblo is 17 miles away from Los Alamos. Why, I wonder, did the Winter's choose Hopi? I wonder, too, what the take-away is for people who read the word "dolls" on that page? On the next page, one of those dolls is shown hovering over the lodge where scientists are working all night. What will readers make of that? 

Reaction to that paragraph is a primary reason I've done this second review. I said very little, which left people to fill in gaps.

Some people read my "why did the Winter's choose Hopi" as a suggestion that the Winter's were dissing Pueblo people by using a Hopi man instead of a Pueblo one. That struck me as an odd thing for that person to say, but I realized that I know something that person doesn't know: The Hopi are Pueblo people, too. They happen to be in the state now called Arizona, but they, and we--in the state now called New Mexico, are similar. In fact, one of the languages spoken at Hopi is the same one spoken at Nambé.

Some people thought I was objecting to the use of the word "dolls" because that's not the right word for them. They pointed to various websites that use that word. That struck me as odd, too, but I see that what I said left a gap that they filled in.

When I looked at that page, I wondered if maybe the Winter's had made a trip to Los Alamos and maybe to Bandelier, and had possibly seen an Artist in Residence who happened to be a Hopi man working on kachina dolls. I was--and am--worried that readers would think kachina dolls are toys. And, I wondered what readers would make of that one on the second page, hovering over the lodge.

What I was asking is: do children and adults who read this book have the knowledge they need to know that kachina dolls are not toys? They have spiritual significance. They're used for teaching purposes. And they're given to children in specific ways. We have some in my family--given to us in ways that I will not disclose. As children, we're taught to protect our ways. The voice of elders saying "don't go tell your teachers what we do" is ever-present in my life. This protection is there because Native peoples have endured outsiders--for centuries--entering our spaces and writing about things they see. Without an understanding of what they see, they misinterpret things.

The facing page, the one that shows a kachina hovering over the lodge, is not in full color. It is a ghost-like rendering of the one on the left:

We might say that the Winter's know that there is a spiritual significance to them, but the Winter's use of them is their use. Here's a series of questions. Some could be answered. My asking of them isn't a quest for answers. The questions are meant to ask people to reflect on them.

• Would a Hopi person use a kachina that way? 
• Which kachina is that? On that first page, Jeanette Winter shows several different ones, but what does she know about each one? 
• What is Jeanette Winter's source? Are those accurate renderings? Or are they her imaginings? 
• Why did Jeanette Winter use that one, in that ghost-like form, on that second page? Is it trying to tell them to stop? Is it telling them (or us) that it is watching the men because they're doing a bad thing? 

The point is, there's a gap that must be filled in by the reader. How will people fill in that gap? What knowledge will they turn to, or seek out, to fill that gap?

In the long exchange at Reading While White, Sam Juliano said that information about kachina dolls is on Wikipedia and all over the Internet. He obviously thinks information he finds is sufficient, but I disagree. Most of what is on the Internet is by people who are not themselves, Native. We've endured centuries of researchers studying this or that aspect of our lives. They did not know what they were looking at, but wrote about it anyway, from a White perspective. Some of that research led to policies that hurt us. Some of it led to thefts of religious items. Finally, laws were passed to protect us. One is the Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978 (some good info here), and another is the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, passed in 1990. With that as context, I look at that double-paged spread and wonder: how it is going to impact readers?

The two page spread with kachinas looks -- to some people -- like a good couple of pages because they suggest an honoring of Hopi people. However, any "honoring" that lacks substance is just as destructive as derogatory imagery. In fact, that "honoring" sentiment is why this country cannot seem to let go of mascots. People generally understand that derogatory imagery is inappropriate, but cannot seem to understand that romantic imagery is also a problem for the people being depicted, and for the people whose pre-existing views are being affirmed by that romantic image.

Update, Monday Oct 23, 8:00 AM
Conversations going on elsewhere about the kachina dolls insist that Jeanette Winter knows what she is doing, because she has a library of books about kachina dolls, because she's got a collection of them, and because she's had conversations with the people who made them. Unless she says something, we don't know, and in the end, what she knows does not matter. What we have is in the book she produced. In a case like this, it would have been ideal to have some information in the back matter and for some of her sources to have been included in the bibliography. If she talked with someone at the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, it would have been terrific to have a note about that in the back matter, too.

Other conversations suggest that readers would know that kachinas have a religious meaning. Some would, but others do not. Some see them as a craft item that kids can do. There are many how-to pages about making them using items like toilet paper rolls. And, there are pages about what to name the kachina dolls being made. Those pages point to a tremendous lack of understanding and a subsequent trivialization of Native cultures.

Curtains

One result of these long-standing misrepresentations and exploitations is this: For some time now, Native people have drawn curtains (in reality, and in the abstract) on what we do and what we share. As a scholar in children's literature, I've been adding "curtains" to Rudine Sims Bishop's metaphor of books as mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. There are things people do not share with outsiders.

Tribal nations have protocols for researchers who want to do research. Of relevance here is the information at the website for the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office. There are books about researchers, like Linda Tuhiwai Smith's Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, now in its 2nd edition.

My point: there are resources out there that can help writers, editors, reviewers, teachers, parents and librarians grow in their understandings of all of this.

The Land of Enchantment

The last page that I want to talk about in some detail is this one:

The text is:

Sometimes the shadowy figures emerge from the shadows, pale and tired and hallow-eyed, and go to the nearby town.

That nearby town is meant to be Santa Fe. See the woman seated on the right, holding a piece of pottery? The style of those two buildings and her presence suggests that they're driving into the plaza. It looks to me like they're on a dirt road. I think the roads into Santa Fe were already paved by then. See the man with the burro? I think that's out of time, too. The Manhattan Project Voices page has a photograph of the 109 E. Palace Avenue from that time period. It was the administrative office where people who were part of the Manhattan Project reported when they arrived in Santa Fe:

You can find other photos like that, too. Having grown up at Nambé, I have an attachment to our homelands. Visitors, past-and-present, have felt its special qualities, too. That’s why so many artists moved there and it is why so many people move there now. I don’t know who first called it “the land of enchantment” but that’s its moniker. Too often, outsiders lose perspective that it is a land where brutal violence took place. What we saw with the development of the bomb is one recent violent moment, but it is preceded by many others. Romanticizing my homeland tends to erase its violent past. The art in The Secret Project gets at the horror of the bomb, but it is marred by the romantic ways that the Winter's depicted Native peoples.

Update, Oct 19, 9:15 AM
Below, in a comment from Sam Juliano, he says that the text of the book does not say that the scientists were going to the plaza in Santa Fe. He is correct. The text does not say that on that page. Here's the next illustration in the book:

That is the plaza. Other than the donkeys, the illustration is accurate. Of course, a donkey could have been there, but it is not likely at that time. If you were on the sidewalk, one of those buildings shown would be the Palace of the Governors. Its "porch" is famous as a place where Native artists sell their work. In the previous illustration, I think Jeanette Winter was depicting one of the artists who sells their work there, at the porch. Here's a present-day photo of Native artists there. (It is, by the way, where I recommend you buy art. Money spent there goes directly to the artist.)  

  

Some concluding thoughts

The Secret Project got starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly, the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, The Horn Book, Booklist, and Kirkus. None of the reviews questioned the Native content or omissions. The latter are harder for most people to see, but I am disappointed that they did not spend time (or write about, if they did) on the pages with the kachina dolls. 

I fully understand why people like this book. I especially understand that, under the current president, many of us fear a nuclear war. This book touches us in an immediate way, because of that sense of doom. But--we cannot let fear boost this book into winning an award that has problems of accuracy, especially when it is a work of nonfiction.

There are people who think I'm trying to destroy this book. As has been pointed out here and elsewhere, it got starred reviews. My review and my "not recommended" tag is not going to destroy this book.

What I've offered here, back in March, and on the Reading While White page is not going to destroy this book. It has likely made the Winter's uncomfortable or angry. It has certainly made others feel angry.

I do not think the Winter's are racist. I do think, however, that there's things they did not know that they do know now. I know for a fact that they have read what I've written. I know it was upsetting to them. That's ok, though. Learning about our own ignorance is unsettling. I have felt discomfort over my own ignorance, many times. In the end, what I do is try to help people see depictions of Native peoples from what is likely to be their non-Native perspective. I want books to be better than they are, now. And I also know that many writers value what I do.

Now, I'm hitting the upload button (at 8:30 AM on Tuesday, October 17th). I hope it is helpful to anyone who is reading the book or considering buying it. I may have typos in what I've written, or passages that don't make sense. Let me know! And of course, if you've got questions or comments, please let me know.

___________

If you've submitted a comment that includes a link to another site and it didn't work after you submitted the comment, I'll insert them here, alphabetically.

Caldecott Medal Contender: The Secret Project
submitted by Sam Juliano, who asked people to see comments, there, about me (note: tks to Ricky for letting me know I had the incorrect link for Sam Juliano's page. It is correct now.)

Guidelines for Respecting Cultural Knowledge (Assembly of Alaska Native Educators, 2000)
submitted by Melissa Green

Indigenous Intellectual Property (Wikipedia)
submitted by Melissa Green

Intellectual Property Rights (Hopi Cultural Preservation Office)
submitted by Melissa Green

Reviewing While White: The Secret Project
submitted by Melissa Green

Jodi Lynn Anderson's TIGER LILY - Part 2

Back in June, I read part of Jodi Lynn Anderson's Tiger Lily. I didn't like what I read and posted my thoughts. The book is now on School Library Journal's "Best of 2012" list, so I got it out of the library and read it today. These are my initial thoughts.

Basics: 

• The story is set in the time prior to Wendy's arrival at Neverland. 
• The narrator is Tinker Bell. 
• There are tribes. They live in these three villages: SkyEaters, Cliff Dwellers, and Bog Dwellers.
• I don't think Anderson uses the word 'Indian' anywhere in the book. She uses 'tribe' and 'warrior' and 'warriors' and 'shaman.'  

What I don't like:
Here's what stands out to me right now. I've got lots and lots of notes, but as I close the book and set it down, this is what is in my mind.

First concern: the names Anderson created for the Native characters. For years and years, non-Native writers have created outlandish names for their characters. In the process, they intentionally or not, trivialize and mock something that matters to us a great deal. Russell Hoban did it in Soonchild. Jon Scieszka did it in My Oh Maya. Here's the names in Tiger Lily:

Pine Sap
Stone
Moon Eye
Tik Tok
Magnolia Bud
Aunt Fire
Aunt Sticky Feet
Bat Wing
Silk Whiskers
Red Leaf
Bear Claw

Tik Tok is the name of the village shaman. We don't know what his name was to start with, but once he finds the clock and hears its tick tock, he decides to have a ceremony and change his name to Tik Tok. It makes him seem a foolish and silly person.

Tik Tok finds Tiger Lily under a tiger lily flower and names her after it. Aunt Sticky Feet was named that way because of the time she had walked through hot tar and then got her foot stuck to a chicken that ran into her path.

Some of you may have heard the crass joke about how an Indian is named after the first thing the person bestowing the name sees in the morning, or just at the moment he/she is about to give a name to someone. It is a racist joke, and as such, it isn't funny, and neither are the humorous names authors create for their characters (whether they directly call their characters Indian or not).

Second concern: Tik Tok is a transgender character. He wears purple and raspberry colored dresses. Once I got past the name, I liked him. I liked him a lot. But then, the Englander named Philip moves into the village and turns the people against him. Instead of listening to Tik Tok, they cluster around Philip and stories of his god. In Anderson's story, the villagers are simpletons. Though, by the end of the story, they've rejected Christianity and returned to their own ways, Anderson's characterization of them is troubling. This may be Neverland to her, but to me, she's playing with very painful history in which Indigenous peoples fought very hard to defend their ways of life.

It was very hard for me to read the pages about what happens to Tik Tok. Because of pressure from Philip and the villagers rejection of him in favor of Philip, he decides he cannot live his life as a man who wears dresses and long hair anymore. He lets Philip cut his hair. It was painful to read that part, and I'm not sure that Anderson knows just how that scene will impact Native readers.

Not long after that, Tik Tok commits suicide. That was painful to read, too, though it isn't spelled out as graphically as the hair cutting is. Same thing with Moon Eye's rape. It is not graphically laid out, but there is enough there that it is painful to read.

Reviewers note that Tiger Lily is very dark, but for me, its darkness is one of ignorance--not the ugly racism Anderson seeks to expose--but the exposure of her own ignorance of what certain things in history might mean to a Native reader. As for the naming, I don't know how to characterize it. When I've had time to think about Tiger Lily a bit more, I'll likely write some more, but that's what I've got for now.

------------------------------------------------------------
Update, Thursday, December 13th, 10:12 AM

Picking up where I left off last night... I have additional concerns.

The tribal people, obviously, had their own language prior to the arrival of the Englanders. But, when the Englanders first arrive (prior to the setting of Tiger Lily), they brought their language with them and gave it as "a gift" (page 10) to the Bog Dwellers, who in turn, gave it to the other tribes. Remember, it is Tinker Bell who is narrating, and it is she who calls English a gift. Maybe Tiger Lily has a different view of English, but we don't know.

Stepping into a broader context, Native peoples in the U.S. who were sent to boarding schools were beaten when they spoke their own language. The result is that Indigenous languages are in decline. In that context, it is callous to see English called "a gift." I assume Anderson needed to insert English into the narrative because Tik Tok and Pine Sap read books written by Englanders. One is Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. On page 64, Pine Sap is reading "Song of myself" aloud to Tiger Lily. Ironically, I imagine that Whitman is one of the poets Native students had to read in the boarding schools. On page 33, Anderson's reference to an old mission tells us she must have some knowledge of missionary activities. Perhaps she views missionaries as benevolent, and that's why she calls English a gift. Anderson is a gifted writer. Couldn't she have figured out a way to problematize English as "a gift"?

On page 84, when Tiger Lily first meets the Lost Boys, Tootles tells her that she has hairy arms, and that girls aren't supposed to have hairy arms. Tiger Lily is embarrassed and thinks about "photos of the English ladies she'd seen, smooth and white, and for a moment, it made her sad." We know Tiger Lily's thoughts because Tinker Bell can hear them. Was Tiger Lily sad that her skin wasn't smooth and white? Later in the book, Wendy's skin is described as "cloudlike with whiteness." Wendy showers Peter and the boys with admiration. They "can't take their eyes off her" (p. 235). In the end, Peter chooses Wendy. We know he chooses Wendy---it is, after all---Barre's story that Anderson is working with. I don't know what to make of all this. It is more complicated than a simple elevation of white over dark skin, but the messages it imparts are troubling.

A few words about the photos... We aren't told where she saw those photos. Are they in books left behind by the missionaries? Leaves of Glass was published in 1855, which is right around the time that it was beginning to be easier to reproduce photographs. I don't know about the dates at which books with photographs in them would be circulating. Course, Tiger Lily is a work of fantasy and we can't really say what time period it is set in, but the reference to Whitman and a later reference to the end of sailing and steamships (in favor of "newer and quicker machines" (p. 279) do give us a time period to work with. She probably was seeing photographs of English ladies, if not in books, then actual photographs.

Do I find anything to like about Tiger Lily? I'm reluctant to say, because I don't want my comments taken out of context to indicate that I recommend the book. I don't recommend it. I find Tiger Lily very troubling, and I find it troubling that reviewers are praising it. Didn't any of them have a niggling of any kind that might suggest it isn't deserving of all that praise? I suppose they like her writing. She is a good writer. I just wish she had not used her art in this book.  

William O. Steele's THE BUFFALO KNIFE

A reader wrote to ask about William O. Steele's The Buffalo Knife. I have not read the book and prior to her letter, did not know anything about it. I've spent some time looking into it, though, and am sharing my thoughts here.

The book was first published in the 1952. In 1990 it was reissued with an introduction by Jean Fritz. It is an "Odyssey/Harcourt Young Classic." Another one (Flaming Arrows) with that designation was published later (in 1957). In Flaming Arrows, the protagonist and his family, according to the "Product Description" on Amazon, have to take "refuge from vicious Chickamauga raiding parties." Judy Crowder's review in the Children's Literature Comprehensive Database (CLCD) references Fritz's note. Crowder writes:

Jean Fritz, in the 1990 forward, explains that when the author--very much a historian--wrote such words as "redskins" or "savages" he was reflecting the language and attitudes of the times, which Steel found as objectionable as modern readers might. However, more subtle mindsets of the mid-twentieth century may rattle the sensibilities of today's young reader. First, the settlers' shooting the raiders as if they were deadly pests instead of human beings is unsettling. Chad himself yearns to "shoot me an Injun," and when he does, his only reaction is that of a job well done and he is disappointed when he is not praised for it. The pioneers also act as if the forests and wild animals were only there to be exploited--again, probably true to the times, but bothersome none the less. Parents and teachers should stand ready to do some careful debriefing when their children/students read this adventure.

Contrast what she said with Frank Quinby's remarks about Fritz's note in his review of The Buffalo Knife. His review is also in the Children's Literature Comprehensive Database. He wrote:

"A useful introduction by Jean Fritz includes an explanation of Steele's use of such terms as "redskins" and "savages" as being reflective of the language of the time period and as such not offensive."

The Horn Book Guide gave both books its "Superior, well above average" rating.

As I studied the entries in CLCD, I saw that the "Subject" field includes "Prejudices Fiction". That subject is not listed for either book in the Library of Congress record for either book. I'll have to look into that later. For now, I want to return to Jean Fritz's note.

According to Crowder and Quinby, her note says that Steele's book reflects language and attitudes of the time period. I wonder which time period Fritz means. Is she talking about 1782, the setting for The Buffalo Knife? Or is she talking about 1952, when the book was published?

And of course, who is Fritz talking about? Who used that language? And, who had those attitudes?

In my experience, that response "that's what they thought back then" is quickly offered whenever someone questions the bias and racism embodied in that language and attitude in children's and young adult literature. My friend and colleague, Jean Mendoza, says it well when she says that surely the Indian people of that time did not use that language about each other, nor did they harbor those attitudes.

I've said that perhaps those who used that language and held such attitudes were like people on Fox News. Many of us have said that not all the white people held those attitudes either. Just some. Not all.

Several years ago, I was at the Bienecke Rare Books Library at Yale, reading some old papers housed there. I read the diary of a soldier, dated 1759-1762. In several places, he refers to Indians they fought, but he didn't say "savage/savages" and he didn't use words like "bloodthirsty." Just the words "Indian" or "Indians." I also read through a document that was a dialogue between several missionaries. Dated in 1795, it is an account of their work with "the Delawares, the 6 Nations, the Mahikands, and some smaller tribes." For the most part, the missionaries used the word Indians. There were a few uses of "heathen" but not many.

On my desk is Volume I of Documents of American Indian Diplomacy: Treaties, Agreements, and Conventions, 1775-1979 by Vine Deloria, Jr., and Raymond J. DeMallie. Chapter 1 is "Pre-Revolutionary War Treaty Making." With clear (jargon free) language, it provides context and information about treaties. In the book, Deloria and DeMallie provide context and documents (speeches and records of negotiations) that are not generally included with printings of the treaties. I pulled the book off my shelf to read some of the documents of the 1700s (time period for The Buffalo Knife), looking to see if, in these documents, I'd find the words "redskins" or "savages."

In chapter one, Deloria and DeMallie begin with the Delaware treaty of 1778.

There was to be a meeting on September 12th, but the Indian representatives of the Six Nations, Wyandots, Delawares, Shawnees, and Ottawas had not yet arrived. The American commissioners sent two people to meet with the Indians, urging them to come to the meeting. The two messengers delivered a message to the Indians. Those American commissioners addressed the Indians as "our Brothers to the Westward."

On October 6th, the Indian delegates arrived for the meeting. In a speech, they were told about the war between the colonists and England. In that speech, delivered by John Walker of Virginia, Walker starts with "Brothers you have no doubt heard of the dispute..." He went on to ask the tribes to remain neutral, and to let the colonists know if/when they learned that other nearby tribes were going to attack the colonists. He asked them, specifically, to stay home with their "Women and Children." He said women and children, not squaws and papooses.

In the next section "Revolutionary War and Articles of Confederation Treaties," Deloria and DeMallie include several speeches. In some of the speeches, the colonist delivering the speech addressed the Indians as "Bretheren, Chiefs ans Warriors of the several Nations here present." The speeches referred to each other's people as people. On July 4, 1775, Major John Connolly refers to past fighting that resulted in death on both sides as "the rash conduct of foolish people instigated by the spirit."

As I continue my research into language use of any given time period, Deloria and DeMallie's book will prove quite useful. I will also look for other documents, perhaps diaries.

What I find interesting is that in the three distinct sets of documents that I have looked at thus far, soldiers, missionaries, and diplomats do not use the sort of language that is commonly seen in historical fiction. At the very least, this is evidence that not all people used that language.

Other notes:

In 1657, John Amos Comenius, writing in Orbis Pictus, used the word Indian.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first use of "redskin" as 1699, by S. Smith. His writing is quoted in Helen Evertson Smith's Colonial Days & Ways as Gathered from Family Papers. Published in 1900, you can see it in Google Books. Here's the quote:

Ye firste Meetinge House was solid mayde to withstande ye wicked onslauts of ye Red Skins. Its Foundations was laide in ye feare of ye Lord, but its Walls was truly laide in ye feare of ye Indians, for many & grate was ye Terrors of em. I do mind me y't alle ye able-bodyed Men did work thereat, & ye olde & feeble did watch in turns to espie if any Salvages was in hiding neare & every Man keept his Musket nighe to his hande. I do not myself remember any of ye Attacks mayde by large bodeys of Indians whilst we did remayne in Weathersfield, but did ofttimes hear of em. Several Families wch did live back a ways from ye River was either Murderdt or Captivated in my Boyood & we all did live in constant feare of ye like. My Father ever declardt there were not be so much to feare iff ye Red Skins were treated wich suche mixture of Justice & Authority as they cld understand, but if he was living now he must see that wee can do naught but fight em & that right heavily.

Notice that Smith used three different terms: "Red Skins," "Salvages," and, "Indians."

-----

As I worked on this blog post, a librarian sent me a scan of Fritz's introduction to The Buffalo Knife. Here's the last two paragraphs:

William Steele pilots a plot as deftly as he does a flatboat. And as swiftly. When you are through with these adventures, you will want to turn around and start over so you can take your time and enjoy the scenery.

Mr. Steele not only writes a good story, he writes good history that accurately reflects the feelings, the worries, the dangers of the times. And the language. When he refers to Native Americans as "redskins" or "savages," the reader understands that he finds these terms as objectionable as we do; he is simply recording what his characters would really have said. Only a skilled writer can tell a story that is true to its times and wind up with a truth that speaks to all times.

What does Fritz mean? I think she assumes that readers will notice the terms and object to them, but I wonder if that happens? Evan, who I gather is a teen reader, did not mention it in his review. None of the customer reviews on Amazon mention it. It isn't addressed in Books Children Love: A Guide to the Best Children's Literature, published in 2002, or in The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling: Year 2001, or in Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum: A Guide to Catholic Home Education.

Do you teach this book? Have you read it? What do you think?

Jean Craighead George's THE BUFFALO ARE BACK

I received an inquiry about Jean Craighead George's The Buffalo Are Back (Dutton, 2010) and will share my observations and analysis as I turn each page of the not-paginated picture book. The paintings are by Wendell Minor. I've included some of the illustrations.

Based on my analysis, I do not recommend The Buffalo Are Back.

In this analysis, I am focusing primarily on the Native imagery/representations in the book. My descriptions and summary text are in regular font; my comments are in italics. Note: In the analysis I use the word "gutter," which is the term used to describe the space where the pages are bound together. Pages to the left and to the right meet together, in the gutter.

I hope this analysis helps parents, teachers, librarians, book reviewers, writers, illustrators, and editors see books from the vantage point of a Native educator who is interested in books that accurately portray American Indians and Indigenous Nations and peoples around the globe.

Among the criteria I have in mind when analyzing a book are the following:

1. Does the author/illustrator specify a tribal nation?
2. What is the time period?
3. Is the history accurate?
4. How does the author/illustrator present gender?
5. Does the author's word choice indicate bias against Native peoples?

Let's begin!

The front cover (shown above)
On the left side of the cover is a buffalo head in profile. To its right is a buffalo calf. They're in some tall grass. Perched atop one of the tall blades of grass is a lark. All are looking to the right. This orientation invites us to open the book.

Title page
The calf is standing, alone, in the center of the page. Beneath it are two prairie dogs standing upright as prairie dogs often do.

First double-paged spread

Left of gutter: Acknowledgement from Wendell Minor, the illustrator.

Right of gutter: Jean Craighead George dedicates the book "To Cyd and Carol Ann, who praise the diversity of the earth and the return of the buffalo. Minor dedicates it "To Jean, in celebration of her fifty years of writing wonderful books that teach children the wonders of nature." The page includes a profile of the calf's head.

Second double-page spread
Left of gutter: same illustration as shown on the cover

Right of gutter: Three prairie dogs face left, looking toward the calf. The text reads:

In a time long ago, an orange buffalo calf was born. [...] On that day in the mid-1800s seventy-five million buffalo roamed in North America. In little more than fifty years, there would be almost none.

What happened? The answer is a story of the American Indians, the buffalo, and the grass.

Craighead George tells us that the book is set in 1850 or thereabouts. She tells us there were millions of buffalo, but that there would soon be almost none. She poses a 'what happened' question and answers her question with "...a story of the American Indians, the buffalo, and the grass." As I read her answer to that question, I think to myself "What? No mention of Americans or the U.S. government who were largely responsible for that dramatic change?"

Third double-page spread
Left of gutter: The page is titled "The American Indians." In the first paragraph, Craighead George says that on the day the calf was born, the air was smoky because "The Indians who lived on the plains were setting the grasses ablaze, as they had for thousands of years." I like that she said they had been there for thousands of years. I would have liked her to specify a tribal nation instead of saying "Indians." For example, she could have said "The Plains Indians were setting the grasses ablaze..." and that would have been ok, but, it would have been better if she had said "Northern Plains" or "Southern Plains" or even better if she'd specified a tribe. 

Right of gutter: Minor depicts the prairie on fire. The Indians Craighead George refers to are shown in the distance, some with a hand raised. In that hand is a flame. One Indian is on horseback. In the background is a structure that I take to be a grass lodge like those used by the Wichitas (Southern Plains tribe). Minor's illustration of the grass lodge tells me that he's depicting the southern plains. The illustration, in this case, is tribally specific, but not the accompanying text.

Fourth double-page spread

Left of gutter (see illustration to the right): A hunter, who I learn from the facing page, is a "white fur hunter." He is looking out over a herd of buffalo (the illustration spills over to the right side of the gutter).

Right of gutter: The page is titled "The Buffalo." The first paragraph reads:

In the mid 1800s, change came to the plains. First it was white fur hunters. They stacked the beautiful buffalo hides in pointed canoes and sold them east for profit. Then the American explorers came, who shot many animals for fun. Buffalo made good targets for the hunters because they are big and often stand still.

In fact, change came to the plains much earlier than the mid 1800s. Anthony Hendry of the Hudson's Bay Company, for example, was there in the 1750s. 


I wonder why Craighead George uses "white" to describe fur traders and "American" to describe explorers? 

Lewis and Clark--explorers--set out on their expedition in 1804, which is before the period Craighead George is referring to (mid 1800s). Her timeline is wrong. Change came long before the mid 1800s. 

• In The People: A History of Native America by Edmunds, Hoxie, and Salisbury (published in 2007 by Houghton Mifflin, p. 198), the authors state that during the 1780s, the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandans, Hidatsas, and Arikara's)--they're Plains tribes--were devastated by smallpox. Their population went from 16,000 to 6,100. And in 1837, a steamboat of the American Fur Company that had several passengers aboard who had smallpox landed at a Mandan village. Another epidemic ensued, and the Three Affiliated Tribes population declined again, to 2,300. 

• According to information on the website of the Three Affiliated Tribes, in 1825, the U.S. government negotiated treaties with the Teton, Yankton, and Yanktonai Dakota as well as the Cheyenne, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara, treaties through which the tribes agreed not to trade with anyone but American citizens.

In short, the history is far more complicated than Craighead George suggests with her "In the mid-1800s, change came to the plains."

The second paragraph (still on the fourth double-page spread) of "The Buffalo" reads:

But it was settlers from the East and the American government that killed almost all of the buffalo herds. After the Civil War, the government bought huge tracts of land from the Indians. They forced many Indians to go to reservations and sold the land to settlers. Families from Europe and the East Coast rushed west to settle the rich black prairie land.

Yes, it was settlers and the U.S. government that killed most of the herds. 

In her second sentence, Craighead George says the government bought huge tracts of land from the Indians after the Civil War. The Civil War took place from 1861 to 1865. I wonder if she's talking about the Dawes Act of 1887? Through that act, Native Nations lost land, but not due to the government buying the land from them. Rather, it was a legal move by the U.S. government to break up the integrity and community values/orientation of the tribes as Nations by allotting individuals plots of land that they would own. Such ownership, the hope was, would assimilate them into becoming white American citizens. The "surplus" land would be sold to settlers.


And "forced to go to reservations" is not quite right either---at least not at that time period. Native Nations were forcibly moved from their homelands in the East and South to what was then-called Indian Territory, but that happened in the early 1800s, not after the Civil War. Returning again to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation website, there is information about the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which says that through the treaty, several tribes established boundaries for what became their reservations. That was in 1851, before the Civil War. Maybe that's what Craighead George is thinking about. 


This all might seem a bit picky to, perhaps, a mainstream reader, but it definitely matters to, say, someone in a tribal nation whose history includes close relationships with buffaloes. 

Craighead George's repeated use of "Indians" is confusing to me, a Pueblo Indian woman, trying to understand what she's talking about. When she uses the word "Indians," is she talking about specific individuals or does her "Indians" refer to Native Nations? And, her last sentence in the paragraph says "Families from Europe and the East Coast...." ---- She doesn't use "families" to talk about Indian people in her book. As such, she unintentionally affirms a pervasive representation of "Indian" meaning Indian men who are too-often shown without wives, children, mothers, fathers, families, etc. 
 
Fifth double-page spread:

Left of gutter: The illustration is an Indian man in profile (shown here on right). He's facing towards the facing page, on which are shown tipis and a staff on which there is a buffalo skull. One half of the skull has red dots; the other half has blue dots. There are two feathers affixed to the pole, above the skull.

Here's the kicker:  Unlike the white fur hunter on the previous page, this Indian man is see-through. You can see through his torso to the prairie grasses behind him. Why did Minor do that? 


Because his name is included in the text on the facing page, I think this illustration is supposed to be Sitting Bull.

Right of gutter: Remember, the words on the previous page said that families from the East Coast were rushing in to settle on the prairie. The text on this page reads:

But there was trouble on the plains. The government broke its treaties with the Indians. So the Indians fought back and won several battles against the United States Army. Then the government saw another way to defeat the Indians. Soldiers and settlers were encouraged to shoot every buffalo they saw, or drive whole herds over cliffs. Without the buffalo for food, shelter, and clothing, the Indians could not survive on the plains. 

Yes, there was trouble. I like that she uses "battles" and that she doesn't use "massacre" or "uprising." It was, in fact, war. But I wish she had said "The United States government broke its treaties with the Native Nations (or Native governments)." That small change would be far more accurate. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn has an insightful article in which she talks about words and what they mean, with respect to the wars between Native Nations and the the United States. It is called "The Lewis and Clark Story, the Captive Narrative, and the Pitfalls of Indian History." It is in Wicazo Sa Review, Volume 19.1. If you'd like a copy send me an email and I'll send it to you.


In Our Hearts Fell to the Ground: Plains Indian Views of how the West was Lost, Colin G. Calloway writes that the U.S. Army and professional hide hunters (sportsmen) worked together to kill buffalo. At this point, I'm not sure where Craighead George will go with her "Indians could not survive" sentence.

Her next paragraph reads:

Said the great Sioux Chief Sitting Bull, who defeated General George A. Custer at the battle of Little Big Horn: "A cold wind blew across the prairie when the last buffalo fell--a death-wind for my people."

And, the settlers soon discovered, a death-wind for the prairie.

Finally! Craighead George names a specific tribal nation but I wish she had been even more specific, using "Hunkpapa Lakota" instead of "Sioux".... Seeing Sioux, though, makes me wonder if all along, the tribal nation she's thinking of when she says "Indians" is the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota (Sioux).  If so, then I think I am right in guessing that it is Sitting Bull that Minor portrayed earlier in the book, but again, why did he present him as a see-through image? It reminds me of the illustrations in Susan Jeffers' Brother Eagle Sister Sky (see discussion of that book in "Pitfalls and Possibilities," an article Jean Mendoza and I did a few years ago).

Sixth Double-page Spread
Left of the gutter: The page is titled "The Grass." The first paragraph reads:

With the death of the buffalo, the Indian Wars were over. The settlers faced a new fight--the battle of the grasses. Over the eons the prairie grasses had adapted to the Great Plains' frequent droughts by growing tough roots to hold in moisture. These roots were wide and deep and held the rich soil in place. The buffalo's sharp hooves, and the Indians' prairie firs, had helped keep the grasses healthy. But the new settlers did not understand the importance of the grass.

From there Craighead George moves on to talk about ranchers, cowboys, settlers, farmers, steel plows, steam tractors, wheat, corn, soybeans... 

Seventh Double-page Spread
Left of the gutter: Craighead George begins by talking about crops that flourish and railroads that take the harvest to market. She says "Now not one orange buffalo wobbled to its feet." She says the larks are gone, prairie dogs are silent, and that "Without the buffalo, without the grasses, and without the Indians to care for them, the prairie was in danger." She goes on to talk about drought and grasshoppers. On the right is a very cool painting of farmers using switches to beat the grasshoppers. Her phrase, "without the Indians" gives me pause. What happened to them? Her last mention of them is that without the buffalo, the Indians "could not survive." On this page she says "without the Indians" --- Does she mean to tell us that they did not survive?

Eighth Double-page Spread
A terrific Minor illustration spans the two pages, showing dust clouds billowing and a barren land, made that way by farmers. The text explains that buffalo hooves played a role in the health of the land.

Ninth Double-page Spread
Here, Minor shows farmers and townspeople leaving the barren land.  One line reads:

In just over fifty years, it [the "great plow up"] had destroyed the buffalo, the protective prairie grasses, and the Indians who had cared for both." 

Does she really meant to say that the "great plow up" destroyed the Indians? And what does "destroyed" Indians mean? What does a child (the audience for her book) understand by what she says? 

Tenth Double-page Spread
Left of the gutter: The page is titled "The Prairie Comeback." The page is about President Roosevelt and that he wanted to save the buffalo. He sent scouts out to look for them. The scouts found nothing. Then, a naturalist named W. T. Hornaday, "looked and looked and would not give up." Following a tip from "a Crow Indian" Hornaday found three hundred buffalo in a meadow in Montana. A small illustration inset on the page shows a man on a horse looking down a hill at a herd of buffalo.

With her reference to "a Crow Indian" Craighead George tells us that she knows that not all the Indians were destroyed. As a writer, I think she could have been more clear in earlier pages. I think the man on the horse is Hornaday.   

Right of gutter: Minor's illustration is of Roosevelt standing in front of a buffalo herd.

Eleventh Double-page Spread
Left of gutter: A buffalo calf fills the page. Below and spilling across the gutter is a herd.


Right of gutter: The text is:

There had been seventy-five million buffalo on the plains. Now there were three hundred left in the wild. People who understood the land, led by Hornaday, knew the buffalo had to be saved. The president helped.

Roosevelt established the National Bison Range in Montana and made it illegal to shoot buffalo. Over the years, more land was set aside in western states for the great grazing herds, which were beginning to grow.

Curious to know more about the Hornaday and comeback of the buffalo, I checked out a couple of books. None of the ones I got are on the list of sources on the last page of the The Buffalo Are Back. The note above the three books listed says they are among the sources used by the artist. I wonder if Craighead George used them, too? If not, what did she use?


One of the books I got is The Extermination of the Buffalo, by William T. Hornaday. It is a fascinating book. Reading it, I see that there is a lot more to Hornaday than Craighead George included on the ninth and tenth double-page spreads. In her text, he sounds like a heroic figure. Reading his own words, though, I see that he, himself, actively hunted buffalo. I didn't find, in his own book, anything that says he found "three hundred buffalo in a meadow in Montana" as Craighead George says on the previous page of her book.

In 1886, Hornaday was the "chief taxidermist of the National Museum." He determined that the museum did not have an acceptable buffalo "specimen" in its holdings, and he was afraid that the remaining buffaloes would be killed before the museum was able to get one. So, an expedition was put together, and on May 6th, off they went to the northwest, looking for buffaloes. Sometime after May 20 they found a calf. Ten days after finding the calf, they found two bulls. They killed one and the other got away. The one they killed was in "unkept and 'seedy' appearance. They decided that the "skin was not in condition to mount" so took "only the skeleton, entire, and the skin of the head and neck." They decided to stop looking until August when the buffaloes would be finished with the shedding of their hair. They returned to Washington with several hides and skulls, and--the baby calf they found (more about that later). 


They returned to the "hunt" in the northwest in September. He does say "hunt" again and again, and they do, in fact, kill many buffaloes to serve as specimens. He includes a map with dots to mark locations where they killed buffalo. Here's one of his accounts (p. 537):

McNaney killed a fine old bull and a beautiful two year old, or "spike" bull, out of this herd, while I managed to kill a cow and another large old bull, making four for that day, all told. This herd of fourteen head was the largest that we saw during the entire hunt.

At one point he writes (p. 540):

About 4 miles from our late camp we came suddenly upon a fine old solitary bull, feeding in a hollow between two high and precipitous ridges. After a short but sharp chase I succeeded in getting a fair shot at him, and killed him with a ball which broke his left humerus and passed into his lungs. He was the only large bull killed on the entire trip with a single shot. He proved to be a very fine specimen, measuring 5 feet 6 inches in height at the shoulders.

Language he uses to describe their hunting indicates he loved the hunting. When he kills another "truly magnificent specimen," he says (p. 542):

I was delighted with our remarkably good fortune in securing such a prize, for, owing to the rapidity with which we the large buffaloes are being found and killed off these days, I had not hoped to capture a really old individual.

The live calf the expedition took to Washington was kept in a pen. It became quite popular, and in 1887, Hornaday proposed a "Department of Living Animals" at the Smithsonian. As director of the department, he proceeded to develop a captive herd.  


Craighead George, correctly, gives credit to both, Roosevelt and Hornaday, for actions they took but she completely omits all the work that Native people were also doing in that same time period, and she doesn't give us a complete picture of Hornaday's activity as a buffalo hunter. 

Ken Zontek's Buffalo Nation: American Indian Efforts to Restore the Bison (2007, University of Nebraska Press) provides a great deal of information about the work of Native people who sought to restore the bison. For example, Zontek writes of a herd of 300 developed and cared for in the 1890s by Michael Pablo whose mother was Blackfeet.


Twelfth Double-page Spread
Left side of gutter: Craighead George describes government efforts to save the prairie by planting crops in curves instead of straight lines, planting trees with deep roots to break the wind, and, planting grass between corn to hold the soil in place.

Right side of gutter: Minor's illustration of a farmer on his tractor spreads across the double-page spread.

Thirteenth Double-page Spread
Left of gutter: Craighead George writes that one day, a young girl walked into her Kansas house carrying a six-foot blade of grass. Her dad asks her where she got it, and that it is buffalo grass that he thought was extinct. She tells him she got it in the schoolyard.

Right of gutter: Minor's illustration is of a school house on the prairie. The clothing on the children in the yard suggests a more recent time period.

Fourteenth Double-page Spread
Left of gutter: Craighead George describes the search for native grasses (bluestem, gamma, bunch, and buffalo grass). She says people raised the grasses and sowed the seeds on abandoned farms and grasslands. She says the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve was established in Kansas, and that 300 buffalo were released into that preserve.

Right of gutter: Minor's illustration is of a prairie and in the distance, a buffalo herd.

I think Craighead George made a mistake about the preserve. The one in Kansas does not have buffalo. There is one in Oklahoma with buffalo. On the Nature Conservancy website and on the Oklahoma Prairie Country website is information about the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Both sites say that in 1993, the Nature Conservancy donated 300 bison for the preserve and that the herd is at its target herd of approximately 2500. 

Fifteenth Double-page Spread
Left of gutter: The text reads:

One morning not too long ago, a young man just out of graduate school galloped his horse across the Prairie Preserve, counting buffalo for the buffalo census. Suddenly he reined in his horse. An orange calf wobbled to his feet and blinked.

Welcome, little calf," the Wichita Indian youth called. "You are America's two hundred thousand and eighty-first buffalo."

A lark flew to the top of a six-foot blade of grass and sang as sweetly as a panpipe. The buffalo are back.

Craighead George tells us the man is Wichita. (Note: I searched on "Wichita Nation" to see if they have a herd, and the first hits the search returned are to Indian Guides programs. The Indian Guides program, while admirable for its goal of having families do activities together, makes a mess of things as they choose an Indian tribal name and engage in stereotypical activities.) I tried again, searching on "Wichita Tribe" and the first hit was, in fact, a link to the website of the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, whose offices are in Anadarko, Oklahoma. They do not have a buffalo herd, but the Wichita guy may work for one of the tribes that does, or, he may work at the preserve.


I am glad Craighead George ended her book with the Wichita man, but I wish she had done more with the work Native Nations are doing today.  The Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative, established in 1990, includes over 50 different tribes who now maintain herds on their lands. Their website refers to Roosevelt and conservationists (they don't mention Hornaday) but like Craighead George, they don't refer to Native efforts in the 1890s. I will send them a quick note recommending they add that info. 

Minor's website includes reviews of the book. School Library Journal says it is "a must have for most libraries" and Horn Book calls it compelling. 

I understand why it got positive reviews, but, it is one of the many books that---when the lens is focused on the way the book represents American Indians---it falls far short of being a book that I can recommend. I think Craighead George tried hard to approach the book with an interest in being unbiased. I say that because of some of her word choices (battle instead of massacre) and I think it is terrific to see that awareness in an author's work--but bias is there nonetheless in the heroic way Hornaday is portrayed, in the ghost-like portrayal of Sitting Bull, and in the "no Indians" portrayals of people who obviously weren't dead and gone. 

In the end, authors have to do both: be fair, and, be accurate. I think her research---or the researcher who helped her---failed because the dates are off, which makes the related information problematic. I think Craighead George's editor failed her, too. He/she could have caught the problems with time periods.


I'll be thinking about the book for a while. I invite your thoughts, too, on what I've said here, and the book itself if you've got a copy.