Jo wrote:
I found a few of these older books at the thrift store one day; they were about a little boy who likes to dress up like a cowboy. I thumbed through Cowboy and his Friend, all about the little boy and his friend Bear and the adventures they have together. Very cute and harmless so I thought what the heck and got them. I read it to the boys and it was great so we started to read the next one, The Brave Cowboy. I don't know why I didn't flip through it first. The second page of the book shows him ready to shoot the scary half naked Indian. I quickly closed it and told the boys we couldn't read it and put it away. A little further in the book it shows him ready to shoot a large number "wild Indians in his territory." We still have it. Steve said we should keep it and send it to you.A few days later, Jo wrote again to tell me:
My six year old picked up the book the other day and read it. When she was finished she was shaking her head and I asked her what she thought about it. She told me she didn't really like it. I asked her why and she said she was confused about the little cowboy shooting the Indians. It was an interesting moment for me to try to find the right words to talk to her about the pictures in the book.
Reading what Jo said, I got a copy of the book from the University of Illinois library, but it didn't have the pages Jo described. The copy I got has a publication year of 2000. The one she had, which she sent to me, is 1959. The publisher is Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Here's the first page with Indians:
1959
In the 2000 copy I had, the third line of text is different. Instead of "not afraid of Indians," the boy is "not afraid of mountain lions." The Indian is gone from the illustration (replaced by another ornery rustler) and a mountain lion has been added:
And here's the next page on which Indians appear. The text is "Or, maybe he would hunt wild Indians that might be in the territory...":
In the 2000 version, the brave cowboy hunts bank robbers instead of "wild Indians."
The day draws to a close and the brave cowboy "settled down to dream the dreams of all good cowboys" which includes dreaming about Indians:
As I wrote this post, my thoughts turned again and again to the current national discussion on gun control. I doubt that The Brave Cowboy would get republished again, and in my opinion, I think that's a good thing. Kids playing with guns? Even in a story, it's frightening.
The Brave Cowboy is far from the first or only book to undergo revisions like these ones. Two that have been updated (or bowdlerized) are Robert Lawson's They Were Strong and Good and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie. At his site, Philip Nel took a look at several others.
Returning to the stereotyping in the 1959 copy of The Brave Cowboy, Jo, Steve, and their kids. First, the children in their home are lucky to have Jo and Steve. They're readers who read critically. They're teaching their children to do that, too. Second, Anglund's book is clearly one that has been updated to remove stereotyping. Third, I wish a note about that sort of updating was noted somewhere in the book. Fourth, I hope the book goes out of print and stays out of print.
Thanks, Jo, for letting me know about this book.
Interesting that they made the changes. Does show that the story can be told without most stereotypes. I also wonder, as you do, if it could be published today. I have been listening to the young Sherlock Holmes series by Andrew Lane and was a little surprised that Holmes actually kills someone (in self-defense). There are also guns being fired but the book is for tweens. They also don't "play" with the guns as the child would playing cowboy. As always, your insights are interesting.
ReplyDeleteI have read this book before, and I guess I just chalked it up to being an older book that is a product of its time. "Cowboys and Indians" were very popular in the 30s, 40s, and 50s thanks to movies starring Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and the like. That is why you could find toy guns, lassos, and horses on a stick in stores so kids could play it. I do not believe that playing that game like the boy in the story does here colored children's views of Native Americans for life or made them want to use guns when they got older.
ReplyDeleteWhen I see a book like this, I see it as a teachable moment. I think people today are smart enough to know that this is not something that we believe in now. Your friends' daughter was able to read the book and as you said, be critical about it. If others come across this book, I do not think that it should be shied away from. It is good that the book was updated in 2000 to eliminate some of the stereotypes, but there would also be some value to reading the 1959 book to foster a conversation.
It is kind of like how I felt about the Looney Tunes DVD sets that came out awhile back that had Whoopi Goldberg explaining that we would be seeing stereotypes when watching the classic cartoons. I guess I can understand the Warner Brothers Company trying to cover their bases legally, but again, I think that we know better now without the reminder.
It was a specific place and time, and we have gotten more politically correct over the years (not perfect, I know, but there's been improvement). I am of Irish and Italian heritage, and there are plenty of stereotypes from that time about us. If I see examples of it on television and books now, I do not take it personally. I know it is just the another person's way of telling a story. I can also choose not to watch it (Hello, Sopranos!).
Hopefully, people will continue to eliminate unnecessary stereotypes and focus on telling stories that are more historically accurate.
This breaks my heart. This was a favorite book of mine as a child. I read it over and over again. I'm in my forties now and I always remembered the pages where he gets dressed in his boots, hat, and belt. I went to a bookstore to get a copy to show my girlfriend, because I think this book kickstarted my lifelong obsession with clothing, including western wear.
ReplyDeleteI did not remember the pages shown above, not immediately. Though I did remember how he maps his fantasies onto the quotidian parts of his life. That's also influenced me greatly. But the pages of Native slaughter are just inexcusable. I suppose I didn't remember it because as a kid I didn't see it as aberrant. It was just like in the movies I was probably watching.
I'm glad the book has been republished without those scenes. I would hope that today, if Joan Walsh Anglund were alive still, she would see it as abhorrent. Sadly, a number of her readers don't. The Amazon reviews show a number feel this is a an over-reaction to political correctness. As to the gun issue, I can see that. I certainly watched movies and read books that involved guns, and my action figures had guns. I even had toy guns. But I haven't grown up a violent person in the slightest.
This book will still always be in my complicated heart though. I can't change how it influenced me, but it will reside along with contrary feelings, as so much does in our narrative of the west. I suppose this is white privilege. I guess as a white person I have to ask: is this acknowledgement of it enough?
Kent,
ReplyDeleteI sometimes use books like this one in talks/workshops because so many people are like you -- they don't remember those kinds of scenes.
Regarding your last question: is this acknowledgement of it enough? I think it is a start that most definitely will impact you going forward and that impact will have meaning in ways we may not know. It may, for example, make you wonder what you didn't see in other books. It may mean that when you buy something, feeling nostalgic towards it, you'll look inside before buying, and before gifting it to someone.
Debbie
Thank you for your response, Debbie. I regret a little bit my question, "is it enough?" It's a bit naive. No that's not enough. But I think we all deal with how to respond to once-favorite artists and works that have shown their faults with further understanding. I'm sure at the time, when I played "Cowboys and Indians" with my friends, we were accustomed to this narrative because we'd seen it so often. And yet another favorite book of mine at around that time was the story of Cochise, which showed him to have more character and honesty than the white characters.
ReplyDeleteMy girlfriend and I read the book together. As always we talked about what we read. We were both appalled by the violence against Native Americans, while clearly seeing the roots of my sartorial fascinations (and my tendency to hide in my imagination, but that's another story).