Editor's note on Sept 4, 2021: An update to this post is long overdue! Today I added books from the 1930s. It is a labor-intensive project.
1922: The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon:
Excerpt:
They had tried to use the Indians as labourers in the fields and in the mines, but the Indians, when taken away from a life in the open, had lain down and died and to save them from extinction a kind-hearted priest had suggested that negroes be brought from Africa to do the work.
1923: The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle by Hugh Lofting:
Excerpt:
"He is a mysterious person," said the Doctor--"a very mysterious person. His name is Long Arrow, the son of Golden Arrow. He is a Red Indian."
"Have you ever seen him?" I asked.
"No," said the Doctor, "I've never seen him. No white man has ever met him. I fancy Mr. Darwin doesn't even know that he exists. He lives almost entirely with the animals and with the different tribes of Indians--usually somewhere among the mountains of Peru. Never stays long in one place. Goes from tribe to tribe, like a sort of Indian tramp."
1924: The Dark Frigate by Charles Hawes, p. 188:
Excerpt:
Miles Philips was his name and the manner of his suffering at the hands of the Indians and the Spaniards may serve as a warning. For they flung him into prison where he was like to have starved; and they tortured him in the Inquisition where he was like to have perished miserably; and many of his companions they beat and killed or sent to the galleys; and himself and certain others they sold for slaves.
1925: Tales from Silver Lands, by Charles J. Finger
Note: It is a collection of 19 folktales of the native peoples of Central and South America. Can't see anything on line.
1926: Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman
Note: Nothing that I can see online.
1927: Smokey, the Cowhorse by Will James
Excerpt:
All the stars was out and showing off, and the braves was a chasing the buffalo plum around the Big Dipper, the water hole of The Happy Hunting Grounds.
1928: Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji
Note: Nothing that I can see online.
1929: The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly
Note: Nothing that I can see online.
1930: Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field, page 28:
Excerpt:
They were sure the Indians had carried me away and I think this made Phoebe even more distressed about my loss.
1931: The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth
Note: Nothing that I can see online.
1932: Waterless Mountain by Laura Adams Armer
Excerpt:
Uncle told Father to ride to the trading post for help. At the post the Big Man was very busy trying to do something for everyone. A party of tourists was asking questions about every little thing. One wanted to know if the Indians still scalped people.
"I have never seen it done," said the Big Man as he went on addressing envelopes on his typewriter.Note: the Big Man is a white trader. The Navajo father wants him to heal his son, who is sick, and calling out for the white trader.
1933: Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze by Elizabeth Lewis
Note: Nothing that I can see online.
1934: Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women, by Cornelia Miggs
Note: Nothing that I can see online.
That's it for now... More later.
----------------------------
September 4, 2021
Later turned out to be several years!
1935: Dobry by Monica Shannon
Note: Unable to see the book online.
1936: Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
Note: Too many to insert here! I've written about this book several times; please use this link to see posts about it: AICL's posts about Caddie Woodlawn.
1937: Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer
Excerpt on page 43:
Five boys were lining themselves up in Indian file, hands on shoulders.
Also on page 43:
Jerry Hanlon slipped out of the tobacco shop and stood back of the wooden Indian.
1938: The White Stag by Kate Seredy
Note: Unable to see the book online.
1939: Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright
Excerpt on page 16:
"We were Comanche Indians doing a rain dance," she exclaimed.
Excerpt on page 19:
"There were Indians, too, in those days."
Excerpt on page 20:
Sure enough, the door would open wide and in would come the Indians, quiet as cats, sometimes one or two, sometimes as many as ten.
Excerpt on page 25:
He had a bundle under one arm and he was wearing a deerskin jacket like the Indians wore.
Excerpt on page 28:
It would have been fun to be an Indian girl wearing a fringed deerskin dress. Garnet saw a long, rather bedraggled crow's feather in the grass and picked it up and stuck it in her hair. Then she crouched down and walked tiptoe in the way she imagined an Indian would walk.
---more later---
September 28, 2021
1940: Daniel Boone by James Daugherty
This is only a sample of what I see in the book.
Excerpt on page 15:
Friendly Indians sometimes came out of the western forest to barter and visit and depart into the unknown forest world.
Excerpts on page 22:
"The Indians are on the warpath and coming down the valley."
The families knew only too well how the fierce red warriors would surround the cabins just before dawn, terrible in the ghastly white and black war paint, fearsome images of violent death that haunted the dreams of every border family.
... stories of frightful Indian vengeance. Five savages had hacked in the door of one cabin...
Excerpt on page 23:
... break the power of the Cherokee tribes and free the border from the Indian terror once and for all.
Excerpt on page 24:
... red varmints...
Excerpt on page 24-25:
"We took them all prisoners that came out to us in this way; but I saw some warriors run into a house, until I counted forty-six of them. We pursued them until we got near the house, when we saw a squaw sitting in the door, and she placed her feet against the bow she had in her hand, and then took an arrow, and raising her feet she drew with all her might and let fly at us and she killed a man, who se name I believe wasMoore. He was a lieutenant and his death so enraged us all that she was fired on, and had a t least twenty balls blown through her. This was the first man I ever saw killed with a bow and arrow. We now show them like dogs; and then set the house on fire, and burned it up with the fort-six warriors in it. I recollect seeing a boy who was shot down near the house. His arm and thigh were broken, and he was so near the burning house that the grease was stewing out of him.
Thank you, Debbie. This is a valuable contribution (as is all of your work). Once you've finished compiling this material, it might be interesting to intersect what was being published with Indian history during these times.
ReplyDeleteI cannot get over that first one. And of course Dr. Dolittle. The first book was unbearably racist as well. I'm teaching it come spring.
ReplyDelete--Veronica
I have read (and blogged) all the Newbery books (my blog covers up through up through 2011, but I have read on in the series.) Two to avoid on Native issues (this from my blog on Newbery books that have failed):
ReplyDeleteDaniel Boone, James Daughtery, 1940. This book lost me when I realized one of its themes was "the only good Injun is a dead Injun." Indians are vastly underrepresented in the Newbery list, but this was the worst depiction of all. I contrasted it with Waterless Mountain (1932, set in Navajo Nation in the late teens or early 1920s), which made a largely successful attempt at portraying a young Navajo boy navigating the modern world while remaining true to his spiritual values. Consider also Caddie Woodlawn (1936), The Matchlock Gun (1942), and Rifles for Watie (1957), all of which have Indians making cameo or supporting appearances. While the Indians portrayed in The Matchlock Gun are clearly the enemy, they are the enemy because they have sided with the French in the French and Indian War and are attacking the family in the story, and not because they are "bad" Indians. I cannot get past the clear bigotry in the work about Boone.
AND
A book which I am reluctant to consign to this list but must talk about is Rifles for Watie, the 1957 winner by Harold Keith. Set during the Civil War in the states and territories west of the Mississippi, this book is exemplary for several reasons, not the least of which is its fairly searing depiction of the realities of war (death, hunger, privation). It stands apart because an underlying story is a love story between Jeff, a young Union soldier, and Lucy, a young woman whose family supports the Southern cause. Romances come and go in any literary genre, but this one is unique because Lucy is the youngest daughter of a Cherokee family living in Talequah, today's capitol of the Cherokee nation. She gets to deliver the clearest explanation of why her family(and indeed many Cherokees) supports the Confederacy when she gives Jeff a strongly worded history lesson about Andrew Jackson and his violation of Indian treaties that resulted in the destruction of the Cherokee's community in the east. Lucy does not say the word "genocide," but in her description of the numbers who died on the trail, it is the unspoken word that hangs in the air.
So why am I struggling with this choice? Because despite his clear-eyed recounting of Cherokee history, the author cannot resist having his characters draws distinctions between the "preferred" Indians (those who conduct their lives like whites) and the "frontier" Indians who have backslid into "shiftless" ways, abandoning the white culture and businesses for subsistence farming and hunting. The frontier Indians even discard the white man's clothing, and while Harold Keith does not describe their undesirable dress, I strongly suspect the women would be wearing the tear dress that is now the national dress of the Cherokee nation.
There is another reason too that I hold back on Rifles for Watie. Someday, I may have a grandchild whose family heritage is an elaborately stitched quilt of many backgrounds, including the strong dose of Ojibwa (Chippewa) he or she will inherit from my daughter-in-law Alise. I wouldn't want to have to begin to explain to my grandchild the inherent bigotry behind the depictions of the good (white) Indians and the lazy (native) Indians. I couldn't do it.
***
An update. I now do have a granddaughter--age 3, Little Shell Chippewa--and I use your column to help steer me. Thank you!