Debbie--have you seen THE NIGHT TOURIST by Katherine Marsh

This "have you seen" post is, more or less, a note to myself to put Katherine Marsh's The Night Tourist on my list of books to read. Of late, I'm finding/learning about several books that are set in New York City and have Native content--in the form of ghosts or Indians-of-the-past.

The Night Tourist came to my attention as I read an article in the March 27 edition of The Washington Post. Written by Katherine Marsh (author of The Night Tourist), the photograph at the top of her article is what caught my eye. Here's a screen cap:

That soldier, with machine gun, standing in front of a book display is, of course, chilling. As my eyes moved to the books on the shelves, I realized the soldier is standing in front of a wall of Tintin books. The one on the top shelf, 3rd from the left, is Tintin in America. It is one of the much loved Tintin books have stereotypical, racist, derogatory content.

As I started looking into Tintin articles to link to in this post, I found an article in Salon: Tintin's racist history: Symbol of Brussels solidarity is uncomfortably divisive. In it is a link to an article in Vox: How Tintin became the symbol of solidarity in the Brussels attacks. The Vox article is mostly a series of tweets of Tintin crying.

I don't know if Marsh chose the photo that was used with her article. She doesn't mention the Tintin books. My guess is that someone in the editorial department at the Post has read the Vox article and thought it a good choice, given that Marsh writes children's books. The image did something else for me: it caught my eye and led me to look at Marsh's first book, which (as noted above) has Native content of the no-longer-around kind, but it also captures the importance of children's books.

Far too many people look down on children and the books created for them, but they're important. They shape the ways we view the world. How they do that is something that needs more attention. When I read Marsh's book, what will I find? Does that book add to the misinformation that Native peoples no longer exist? If/when I read her book, I'll be back. If you've read it, let me know what you noticed when you read it.

New cover for TINTIN IN AMERICA?

This morning at the Kirkus page, I noticed a contest in which people can win complete sets of Herge's Tintin series. Here's the image that accompanies the story:

See the cover for Tintin in America? It is not the cover I'm most familiar with, shown here:

I wonder what prompted the new cover? Instead of Tintin tied to a stake (which, by the way, is an inaccurate or misleading bit of info about Indians that was popularized by Westerns), we see Tintin riding a horse. Here's another version of the on-a-horse cover. It is the one offered at Amazon:

In doing an Internet search of covers for Tintin in America, I came across a couple of others. This one has a "II" after it, so maybe there's a Part 2 for this particular book in the series.

And this one, according to a fan, is the original cover.  The original artwork for this cover was recently sold for $1.6 million dollars.

The Tintinologist site has a great deal of information about Tintin in America, including the changes publishers wanted made: 

Finding a publisher for this book in the USA was impossible. Even in the mid-1940s, American publishers insisted that Hergé replaced the 'coloured' people featured in the comic with 'whites'. Then again, the USA was not the only country that gave Hergé a hard time publishing this comic. Most foreign publishers (i.e. non-Belgian or French) seemed to have problems with the almost apocalyptical scene in which the soldiers move out the Indians of the reserve, and the speed in which the new town is created. 

I've got to do some research on Tintin in America...  

"Race changes" in Tintin

In 2006 I learned about Tintin in America. I wrote about it then, but apparently failed to order it so that I could do an analysis of it for AICL. It is now on order...

Obviously, I'm thinking about Tintin because the movie is in theaters now. This morning on Slate, I read David Haglund's blog post about parent objections to Captain Haddock's love of alcohol. He provides some historical background for the American response to Haddock:

Sam Adams, who recently reviewed two Hergé biographies for Slate, pointed me to a third, Pierre Assouline’s Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin, which reveals that when the Tintin books began appearing in America, Hergé’s publishers demanded that he “attenuate the text here and there” to reduce Haddock’s drinking, in an effort to satisfy “puritanical American morals.” Hergé went ahead and “eliminated all images of Haddock drinking straight from the bottle,” telling one reader, “The blacks have been whitened, and Captain Haddock has to refrain from guzzling his drink.” (A PDF of this chapter from Assouline’s book is available online.)

I clicked on the PDF and read the chapter. In addition to portrayals of Blacks and alcohol, Assouline writes about the ways that Herge depicted Jews. I think it will prove useful when my copy of Tintin in America arrives.

I'm also intrigued by what I'm reading in Paul Mountfort's "'Yellow skin, black hair... Careful, Tintin': Herge and Orientalism" published in 2012 in the Australasian Journal of Popular Culture (Volume 1 Number 1): 

The original black and white version of Tintin in America (1931-32) offers a blistering critique of capitalism, both implicitly in its depictions of down-trodden urban Black Americans and in its explicit representation of American Indians as the victims of colonial dispossession and ongoing oppression at the hands of capital, backed by the US Army at gunpoint. (p. 38)

Eighty years later, "ongoing oppression" is about right, as the US is poised to, once again, come down on the side of companies who want resources on Native lands (see, for example, the resolution by the National Congress of American Indians ). It is too bad, however, that the Indians Herge presents are stereotypes (see the cover above). But how did he show them as "abject?":

the colour French (1946) and English (Herge 1978) editions progressively bowdlerized key scenes at their publishers insistence, so that, for instance, both a black doorman and mother with wailing child are literally bleached white in the colour version (Herge 1978:29 f12, 47 f15), along with their implications of ghettoization, due to the 'unsuitability' of mixing races in a children's book destined for an American audience. Similarly, frames depicting 'Red Indians' as abject were severely toned down (1978: 16 f7-8). (p. 38)

The copy I ordered is the 1978 edition. I'll have to see if I can get the black and white version to see what needed to be toned down. (If you've got access to it, perhaps you can scan relevant pages for me.)

Update, Saturday, December 31, 8:02 AM CST
Adelaide Dupont submitted a comment that says the Indians in the original are "Lakota Isnala." Items shown include a peace pipe, a tomahawk, a monastery, and a treaty. Using "Lakota Isnala" as a search term, I found a bit more information, also from Assouline's book. He says that Herge was looking for fresh ideas:

Then in the last months of 1957 he read an article on American Indians, reviving his youthful passion. He found his thread: Tintin finds himself on a reservation trying to prevent unscrupulous businessmen from evicting the natives in order to drill for oil. He immediately wrote to his old friend Father Gall to ask for his advice on the project. The Cistercian monk was an expert on the Plains Indians, who had named him "Lakota Isnala." He sent Herge five single-spaced typewritten pages filled with details and anecdotes about the geography of Little Rock and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Indians' hostility toward white people, and the despoliation of their land by big corporations. He even wrote of how Indians had been on the front line when the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy.

Like the previous project, the story opens with an incident on the road to Marlinspike Hall. An accident, or is it an attempt on the life of a Sioux? At the hospital, in his delirium, the man mentions a peace pipe, a tomahawk, and a monastery. Going to the monastery and visiting an exhibit of Indian artifacts, Tintin discovers that the peace pipe has disappeared. It contains a precious official document proving the claims of the Indians to their hunting grounds. As all the other copies have vanished it is the last thing to prevent their being forced from their land by an oil company. Herge abandoned this project instinctively. (p. 187)

I read that excerpt in Google books preview. The excerpt prompts questions! What was that youthful passion? What was the article Herge read? Why did Herge abandon the project? I've got Assouline's biography on order...

"Lakota Isnala" also turned up in my search. Paul Goble also consulted with "Lakota Isnala" in writing Red Hawk's Account of Custer's Last Battle" in 1969. Interesting, eh?! I gotta learn more about "Lakota Isnala"!

Update: Saturday, December 31, 10:30 AM CST
"Lakota Isnala" is also in Benoit Peeters Herge, Son of Tintin, published by JHU Press in 2011. The Google Books preview offers a bit more info than the preview of Assouline's book allowed. Herge met "Lakota Isnala" at "the Trappist abbey of Scourmont near Chimay" (p. 204), where Herge went to rest. At first he was bored with the religious services there. Then, he met Father Gall, a monk who was "passionately interested by American Indians" (p. 204) who had entered the monastery in 1926.:

Without ever having set foot in America, he had learned the Sioux language in order to correspond with the tribe. Herge and Father Gall struck up an immediate friendship. The monk took the cartoonist into his den, an isolated circular room at the top of a small tower.

There, you don't know if you're still in an abbey or if you're in a Sioux tent. Eagle-feather headdresses, bows and arrows, tomahawks, guns, a peace pipe, and all sorts of other objects. Since I had read Paul Coze's book Moeurs et histoire des Peaux-Rouges (Customs and history of the Indians), I didn't feel too out of place. We talked for a long time. The names of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, all the famous Indian chiefs, came up again and again, mingled with mentions of Little Big Horn, Wounded Knee, all the battles in which they became famous. He showed me photos of his friends Black Elk and Little Warrior, and told me their stories. Then he told me about his own life, or rather his grandmother's; she almost married a Sioux. He is Sioux by adoption himself; that is, he is actually part of the White Butte Band, a tribe of Ogallala Sioux! [31]

Herge, passionately interested since his youth in the world of the Indians, as totally fascinated by Father Gall. Gall was an extraordinary character, and he made a deep impression on the few people who were lucky enough to meet him. "My name is Lakota Ishnala," he would tell his visitors, "which means 'the solitary Sioux.' I am solitary in two senses; not only does this allude to the solitary prayers of the Indians, since I am a man of religion, but it is also a reminder that I am all alone here, far from my people and my family." [32]

The day after their first meeting, Father Gall took Herge into the woods, to the place he called his "reservation." There, the monk dressed in Indian clothing from head to foot, complete with a feather headdress, embroidered vest, loincloth and trousers, moccasins, and blanket. In a few minutes, the Trappist monk had transformed himself into a Sioux chief. Soon he suggested that Herge smoke the peace pipe with him, according to the very strict Indian rites: the bowl had to be stuffed with tobacco and special roots; the pipe raised toward the sky and lowered toward the earth, then turned toward the four cardinal points, before it could be passed around by the participants. This was a form of religious sentiment that Herge felt extremely close to. Father Gall spoke to him about the Indian soul, the desire for communion with all the beings in the universe, and the feeling of harmony with nature of which the white man was capable. He also tried to correct the misconceptions propagated by the Scouts on the subject, before describing the current situation of Indians on reservations. Fascinated, Herge decided to suggest that Paul Cuvelier work with Father Gall on an "illustrated history of the Indians."  (pp. 204-205).

LOTS of red flags all through there... How did this monk learn to write the "Sioux language"? At best, he learned Lakota, Dakota, or Nakota. And just who was he corresponding with? I don't think there is a "White Butte Band." Was Gall friends with Black Elk? I suppose that is possible, given that Black Elk was in England as part of the Wild West show that toured there. Do I need to do research on Gall?! His persona was convincing to Herge, and as noted earlier, to Paul Goble, too. Do these two European writers (Herge and Goble) mean to tell us that this was the best they could do in terms of reliable sources for their portrayals of American Indians?!!! 

Tintin in America

Yesterday's assignment in my class at UIUC was for each student to bring a children's book about American Indians to class. I'll talk more about what they brought in a later post, but for now, I want to talk about a specific book: Tintin in America.

One of the students brought Tintin in America. The author, Herge, is Belgian, and the book was published in Belgium in 1932. I will get a copy and read it, and invite anyone who knows the book to send me your thoughts (dreese dot nambe at gmail dot com).

In the book, Tintin goes to "Redskin City." From what I saw, the Indians are stereotypical characters in feathered headdress and buckskin. On the cover of the book, Tintin is tied to a post in front of two tipis. An Indian appears to be calling to others to join him; he brandishes a tomahawk in one hand and points to Tintin with the other.

An old publication date (1932), originally published in another country... But it was published here, too, in 1979, by Little, Brown. I'll spend some time reading and thinking about this book. There is a fan website called Tintinologist.org that says:

"Hergé had wanted to write a story about the oppression of the Indians in the USA, but his boss, Father Wallez fancied a story about the Chicago crime syndicate that would help illustrate how corrupt the USA really was. (Don't forget that Wallez was all in favour of a strong and unified Europe - without the rightist Hitler - type associations). That was not exactly what Hergé had in mind, so on page 16 he lets gangster Bobby Smiles flee to Redskincity, a town near an Indian camp. However, to stay out of trouble with Wallez, Hergé used the Indians to expose American corruption with the scene where the 'whites' found out about the oil on the Indian reserve, they established a town and oil industry within 24 hours.

Finding a publisher for this book in the USA was impossible. Even in the mid-1940s, American publishers insisted that Hergé replaced the 'coloured' people featured in the comic with 'whites'. Then again, the USA was not the only country that gave Hergé a hard time publishing this comic. Most foreign publishers (i.e. non-Belgian or French) seemed to have problems with the almost apocalyptical scene in which the soldiers move out the Indians of the reserve, and the speed in which the new town is created."

A lot of people here and around the world object to the treatment of American Indians. As the author of tintinologist says, Herge wanted to write a story about the oppression of American Indians in the United States.  In doing so, however, he uses stereotypical imagery. Does that imagery inadvertently negate what they're trying to accomplish? And what about people who don't know it is stereotypical?