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Marion E. Gridley was born in 1906. In 1939, she edited Indian Legends of American Scenes and in 2008, I found a first edition of Indian Legends in a small bookstore in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Until 1973 Gridley wrote about Native Americans — Maria Tallchief, Pocohontas, Hiawatha and many of the Indian Nations series. Marion’s husband Chief Whirling Thunder of the Winnebago illustrated the initial letters in the Indian Legends book. Chief Whirling Thunder was a teacher of Indian lore.

What is amazing about this book Indian Legends from 1939 is how respectful it is of Native Americans. The book is divided into 27 sections that cover different locations amongst them: Indians of Alabama, Indians of Colorado, Indians of Michigan, Indians of New York, Indians of North Carolina,  Indians of Canada. Prior to the stories in each section Gridley wrote introductions to the tribes of the area and their history, not mincing any words about the forced removals, mistreatment and general violent oppression whites put upon the American Indian.

I was disappointed that not a single story or mention was made in the book of the Shawnee.

She generally includes in each introduction American Indians of note and their activities and location as of the time of writing. No where does the reader get the sense the Indian disappeared or is no more or did not survive. No where is the Indian spoken about using deragatory language or romanticized language or any kind of stereotype.

I was delightfully surprised. The stories themselves are wonderfully edited and read with the same thought as was put into the introductions. Not to mention the fact that the stories are fascinating. One of the Michigan stories is about White Lake. My family and I had a reunion on the shores of this lake on the western side of Michigan.

My only concern is that the stories in Indian Legends were used without permission. Before an author uses any kind of Native American story in any way, they should secure permission from the tribe to use the story. The story having been published already does not connotate permission to use it. Many American Indian stories are considered sacred and permission is needed to use the story.

I have put Post-Its to A Parallel Universe to rest. R.I.P.

I cannot review anymore books. I have been there and done that and need a new challenge in my life.

Here are some things I learned from reviewing books:

• I can write a synopsis now. Every writer should review at least twenty books and write the review to be read by others. It will change the way you feel about the dreaded synopsis task when querying editors and agents. Summing up a story in a sentence or two will eventually feel like putting on your best pair of jeans, if you review enough books.
• My eyes have been opened to what is still really going on in children’s literature. I am speaking about the prevalent use of negative/demeaning and inaccurate/romanticized stereotypes of American Indians. Thank you especially to Debbie Reese and Oyate for this education.
• For the most part, Americans are apathetic about the issues of American Indians. The racism that still exists today against American Indians does not seem to rouse a single bit of even minor irritation- except amongst my cousins of Native American ancestry. This is very depressing to me. It is as if we cannot see these other people who are living right next door.
• Children still love to read books.
• Never offer to review a book for someone you know until after you have read it. You cannot be honest without destroying the relationship if the book is flawed, so when the relationship is more valuable than producing the review, you will have a struggle as to what to say. Unless you are the smooth salesperson, and then I have my doubts about you.
• Stories have universal value and are far more important to us than we are willing to say. Keep writing. 

And speaking of writing, I need to get back to finishing my novel and reading books for review is time consuming. I want to keep writing my blog, and so I needed to come up with a theme. What will my blog be about?  How about my blog being about my life?

Do I care if anyone reads it? Yes, but I can’t write for anyone but myself.

Goodbye, Post-Its From A Parallel Universe.

Hello, Life on Misfit Acres.

Native American Gardening: Stories, Projects and Recipes for Families was written by Michael J. Caduto and Joseph Bruchac. Caduto is a well-known gardening expert and Bruchac is a prolific and talented children’s author of Abenaki  and European descent. The book was published in 1996 by Fulcrum Publishing.

The book has a few stories from the Tuscarora, Zuni, Lacandon Maya, Arikara and the Tutelo. “The Bean Woman” a tale from the Tutelo was my favorite as Bean Woman must find a suitable husband and she finds him not in Mountain Lion Man, or Deer Man, or Bear Man but in Corn Man. Bean Woman and Corn Man become intertwined for as Bean Woman said, “The Great Creator made us to be with each other.”

It is in this book that I was taught to fully comprehend how planting pole beans at the base of corn feeds the nitrogen-needy corn with the nitrogen heavily produced by beans. When I went to Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana last summer, the Leni Lennape gentleman took the time to show me how to plant my beans and corn the Native way. The corn is planted in a circle and when it grows several inches high, the pole beans are planted around the corn. The pole beans then climb and intertwine themselves around the corn. He had planted seeds that had been saved for many many generations and his corn was enormously tall. He then had his squash nearby.

In the book, squash, corn and beans are called the Three Sisters. Squash is planted amongst the corn and beans and its large leaves keep weeds to a minimum and its prickly vines keep raccoons and other animals from walking amongst the corn. So, I had already re-designed this season’s garden to plant my corn, beans and squash as the Leni Lennape do. Native American Gardening gives excellent instructions on how to plant a Wamponoag Three Sisters Garden and a Hidatsa Three Sisters Garden. I am going to use the mound instructions when planting my corn and beans and also I will try and see if I can honor the Four Directions when planting the seeds. I will also relocate my sunflowers to line up against the North.

My daughter and I will use the directions on how to dry gourds and create rattles, storage jars and birdhouses with them. We will also make corn husk dolls with the excellent directions in the book.

The book reads a little choppy, but it’s not annoying. There are good sections on storytelling, buying Native seeds and harvesting and storing seeds, starting a garden from scratch and traditional Native food recipes. Often, we are reminded to plant extra crops for our friends the animals and for the insects. I am planting as much as possible to try and share with my local food bank also.

Sources for Native seeds: http://www.nativeseeds.org/Home

http://www.seedsofchange.com/garden_center/browse_category.aspx?id=123

The writing of the book is aimed at the entire family, and there is a good list of do’s and don’ts :

1. Don’t dress like Indians. But do study Native customs.
2. Don’t use words like “savages”, “war-loving” and “primitive”  or “squaw” to describe American Indians.
3. Don’t say “sit Indian style” or “walk Indian file”.
4. Don’t talk about American Indians as if they existed only in the past.
5. Don’t talk about Native Americans as if they are all of one large culture. Each tribe is unique and different.
6. Don’t belittle sacred ceremonies and beliefs. I would add, make sure you ask before you borrow a tribe’s story also. Many stories are sacred.

Joseph Bruchac’s The Arrow Over the Door takes place in 1777 near Saratoga, New York. The Americans have begun their war of rebellion and the Quakers desire to remain neutral and peaceful while the Abenaki Indians must decide if they are going to answer King George’s call to fight the Rebels.

And so Bruchac tells the story of the historical Easton Meeting that occurred at a Quaker Meetinghouse in Easton, New York (not far from Saratoga) between a group of American Indians and the Friends that worshipped in the Meetinghouse.       

The story is told in alternating viewpoints between two young teenaged boys: Samuel, a Quaker and Stands Straight, an Abenaki.           

The Arrow Over the Door is a very short primary grade historical fiction, that could easily be read aloud to ages six and up. My guess is that the very upper end of readership on this piece to be about ten. And I was disappointed in that respect. It is an exciting, interesting story about two well-realized characters and so much more could have been done with this story to make its appeal to include the age of child the characters are, fourteen or so. I have seen this book recommended for higher grades, but I disagree. It is fairly simplistic and plot-oriented.

In the book, we learn that our custom of shaking hands upon meeting someone derives from the Quaker tradition of extending a hand of friendship. But, extending a hand for a handshake denotes equality between the two parties and so sometimes, the hand in Colonial times was rejected.

We learn that the Abenaki’s called the Americans “Bostoniaks”, the English “Songlismoniaks”, and the French “Platzmoniak”, that Elder Brother Sun “liked the sight of war”, and to say thanks in Abenaki we would say “wliwini”. Stands Straight at the age of eight, swam down to the bottom of a cold, icy river to grasp what he could and came up with a seeing stone. The Shawnee seemed to also have this custom amongst their boys.

I will not tell you what happens when the Abenaki warriors come upon the meetinghouse as they search for the enemy, the Bostoniaks. Bruchac does a wonderful job with building the suspense through the voices of the two boys, both of them concerned for their lives and their loved ones.

The Arrow Over the Door is an excellent choice for the study of American History in grades one to three as Bruchac is faithful to represent both sides of the story, the European and the Indigenous. It was published in 1998 by Dial Books for Young Readers and includes fine pencil illustrations by James Watling. My boys would’ve enjoyed this book a great deal, and I would also include it on a list for older dyslexic readers, as its pace is excellent, the story compelling and the reading easy but not patronizing.

Four Ancestors – Stories, Songs, and Poems from Native America as told by Joseph Bruchac and illustrated by S.S. Burrus, Jeffrey Chapman, Murv Jacob and Duke Sine is a good read aloud for ages six and up. I say age six because some of the stories run on the long side.

Told by Joseph Bruchac is a most apt description as the writing is such that it flows perfectly in the form of oral storytelling. This is definitely a read-aloud.

The four ancestors are: fire, earth, water and air. They are viewed as living beings within the Native American cultures, and the four elements were used in the creation of people.

There are no stories from the Shawnee in this book, as is the usual. Other than a very old book by CC Trowbridge and one picture book, I have been unable to find anthologies that include tales from the Shawnee.

Tribes represented in Four Ancestors include: Wampanoag, Mohawk, Pawnee, Seneca, Chippewa, Cheyenne, Navajo (several), Lakota, Abenaki, Cherokee, Inuit and other lesser known tribes such as Muliseet, Micmac, Cochiti Pueblo amongst others.

The stories did not stand out as much to me as in the anthology The Girl Who Married the Moon, but some of them are rather amusing and humorous. In particular, “How Saynday Tried To Marry Whirlwind Girl” and “The Bird Whose Wings Made the Wind” both in the Air section. I particularly learned from “Clay Old Woman and Clay Old Man” a Cochiti Pueblo story about how the people learned to use clay to make pots and a Pawnee tale “The Moon Basket” in which First Girl and First Boy meet Moon Woman and she teaches them important things, like how to make a lodge, how to make baskets, how to dance and sing, how to grow corn.

The poems and songs are a delight to read. From How Songs Are Made an Inuit poem:

Songs are born in that stillness

when everyone tries

to think of nothing but beautiful things.

Four Ancestors ends with an Abenaki tale “The Gift of Stories, The Gift of Breath” which every storyteller and writer should read. Grampa Obomsawin tells his granddaughter, “Long ago, our Creator made the world, and He filled it with stories. Those stories are a gift to us, just like the gift of breath.” Grampa goes on to teach Cecile how stories are inside of us, but we must listen for them.

JRR Tolkien author of Lord of the Rings did not see a dichotomy in the creation of his stories and his faith in God. After all, we are formed in His image and He took great pleasure in the act of creation. God created an entirely new world as does an author. It is part of us to find a story.

Four Ancestors was published in 1996 by Bridge Water Books and has 31 tales, poems and songs.

Through Indian Eyes – The Native Experience in Books for Children was published in 1998 by Oyate and edited by Beverly Slapin and Doris Seale.

This is a must read book for children’s writers/illustrators, educators and librarians. Through Indian Eyes begins with a series of essays by such notables as Joseph Bruchac, Doris Seale and Beth Brant on how American Indians view what is written about them, how they view what has happened to them (and continues to happen), and how racism against the American Indian is very alive and well today and occurring quite frequently, in of all places that it shouldn’t, books for children.

In the midst of the essays are poems written by American Indians that will not only help to open your eyes but will touch your heart. The book then includes 91 (large print) pages of reviews by Slapin and Seale of children’s books that include the presence of American Indians in them. Recommended and not recommended books are included and this is followed by clear cut examples of what should not happen in a children’s book along with what should. For example, “Look at Picture Books” asks is E for Eskimo, are Indians counted, do the Indians have ridiculous names?

The reader is given several and numerous examples in published pieces in which all concerned should “look for stereotypes, loaded words, tokenism, distortion of history, lifestyles (the myth of the vanished Indian), dialogue, standards of success (how are modern Indians portrayed?), the role of women, the role of elders, the effects on a child’s self-esteem, and the author or illustrator’s background.

The following is a partial list of recommended books that I’ve included on my reading list. I have been reading a lot of the books that are not recommended and it is time for me to continue reading what is:

• Halfbreed by Maria Campbell (adult)
• Children of the Maya
• Morning Star, Black Sun
• To Live in Two Worlds all by Brent Ashabranner
• The Mishoni Book by Edward Benton-Banai
• A Legend from Crazy Horse Clan by Moses Nelson Big Crow
• Night Flying Woman by Ignatia Broker
• Columbus Day by Jimmie Durham
• Death of the Iron Horse
• Star Boy both by Paul Goble
• Native American Cookbook by Edna Henry
• A Thousand Years of American Indian Storytelling by Jeanette Henry
• American Indian Stereotypes in the World of Children by Arlene Hirschfelder (adult)
• The Ways of My Grandmothers by Beverly Hungry Wolf
• This Song Remembers by Jane Katz
• How the Birds Got Their Colours by Basil Johnston
• Sparrow Hawk by Meridel Le Sueur
• Native American Testimony – A Chronicle of Indian-White Relations from Prophecy to the Present, 1492-1992 edited by Peter Nabakov (adult)
• Who-Paddled-Backward-With-Trout by Howard Norman
• Legends of Our Nation by North American Indian Travelling College
• The People Shall Continue by Simon Ortiz
• The Story of Jumping Mouse by John Steptoe

Some of the books above are by white authors and Slapin and Seale state repeatedly that it is not the author’s ethnicity that matters as much as it is her handling of the material, the characters, the historical background, etc. We should not be writing books that hurt children and we are responsible for being aware of racism against the American Indian in our work.

Oyate published in 2005 another book edited by Slapin and Seale titled A Broken Flute – The Native Experience in Books for Children. I have a copy but have not read it yet. It looks like a wealth of further information and understandings of how American Indians are treated in children’s literature with, of course, reviews on books written since 1998.

Please educate yourself as to how our society is continuing to perpetuate racism against the American Indian through children’s literature, whether we are using books published decades ago or books published this year. Be very careful if you are a homeschool parent. Many outright racist books are recommended in homeschool book catalogues and curriculums, books such as The Matchlock Gun.

What disturbs me the most, is these are most-often Christian institutions or businesses profiting off the continued glorification of our country’s past sins against our Indigenous peoples. But if we all stopped buying these types of books for our children, they would be forced to quit printing them.

And if you as a children’s writer are not taking this seriously yet, look on this list from Oyate and see if you know any of these writers and decide if you want to end up on this list also : http://www.oyate.org/books-to-avoid/index.html

Pocahontas is an excellent historical fiction read for ages ten and up. Bruchac did his work in researching and writing this 147 page book that dispels many of the Disneyfied myths of Pocahontas and John Smith.

Pocahontas is told by both the eleven-year-old Powhatan girl, daughter of the Great Chief or Mamanatowic, of the Powhatan people and Captain John Smith of England. The story covers the time from the voyage to the scene in Mamanatowic’s village, in which John Smith misinterpreted what had happened and thinks he was saved by Pocahontas.

Pocahontas is her everyday name. Mataoka is the name only her closest friends and family use. And Amonute is her formal name, a name meaning favored one and a name she will no longer be known by when her father passes on. She lives in the village Werowocomoco with her father. Her mother died but her father’s sisters care for her. Her mother would not have lived in the same town as her daughter, but rather with her own family.

The Tassantassuk, or Outsiders, have arrived on the shores of Chesepiock, the great salt bay, in their big swan canoes and are building a camp in one of the worst and most foolish places to try and live. John Smith has been on board the Susan Constant as a prisoner but is released when his name is read as one of the leaders on the council.

The story then follows the two cultures as they clash against each other and learn about each other. The Powhatans keep the English alive despite the English being offensive, rude and hostile (not to mention aggressive and violent).

Mamanatowick destroyed the Chesepiock people because of a prophecy that foretold that a great nation would rise from the Great Salt Water Bay and bring an end to Mamanatowic’s kingdom. So, he made war on them and the Piankatanks and then attacked and removed the Kecough people from their land. Now, a new threat, a more dangerous threat with their powerful thunder sticks, has cropped up.

Pocahontas never meets John Smith until his capture by her Uncle and the ceremony in which her father adopts him as one of his own sons. She never goes to the white man’s camp without her father’s permission and with escorts.  Mamanatowic thinks the ceremony has obligated John Smith to honor the Powhatan leader.

Captain Smith has his hands full getting the lazy men to work and to protect themselves and recover from assundry illnesses. He also engages in some political take overs and expeditions into the surrounding country. He is not captured until Dec. 1607 (they landed in April 1607). The Powhatan call him Little Red-Haired Warrior and he earns their respect with his courage and fighting skills.

We learn what it must have been like for both of them to be who they were and to live when they did. We learn that the Powhatan recognized five seasons: Cattapeuk (spring), Cohattayough (early summer), Nepinough (late summer), Taquitock (fall) and Cohonk (winter). “Everyone knows the earth prefers the touch of a woman’s hands,” Pcoahontas is told while she helps the resting women during their time in the Moon House.

When Smith is captured, Pocahontas hopes that he will join her people and help them get rid of the worthless and rude Tassantassuk. Smith lies to Mamanatowic about why the English are there and how they even ended up there. Pocahontas impulsively rushes forth when Smith’s head is lain upon the rocks in order to be the first to touch him so that she’ll always be the first of his relatives among her people.

When Smith returns to Jamestown, he is arrested and charged (but acquitted) for the deaths of the other men on the expedition up the Chickahominy River, in which he was captured. In September 1609, he is badly injured (possibly intentionally) and then someone attempts to assasinate him while he recovers. Pocahontas has become a frequent visitor and when he returns to England in October, she is told that he died.

Brucac includes in the end both a section on Early 17th Century English and the Powhatan Language. The author used all of Smith’s accounts in his research and also accounts of others. He gives us selected words and phrases in Powhatan, place names and Native names.

How to count to ten in Powhatan:

1. necut
2. ningh
3. nuss
4. yowgh
5. paranske
6. comotinch
7. toppawass
8. nusswash
9. kekatawgh
10. kaskeke

Bruchac primarily based his Native stories (of which preface Pocahontas’s chapters) on Powhatan and eastern Algonquin traditions and the works of Helen C. Rountree, in particular her 1989 book The Powhatan Indians of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture. He also had the help of Native Americans and the Powhatan’s and his own familiarity with the Abenaki language.

All of us have two ears; our Creator wishes us to remember there are two sides to every story, says Bruchac.

If you get the chance, visit the historic site of Jamestown. It is a fascinating trip. The fort was actually very small and built in a triangle and right on the river’s shore. It is definitely in the midst of a swamp.

Looking for the Native American perspective on the first Thanksgiving? Joseph Bruchac’s Picture Book Squanto’s Journey accomplishes this while leaving the readers remindful of giving thanks. This book is appropriate for any age child.

The book is wonderfully illustrated by Greg Shed. Squanto tells his story in first person. Born in 1590 and of the Patuxet people, Squanto is taken against his will to Spain in 1614. He returns to his homeland in 1621.

The Patuxet are the People of the Falls and when Squanto journeys home with a friend of John Smith’s in 1619, he is told that most of the Patuxet have perished in a great illness. Squanto’s entire family have died. Thousands of Pokanoket have perished also and they are still weak from the illness. They capture Squanto and he becomes involved with the Pilgrims. Massasoit, a sachem of the Potakonet, is wary of befriending the English.

Samoset, a sachem of the Pemaquid people, walks into Plymouth on 16 MAR 1621 and returns on 22 March with someone who can speak English — Squanto. Plymouth was once Patuxet, Squanto’s village.

Squanto is freed by the Pokanoket and he begins teaching the Pilgrims how to survive in America. “Together we might make our home on this land given to us by the Creator of All Things.”

A good harvest comes in in the Fall and Squanto gives thanks and hopes for many more days to give thanks for. He gives thanks for the people.

In Bruchac’s author’s note, he explains how carefully he researches and learns the stories of the Native Americans he tells. Squanto’s Journey was published in 2000 by Harcourt Books.

Seasons of the Circle by Joseph Bruchac is a richly illustrated (Robert Goetzl) Picture Book about the twelve months of the year and what some of the Native American tribes did during those months. It is a gentle and soothing book, appropriate for bedtime and for preschool studies of the seasons and the year.

Each month centers on a different tribe. Lenape women gather maple sap in March. Cherokee people gather berries in May. Apache Mountain Spirit Dancers circle the fire in July. A Lakota elder tells stories in December.

The author recommends the following two sites for more information on Native Americans:

www.nmai.si.edu   and www.nativeculture.com/lisamitten/nations.html

The Girl Who Married the Moon — Tales from Native North America is a delightful MG book about the time in a girl’s life when she becomes a woman. About her moontime. The book is told by Joseph Bruchac and Gayle Ross with wonderful ink illustrations by S.S. Burrus. Joseph Bruchac is a prolific children’s book author and of Abenaki heritage and Gayle Ross is a direct descendant of the Cherokee Principal Chief John Ross. 

The book is divided into four regions of the United States and each section has four stories. The stories are about empowered girls, capable girls, intelligent and clever and very brave girls and the challenges girls face growing into womanhood. The stories also show the respect for tradition.

The Northeast section has tales from the Penobscot, Seneca, Passamaquoddy, and Mohegan. My favorite from this section is the Passamaquoddy tale The Girl and the Chenoo. Little Listener has braggard brothers and while they hunt each day, she remains behind, caring for camp. A Chenoo comes to her camp ; he is a “great cannibal monster in the shape of a man” and reminded me somewhat of a Sasquatch. Little Listener invites the Chenoo in, feeds him, allows him to rest and convinces him that she and her brothers are his family. He hunts for them and then asks for her help to not be frightening to others. And she melts his icy heart with her kindness. 

 The Southeast section has tales from the Cherokee, Muskogee, Piankeshaw, and Caddo.

I most enjoyed the Cherokee  tale Stonecoat.                           

Stonecoat is a powerful cannibal with a skin of solid rock. But women in their moontime are more powerful, the power to create life is most evident then, and so women in their moontime line up along the path to camp, oldest to youngest. As Stonecoat passes each one, he becomes more and more defeated and the most powerful woman is the girl with her first moon. Stonecoat is defeated.

Santa Clara Pueblo, Cochiti Pueblo, Dine (Navajo) and Apache tales make up the Southwest section.

The Beauty Way — The Ceremony of White-Painted Woman tells how the Apache honor a girl’s entrance into womanhood through the Beauty Way Ceremony. 

She spends four days in a sacred lodge and an elder woman, Spirit Mother, teaches her about womanhood. The family hosts feasts for all who attend the four days, and the Crown Dancers, the mountain spirits who dance to shield the people, dance in firelight to drums. It sounds like a truly beautiful ceremony.

The Northwest section has tales from the Lake Miowak, Cheyenne, Okanagan, and Alutiiq. My favorite is the Cheyenne tale Where the Girl Rescued HerBrother. This is the story, that I take to be true, about a Cheyenne girl who rescued her brother during what whites refer to as the Battle of Rosebud Creek. This battle occurred just days before Custer was defeated at Little Bighorn.                                                                                                    

Buffalo Calf Road Woman is a member of the Society of Quilters, the very bravest of   women. She watches the battle at Rosebud Creek from atop a hill and when her brother becomes surrounded by Crow scouts and his death is inevitable, she charges down the hill on her horse and swoops him up and carries him to safety. It is because of her heroic deed, that the Cheyenee refer to this battle as Where the Girl Rescued Her Brother. I love this story. I know how she feels about her brother and I admire her courage and adept skills.

The Girl Who Married the Moon was published by Bridgewater Books in 1994. I do want to point out that the authors cited as a source the book American Indian Myths and Legends, edited by Richard Edoes and Alfonso Ortiz and published by Pantheon Books in 1994. It is in this cited source that I found several tales of the moon and sun in adversarial relationships, including one in which the moon rapes his sister sun. I bring this up because there is a harsh review of Janet Heller’s book How the Moon Regained Her Shape and the reviewer claims that there are no such American Indian tales in which the moon and sun have an adversarial relationship. When I brought this book to their attention, the book was dismissed, but it appears it has some credibility if used by both Joseph Bruchac and Gayle Ross.

National Book Award winner The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie was published in 2007 by Little, Brown & Company. It is a contemporary YA fiction novel about a fourteen-year-old Spokane Indian, Arnold Spirit, who leaves the reservation school system to attend a nearby public high school where he becomes the only other Indian there besides the school mascot.

Alexie tells Arnold’s story in an engaging and humorous first-person teen boy voice. Arnold tells us right away that he has a boat load of medical problems, including brain damage (water on the brain he calls it). He had 42 teeth instead of the standard-issue 32, until the 10 extra were pulled out in one day (this is the best the local clinic can do for him). He is very skinny and nearsighted in one eye and farsighted in the other. But, it is very obvious that he is extremely intelligent, introspective and observant. Arnold is instantly likeable.

Arnold’s situation on the Indian reservation, on the other hand, is not likeable. It is distressing and uncomfortable and depressing. His family is poor, his parents are drunks (albeit nice ones), his angry best friend gets beat up at home, his sister lives in the basement after being one of the most promising students at Wellpinit High School. Indians simply do not go to college. His mother and father were once promising individuals only to fall into the apathy and repression they live under at the reservation.

It is a white school teacher at Arnold’s reservation school, Mr. P, that convinces Arnold to leave the reservation. He tells Arnold he will die if he doesn’t. Mr. P used to dish out the dirt to his Indian students and he feels guilty. He wants to save Arnold.

So, Arnold decides to go to Reardan High School where the kids do well in sports and academics and go to college and have hope. Hope is something white people have. His parents are supportive; although he often has to get to school on his own (his father drinks away the gas money, etc). His best friend Rowdy ditches Arnold and many people on the reservation feel he has betrayed them.

Despite the humor, this is a heavy book to swallow. Arnold’s life is fraught with tragedy and it is deeply disturbing that he feels and others feel that his only hope for a life is to leave the reservation. There is a lot of loss and death in the story.

But Arnold has some great experiences at Reardan. He becomes a star basketball player, flourishing under a wonderful coach. He makes friends and has a translucent semi-girlfriend named Penelope. The white people aren’t all that bad, after all.

There are some statements the narrator makes that struck me as not quite on the spot. He states that loving ghosts and monsters is an American Indian thing. I find it to be a universal phenomenon across race and culture. The negative effects of alcoholism on the family and its children are universal, rather than specific to any one culture.

There is some swearing and talk about masturbation in the book, not that it offended me, but each family must make its own decisions about what they are comfortable having their children read. I would recommend the novel for children aged 13 and up.

I do wish there was hope for the children as they grow up on the reservation. I hope that Alexie’s book will inspire American Indian children living on reservations to go for their dreams and work to make them come true. And I hope that for all children because I know many of you young people, no matter your race or ethnicity, feel hopeless. College costs too much money, you are struggling to make it on your own as it is, you already have children, your parents are not supportive or they are dysfunctional etc. Go for it! I believe in you. In my eyes, you might be the next President, the next Wassily Kandinsky, the next Bono, the next Meryl Streep, the next Curtis Granderson (go Tigers!), the next Sherman Alexie. You will never know if you don’t try…

It appears that I’ve finally truly gotten the attention of the folks over at Sonlight Curriculum: http://www.sonlightblog.com/2009/04/questionable-content.html.

But it appears their answer to american history books with negative and/or inaccurate portrayals of Native Americans and the treatment of Native Americans by whites is to put an oft-overlooked warning comment in a teacher’s guide rather than doing the work to find better books.

My husband, bless his English-German soul, came up with a much better analogy. He likened the children reading the books, or hearing them read-aloud, to a jury. The prosecuting attorney is the author of the poorly written book. The teacher is the defense attorney and the defendants are the American Indians.

The jury hears a passage presented by the prosecutor that American Indians were vicious, aggressive and without cause (they are reading Matchlock Gun, for example). Suddenly, the defense jumps up and whips out their teacher guide (if they remember) and shouts, “Stop! The American Indians were protecting their homes. Treaties had been made that whites ignored. Frontier people knew they were encroaching on Indian lands and they did so with the government’s backing.”

The judge turns to the jury and says, “Please disregard that passage the prosecutor just read. Go on, Prosecutor, and continue your argument.”

The prosecutor smiles slyly and continues reading the riveting, informative and engrossing literature while the American Indian sits in her chair with no voice. The jury, being children, are engrossed with the story and have completely forgotten the defense’s sermon. The jury, being children, are riveted by the images their minds are creating as they read the story and those images stay with them for a very long time, if not forever. Especially, since the defense is always harping on them to do their chores, to stop hitting their sibling, to brush their teeth and get to bed, to learn their multiplication tables and now not to listen to everything in the book they read to learn what really happened in American history.

I started on this journey as my daughter and I began reading the historical fiction assigned to us through the Sonlight Curriculum’s American History 3/4 program. I made sure to back up Bulla’s Pocohontas book with a selection of others, including nonfiction as Bulla’s book does the Disneyfied version of Pocohontas. I also was careful about presenting the first Thanksgiving. But, after reading Caddie Woodlawn, Matchlock Gun and Skippack School (amongst others) my daughter said to me, and I do quote her, “I am sick and tired of these terrible books about  these so-called mean Indians. I want to read a book that is told by an Indian child. Not all Indians were bad and besides, the whites were stealing their land.”

And so since she was right, and I was sick of them also, we began our search. And, we are still searching. We have found some excellent resources, including Debbie Reese’s blog and Cynthia Leitich’s website.

So, why should we care if Sonlight has children reading “terrible books” as my daughter calls them. Well, we care because both of my great-great grandparents were mixed blood. And we care because we are Christians and God calls us to be truthful, honest and compassionate to and about all of the people He created. We care because American Indians are still suffering as a result of the actions our white ancestors enacted upon them. We care because we care about children, whether they be white or Asian or black or Indian.

Why wouldn’t Sonlight worry that one, just one, of the children being taught American history through their curriculum might be American Indian?

Sonlight is using primarily books that were published years ago, some of them decades ago. If you look closely, they are primarily Newberry award winners; as if that makes them instantly okay. I think if Sonlight did the work, and they could have done it this past year, they could come up with a much better curriculum. But I got my new catalogue and I see none of the books have changed. And so I threw it out.

I think it is our God-given responsibility to educate ourselves as to what really happened in American history and to honor God by teaching our children the truth, whether we use historical fiction, nonfiction or textbooks.

I am 45 years old, and I just learned that Thomas Jefferson, whom I’d always admired, had a fervent policy to wipe out the Shawnee Indian, not just remove them. He wanted them dead and gone. He authorized giving them disease-infested blankets. He speculated in Indian lands.

The President I’d admired tried to wipe out my ancestors and I never knew it until I read Colin Galloway’s book The Shawnees and the War for America. This is not something I should have found out on my own, after all I was an AP student in American History and graduated from college.

I read The Darkness Under the Water as I am a follower of Debbie Reese’s eye-opening blog American Indians in Children’s Literature. There is a great deal of warranted controversy about the accuracy of the historical picture Kanell paints in her book and the accuracy of her portrayal of the Abenaki people.  There is no way for me to assess either, as I know nothing about the Vermont Eugenics program in the 1930’s nor about the Abenaki people. So, read the information on Reese’s blog but I do know a good book when I read one.

There is no other reason to read this book other than to teach yourself how not to write a book. If I hadn’t known from Reese’s blog about the gory, horrifying kitchen scene to come, I would have never finished the book. It does not engage the reader, it is poorly written and it is scattered. Scattered in theme and composition. It is frankly, boring.

There is far too much narrative exposition in this book. It often reads like a diary rather than a piece of fiction and Kanell has a problem making the narrator disappear when it is necessary. She writes far too many sentences telling us what Molly sees or hears, when we know it is Molly hearing and looking, “She chatted with Mrs. O’Connor, and I overheard part of it.” Instead of showing us what Molly sees, Kanell tells us Molly sees it, using those kinds of words, “I saw…” This is a critical mistake according to all of the critique groups I have ever been in and this type of writing slows the pace. 

That is until, the reader gets to the gory, horrifying kitchen scene that I could NOT believe was put into a children’s book.  Don’t use with me the YA cover, and justify allowing this scene to be published in a children’s book because “it is for teenagers”. My daughter has been reading YA since age eleven. I could not have stomached this scene at age sixteen and I don’t want my daughter to have it put in her mind.

Sixteen-year-old Molly Ballou lives in Waterford, Vermont in 1930 and tells the story of her Abenaki family dealing with the damming of the local river and how the lake created will then cover over their family home with water, their need to hide their Native heritage, the sick disgusting nurses who butcher her mother in the kitchen because of the Vermont Eugenics program, Molly’s ghost sister’s hauntings, Molly’s friendship with a Catholic Irish girl and the predjudice against Catholics, her attraction to an Abenaki boy named Henry, the burning down of their family home, her own lack of maturity and selfishness and her strained and difficult relationship with her mother who becomes pregnant again and then loses the baby. And to top it off, the nurse falls down the stairs at the end of the book and is killed. The body must be disposed of, so no one will suspect murder and THEN mother dies anyway. This is what I mean by scattered. Put all this into a short novel and you get a slamming of issues with no depth. A book this scattered has nothing to say. It is a book written to get published.

Molly sums up her shallowness with this statement about the deaths of her family members, the “passing felt like the seperation between a tree and its leaves in autumn…” What? There is no pain involved when a tree sheds its leaves.  There is no end in the natural act of autumn. The leaves come back just six months later. A loved one is gone until we are reunited, sometimes for many many decades and we are not reunited here on earth. How can anyone compare death and grieving to a tree and its leaves? That is not what the death of a loved one feels like, but this strange and inaccurate metaphor is placed at the end of the book.

It is also a book of characters that made me wince. Molly complains incessantly when she has to help her mother with chores and responds to nearly everything with no empathy. Her voice is very immature for her supposed age of sixteen in 1930. Her mother is often mean and psychologically unhealthy; she cannot move on from the loss of her five year old daughter when she drowned in the river (years ago). The irritating ghost of the drowned child has no insight and haunts Molly. It is annoying. And even though Molly lives with her Abenaki Grandmother who practices the customs of their people, Molly knows nothing about what it means to be Abenaki.

Molly’s friend Katy has an “Irish temper” and an “Irish laugh” and we read that others believe it is not American to be Catholic. Growing up with an Irish Catholic grandmother, I had no idea there is an Irish laugh or that all Irish have a temper. My Grandmother was twenty-seven in 1930 and she lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and never once told me she had a problem with others because she was Catholic. Not in Iowa nor in Detroit where she moved in 1940.  Here we go with the cliche stereotypes.

Where is the true purpose of the art of fiction played out in this story? What is the purpose of writing in graphic detail a scene about an Abenaki woman who gives birth too early on a kitchen table and one of the visiting white nurses brings out a knife and chops out the mother’s uterus so she can have no more babies? And then leave the reader (and some of the characters too) with wondering if the baby died naturally or was smothered by the nurses since he was Indian?

Why does the mother have to end up dead? Why does the little sister have to be in a place of no rest, a trapped miserable wandering spirit even though she received a proper burial. A relieved Molly tells us when the dead nurse is found by the authorities that her spirit won’t speak from the river as it will have a proper burial. Then why did the little sister speak from the river?

What is the purpose of this book? What hope does this book impart? Is it historically accurate and so we can trust our children will learn about the Vermont Eugenics Program? Does it accurately portray the Abenaki people and their customs?

Hey, if we can pull all of these memoirs off the shelves because we have learned that they were really fictional, like James Frey and the couple who really didn’t live through the Holocaust, why can’t we pull off the shelves a book that butchers the truth and in the process leaves us nothing but scenes of horror?

After reading the reviews on Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder on Debbie Reese’s blog and the Oyate organization’s website, I thought it was time for me to revisit the book I loved as a child. Would I agree with them that my daughter should not read this book when we study this time period in American history? Should LHOP be removed from library shelves and schools?

Can I put aside my emotional ties to the book and look at it through new eyes? I set about to thoroughly critique and assess every mention of Indians.

I wasn’t sure if I could. I did read this book over and over and over as a child while knowing that one of the branches of my family tree is Native American. I grew up with remorse in my heart for what had happened to the American Indian in the United States. I am still disgusted at what happens to the American Indian now and I have always taught my children that we should, quite simply, be terribly ashamed of what our European ancestors did to the Native American. There is no way out of that truth. So did my reading of Little House on the Prairie influence me as a child to see the American Indian in a negative light? No.

It did influence me to understand that the Ingalls family was wrong for moving onto Osage land. It does bother me enormously that on the Little House in the Prairie historic site website, they present a shameful mistruth that Pa did not know he was moving onto Osage land. He sure did and the book says he did on page 316. The site goes on to say that it was too bad Pa didn’t know the government was going to remove the Indians six months after he left. He could’ve settled the land.

Little House in the Prairie is set in 1868. Pa, Ma, Mary, Laura and Baby Carrie are moving west out of the Big Woods of Wisconsin because Pa wants to move to Indian country where only Indians live. They pile in their covered wagon and head to Kansas.

Why? Pa thinks it is too crowded in the Big Woods, he wants to be around more wild animals, in the West the land is level, there are no trees and the grass grows thick and high - pasture as far as the eye can see and most importantly, there are no settlers. Pa promises Laura that she will see a papoose - a little, brown Indian baby.

The obstacles begin to be thrown in the Ingalls’s path. God letting them know that they were not in His Will, in my opinion.

Pa crosses a creek where he is only guessing it is the ford and he makes Jack swim, even when Laura asks for the dog to be allowed in the wagon. Pa is not so nice. The creek supposedly rises too fast and they are all nearly lost in the rushing water. Jack the brindle bull dog is gone. Pa says, “What we’ll do in a wild country without a good watchdog I don’t know.”

I think Pa was impulsive and thoughtless — serious character deficiencies. He moves his family of girls to American Indians’ land from a place of family and community, he crosses the creek in the wrong spot and tries to explain it away as a sudden rising and he loses the dog. What the heck was he thinking?

But in one of my still favorite scenes, Jack finds the family and Pa almost shoots him, thinking the dog is a wolf. The family is camping where there is no evidence of anyone living there; they are 40 miles from Independence.

Laura describes the prairie as teeming with life. Enormous blue sky and birds galore. Wild animals and wild flowers and such beauty as she can hardly believe. Every breath she takes seems to take in the abundance of the prairie. And I love how Ma made order in the midst of the wild. She washed the bedding and clothing right in the middle of the wagon; the girls are always clean, hair brushed and done, the meals cooked. Ma’s compulsiveness to Pa’s impulsiveness.

Ma answers Laura’s questions about the Indians on pages 46 to 47. She tells the girls the Indians won’t hurt them but that she just doesn’t like them. She doesn’t want to see them. Laura confronts her, why did their family move there then? Ma says she doesn’t know if they’re in Indian country or not and that the government may have already opened the land to settlement, they don’t know. This seems to fluster Ma and she gets back to housework.

Pa has decided to build the cabin near the Verdigris River, according to the Little House website, this is about 13 miles southwest of Independence. Laura finds an old walking trail.

Pa answers Laura that she would only see an Indian if he wanted her to see him. He had seen Indians in New York as a boy and Laura tells us that she knows the Indians are “wild men with red skins.”

Then we find out how tough Ma is. A big log falls on her as she is helping Pa build their cabin. She sprains her ankle, but wants no fuss over her. In Chapter 6, she asks Pa why they haven’t seen any Indians. He doesn’t know, he’s seen their camp sites, maybe they’re on a hunting trip. They joke together that Ma could wash clothes in the creek like the Indian women do and Ma says they could cut a hole in the roof to let smoke out and have a fire on the floor like the Indians do. Yet, Ma cooks outside. Pa and Ma justify their sins against the Indians by assuming an air of superiority over them.

It is difficult to get an accurate reading as to Pa’s real beliefs about the American Indians. His words often seem to contradict his actions. But sometimes, his actions support his words. Did he think that he could just live among the Indians? What was he really running away from back in Wisconsin? What had he promised Ma behind closed doors about life in Indian Territory?

When Pa goes out riding in Chapter 7, he does not take his gun as they have plenty of meat EVEN THOUGH he knows the Indians are nearby and they may be in armed hunting parties. Jack acts anxious while Pa is gone and it does not really worry Ma except that she keeps her eyes open. Pa had met other white settlers, some of whom had only seen Indians. On this trip, Pa finds an ill white family and gets them help. He also encounters a pack of fifty wolves, and the wolves do not attack him. Furthermore, Pa does not shoot any of the wolves after he makes it back home and the wolves have circled the cabin. Pa is an unusual man for his time. Often in literature, wolves are depicted as monster-like animals that attack and kill and must be killed. Who is this Pa really that he would ride around without a gun and not shoot any of those wolves around his cabin?

Pa locks the stable, “Where there are deer, there will be wolves, and where there are horses, there will be horse-thieves.” But the family still hasn’t seen any Indians and the Indian camps in the bluffs are deserted. Ma says Laura yells like an Indian and is getting as brown as one, Mary and Pa also and she doesn’t understand why Laura still wants to see an Indian. Laura is tired of waiting to see them.

Finally, in Chapter 11 we meet the Indians. Pa goes hunting and Jack is chained to the stable. The girls are told not to let him loose. The girls stay by Jack. He growls. Two “naked, wild men” are coming down the Indian trail. They are “tall, thin, fierce-looking”, “brownish-red”, have a “tuft of hair”, their eyes are black and glittering like snake eyes, “terrible men” Laura says. The girls are frightened.

And here we have writing at its finest. One of the most difficult tasks a writer faces is to stay true to the voice of the character. Wilder uses the voice of a six-year-old white girl raised by her parents to view American Indians as dangerous. Would she describe them any other way? They were dangerous if you were somewhere you shouldn’t have been.

And that is the crux of the underlying tone of this book, in my opinion. The Ingalls family knew they were doing something wrong and the entire story is flavored in a dichotomous justification and sense of guilt for that wrong.

The Indians go in the house with Ma and baby Carrie and Laura faces her fears and goes in the house. There is a “horribly bad smell” from the skunk skins they wear on their leather thongs and Wilder gives a detailed description of their appearance. She does overuse “black glittering eyes” but I found over usage with other phrases. Remember she could not click on find on a word processor. Or I should say, her daughter Rose could not.

The Indians eat Ma’s cornbread that she serves them, they take all Pa’s tobacco, but they DO NOT harm the family. This is an important point to make. Throughout the story, the Indians never once harm the white family nor any other white families the Ingalls’ know. Doesn’t this contradict what Ma and Laura had expected? Does it contradict what happens in so many other stories about American Indians written in 1935? I know that Dwight Eisenhower often read pulp Westerns to relax. How did those depict American Indians? Could Laura and Rose have been forward thinking? I would appreciate hearing about any exhaustive reviews of the depiction of Native Americans in literature at the time LHOP was written.

And what about that these Indians did not know enough to prepare the skunk skins correctly? A quote from Laura, “Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own mind.” Whether the depictions of two Indians lacking in a particular skill are cast from Laura’s mind or her daughter Rose’s, (as she put the finishing touches on Laura’s narrative) we will never know. The depiction does bring to the reader’s mind the sharp differences between the Native culture and the European culture. The inaccuracy, as it appears, is unfortunate in a book published in 1935. Just fifteen years after women won the right to vote and three decades before the civil rights movement. I could not locate any sources as to whether or not the Osage Indians even wore skunk skins.

An inaccuracy of this magnitude is inexcusable in contemporary children’s literature.

Pa gets very angry with the girls when he finds out they considered loosening Jack. “Bad trouble” would’ve happened “And that’s not all.”

Pa makes a locked cupboard to protect their food stores and then he goes on to save a neighbor from death due to gas poisoning at the bottom of the Ingalls’ water well, despite Ma’s protests, and the risk to his own life. So, Pa is like all of us. Sometimes he commits heroic acts and sometimes, based upon his personal beliefs, he does not.

In the “Indian Camp”, Chapter 14, Pa wonders where the Indians have gone, and he takes the girls to see their camp in the heat of summer. Along the way, he stops Jack from killing rabbits as they have enough meat already. Pa reads the tracks at the camp and the girls collect pretty glass beads. Pa did NOT take his gun.

In chapter 15, Laura meets an African-American man for the first time in her life and she describes all of his differences in as much detail as she did with the Indians. Dr. Tan was on his way to Independence, from doctoring the Osage, when he came upon Pa’s house and finds the family sickened with malaria. Jack begged him to come in. He stays for one and half days until Mrs. Scott, the neighbor comes to care for them.

In the next chapter, the chimney catches fire while Pa is hunting. Laura pulls Mary and Carrie in a rocking chair away from the fire. Looks like they are having a lot of problems living on Osage land. Wilder was a lifelong Christian and relaying the extent of their many problems while living where they shouldn’t have been was a conscious decision. Yes, they face tragedies in the other books, but Laura left the two years out of her books when her little brother died. She chose which problems to relay to the reader.

When Pa goes to town for four days, and this length of travel is consistently relayed throughout (including when they left for good), Mrs. Scott comes to visit with Ma. And while Laura is grateful to Mrs. Scott for nursing her and her family, she obviously doesn’t like her.

Mrs. Scott is a racist bigot. She rails against the Indians. She worries about trouble with them, as she should. The Indians would never do anything with the land except to roam around like wild animals - the land belongs to folks that’ll farm it - despite the treaties - that’s common sense and justice. Mrs. Scott goes on to say, “The only good Indian was a dead Indian.” The thought of them makes her blood run cold and she starts to recall the Minnesota massacre but Ma stops her. The Minnesota massacre occurred in 1862.

Mr. Edwards stops by and warns Ma that Indians are camping in the shelter of the bluffs and he offers to stay overnight in the stable. But, Ma is a toughie and she sends Edwards home. Laura worries about Pa crossing the creek bottoms where the “wild men” are.

It rains during this trip for Pa and on the way home, he must continuously break the frozen mud out of the wagon wheel spokes. The terrible wind slows the horses. Pa comes home though with eight squares of window glass in perfect condition.

In Chapter 18, “The Tall Indian”, Indians ride by the house on the path — straight and tall, black eyes glittering, “scalplocks wound with colored string”. Pa wouldn’t have built the house so close to a well-traveled road, if he’d known. Another thoughtless mistake. Jack hates Indians and Ma doesn’t blame him, “Indians are getting so thick around here that I can’t look up without seeing one!” she claims. An Indian stands in the doorway and says, “How!” They hadn’t heard him approach. “They couldn’t take their eyes from that Indian. He was so still that the beautiful eagle-feathers in his scalplock didn’t stir. Only his bare chest and the leanness under his ribs moved to his breathing. He wore fringed leather leggings, and his moccasins were covered with beads.” This is the man the story later identifies as Soldat du Chêne, and he is dressed in his culture’s attire.

Pa and the man squat by the fire and Ma serves them dinner. Pa gives him tobacco for his pipe but he cannot understand him. He guesses the Indian is Osage, that he spoke French and he says he was not “common trash”. Ma wishes everyone would keep to themselves and Pa says not to worry, they are friendly. Pa seems to continuously defend them throughout the story.

Months later while Pa is out hunting and trapping, two dirty scowling, mean Indians come to the house, take all the cornbread, the tobacco and Pa’s bundle of furs for trade. One of the Indians makes the other one drop the fur bundle and leave it. Pa says, “All is well that ended well.” Laura asks where the Indians go and her parents tell her that Indians go west because the government makes them. On page 237, Pa says, “When white settlers come into a country, the Indians have to move on. The government is going to move these Indians farther west, any time now. That’s why we’re here, Laura. White people are going to settle this country, and we get the best land because we get here first and take our pick. Now do you understand?” Laura answers yes, but …

I think this story was Laura’s attempts to try and come to that understanding. Why did Pa move them there? Wasn’t it wrong even when all the other white people said it wasn’t? Children are different about assessing right and wrong. It isn’t as easy for them to justify greed and moral injustice. How do we in the 21^st century grapple with what our white ancestors did to settle the land we know now as the United States?

Pa has a scary but harmless encounter with a panther. This whole place he has moved them to is dangerous. They almost don’t get any presents from Santa Claus because it is so dangerous - the creek is roaring with rushing water and no one can cross it.

In Chapter 21, “Indian Jamboree”, Pa is gone again for five days taking his fur trade to Independence. The Indians are making a lot of noise, something like an ax chopping, dog barking and a wild and fierce song (but not angry) and it gets louder and louder and faster and it frightens them. Pa returns with goods from town and he tells Ma that the Indians have been complaining to Washington and the white settlers will have to leave Indian territory. But Pa doesn’t believe it; they always make the Indians leave. Even the newspaper says the territory will open soon to settlers. Pa has a very good understanding of the government’s treatment of the American Indian. General William H. Harrison barged his way onto Treaty secured Shawnee land and wiped out the Prophet’s Town in 1811.

In the “Prairie Fire”, Chapter 22, Indians are everywhere now, some friendly, some surly and cross, and the Ingalls give them what they want. Pa and Ma must fight a raging prairie fire with wet sacks and a controlled fire in a furrow. It is a harrowing experience. The fire never reached the Indian camps and Mr. Edwards and Mr. Scott stop by after and raise suspicions the Indians set the fire. Pa doesn’t believe it; the Indians set fires to make the green grass grow and travel easier.

Mr. Edwards doesn’t like all the Indians. Mr. Scott says they’re coming together in the jamboree means “devilment”. “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” says Mr. Scott. Pa says, “He didn’t know about that. He figured the Indians would be as peaceable as anybody else if let alone. They had moved west so many times that naturally they hated white folks. But an Indian ought to have sense to know when he was licked.” The soldiers at nearby forts will stop any trouble and the Indians are really congregating for the big spring buffalo hunt. Half a dozen tribes who often fought each other were making peace for the hunt. “It’s not likely they’ll start on the warpath against us.”

On page 285, Mr. Scott responded to Pa, “Well, maybe you’re right about it, Ingalls.” He’ll be glad to tell Mrs. Scott what Pa said as she can’t stop thinking about the Minnesota massacre.

Isn’t Pa full of contradictions?

More and more Indians begin to congregate in Chapter 23, “Indian War-Cry”, and the Ingalls hide inside as they hear the “savage” voices shouting. Pa makes a bunch of bullets. Indians stop coming to the house. The prairie feels unsafe, queer, and as if something is watching Laura now. But Laura had already imparted a feeling of danger to us throughout the story. Is everything coming to a head? Laura is afraid of the Indians and Pa spends every waking second with his gun out the window, watching. Pa tells her, “Don’t be afraid” but the warrior yells are worse than wolves howling.

The Osage who spoke French goes galloping by on a black pony during this nightmarish five nights of “wild, fast yipping yells” and days of silence. Ma hopes that the Indians will fight each other. Then, it is over. The Indians split apart and begin to leave. After it is quiet for two nights, Pa takes his gun and scouts along the creek. All the Indians except the Osage have left.

On page 300, Pa meets an Osage in the woods and the Osage tells Pa that all the Indians except the Osage wanted to kill the whites who were on Indian lands. But Soldat du Chêne, the man on the black pony, stopped them. He told the other tribes that the Osage would kill them if they attacked the whites. The other tribes didn’t dare fight the Osage. “That’s one good Indian!” Pa says. He adds that he didn’t believe the only good Indian was a dead one.

Laura invented the character of Soldat du Chêne. He was a contemporary of Tecumseh’s, his portrait done in 1805/1806.

Stephanie Vavra has written a booklet on who really was the Osage Indian that Laura had met:

http://www.amazon.com/Who-Really-Saved-Laura-Ingalls/dp/0971278504

The Indian that stopped the other Indians from attacking and killing white settlers was a good Indian. Much as Tecumseh is credited with stopping massacres of captives in battles the Shawnee won. Tecumseh felt the red men would never grow as a nation of stature if they continued to kill men, women and children captured in war. The people who followed Tecumseh admired and respected this change in approach.

Killing women and children and defenseless men no matter their ethnicity or race or religion is wrong. Even George Armstrong Custer knew this. It is what makes the story of what happened to the native peoples of America so horrific.

In Chapter 24, “Indians Ride Away”, Pa strikes Jack for the first time ever when he growls at Soldat as the Osage passes by the little house on the prairie, dressed the same but wrapped in a blanket. Pa salutes Soldat, the Osage’s face “fierce, still, brown” and “proud”, but Soldat does not acknowledge Pa. “Savage warriors” and “little naked brown Indians” on pretty ponies and all of the people follow Soldat down the trail.

Laura has a “naughty wish” to be an Indian, but “of course she did not really mean it”; she just wanted to be naked, riding on a pony. This uncomfortable scene continues, Laura asks Pa to get her one of those little Indian babies, as if they are objects. Pa reproaches her, but she continues to beg. When Pa tells her the Indian woman wants her baby, Laura cries. Ma says, “Why do you want an Indian baby, of all things!”

But the reader is only left to conjecture what was going on in six-year-old Laura’s mind. My daughter, when younger, sometimes would ask for a baby that she saw. She’d say something like, “Can we get one of those?” Sometimes they were little brown or black or yellow babies and one of her favorite doll babies was an African-American cabbage patch doll. It bothered my racist grandmother enormously when I purchased the doll for my daughter.

On page 311, after many, many Indians went west and they are all gone, Laura writes, “And nothing was left but silence and emptiness. All the world seemed very quiet and lonely.” The family cannot eat and Ma feels “let down”. Pa goes out to plow. Sadness permeates the scene. There is no justification for the white settler’s claims. They got what they wanted but they cannot escape the sin of that greed.

“After the Indians had gone, a great peace had settled on the prairie,” writes Wilder in the next chapter. It seems the family has rectified in their minds what has happened. Everything begins to grow again, it is spring and soon they will live like kings.

And then Mr. Scott and Mr. Edwards pay Pa a visit, bearing disturbing news. On page 316, Pa exclaims, “I’ll not stay here to be taken away by the soldiers like an outlaw! If some blasted politicians in Washington hadn’t sent out word it’d be all right to settle here, I’d never have been three miles over the line into Indian territory.”

And it is for this passage that I believe the book has merit as a supplemental curriculum aid in the study of American history. Somehow, we must explain to our children how this all happened. And Pa explains it in one passage.

Dwight D. Eisenhower writes in his memoir At Ease that one person can change history. That historical events are often an accumulation of small acts done by individuals. Just as the Holocaust could have been prevented if the German citizens, each one on their own, stood up and stopped Hitler, so we can safely say, that Pa’s attitude, and those of Mr. Scott and Mr. Edwards, toward the American Indian, resulted in the Native Americans forced removal from their tribal lands. Each white settler who thought he could plop down on someone else’s land, under the protection of the American government, was guilty. Each white man who voted in Presidents and other leaders who advocated the removal of the American Indian, was guilty.

A good teacher will really explore the entire issue of the Native American’s story using this book. A neglectful teacher will have his/her students read this book and romanticize it.

Pa and Ma and Laura and Mary and Carrie leave their house, with more than they brought, and even the horses are eager to go. Pa tells a captain in Independence about the stranded settlers they saw on their way, ensuring they get help. No one of us is molded incapable of doing both good and evil.

My stories are written from a place of grappling with unanswered questions. I am trying to draw conclusions to issues I’ve faced or issues that disturb me through the working out of the story. I see Wilder attempting this in LHOP, and bringing to it her own opinions, beliefs and feelings.

Elizabeth Marie Tallchief was born in 1925 on an Osage Indian Reservation in Oklahoma. Her father was Osage and her mother was Scots-Irish. The Tallchiefs were wealthy from the Oklahoma crude oil that came from their land.

Elizabeth grew to become America’s greatest ballerina, Maria Tallchief. She wrote TallChief - America’s Prima Ballerina with Rosemary Wells. It is beautifully illustrated by Gary Kelley and first published by Viking in 1999. Rosemary Wells is the author of many beloved books for children, including one of our family’s all-time Christmas favorites Morris’s Disappearing Bag.

Tallchief is an inspiring story of how one girl can set her heart on her dreams and work hard to make them come true. How our parents, when they believe in us, can foster our creativity and passions and talents and help us make our dreams come true.

Maria’s parents move their family to California so that their daughters can get the education they need. One day, Maria’s father asks her to choose whether she will focus on piano or dance. Maria writes, “I chose dance because I felt the music I loved grew inside of me in a different way than could be expressed by my hands on an instrument.”

Maria Tallchief married the great choreographer George Balanchine in 1946 and he developed many roles for her. She also received the Kennedy Center Honors in 1996.

Here is a site where you can watch her dance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F0caHz7A6Y

We enjoyed reading this positive portrayal of an amazing Native American woman.

Crossing the Panther’s Path was written by Elizabeth Alder and published in 2002. It is the fictionalized story of a fifteen-year-old boy named Billy Calder and his involvement with the Shawnee Chief Tecumseh during the War of 1812.

The character of Billy Calder, according to the author, is based upon the life of Billy Caldwell, who eventually became named a Pottawattamie Chief. If you research Billy Caldwell on the internet he will be listed as having a Mohawk mother, a Pottawattamie mother and even a Shawnee mother but Alder calls his mother Windswept Water, of the Mohawk tribe. His father was an Irish man and a captain in the British army and in the novel his father is loving and kind. According to most information I found, his father abandoned him as a young child and Billy grew up with his mother’s tribe. His father took Billy in later in his childhood and had him educated. His father eventually disinherited Billy and it appears to have been due to conflicts over their both desiring to be Commandants of the Canadian fort in Amherstberg, across from Detroit, Michigan.

The novel is also inaccurate in its recounting of Billy’s wives and so it makes sense that the character’s name was changed, though most other historical figures retain their real life names.

Billy wants to join Tecumseh in his fight against the Americans and their theft of Native lands, against his mother’s wishes. Billy is aptozi meaning half-breed. In the end, he marries Jane, another person of mixed-blood. I enjoyed this aspect of the novel. My great-great-grandfather Millen Ralston was half Scotch Irish and half, well, we’re not totally sure. Possibly Cherokee, most likely Shawnee. Millen married Eliza Sinkey who was of mixed blood also, Shawnee, maybe? Some cousins say her ancestors - the Greens, the Hustons, the Sinkeys - were associated with Blue Jacket’s tribe. Some cousins say some cousins today still know some Shawnee language, passed down through the generations. And we have all spent countless hours trying to document or prove our ancestry. Some cousins have done DNA testing to prove their Native American ancestry. I think it is going to remain an educated guess.

I also think we need to talk about the American experience of being mixed blood more often. The story of my ancestors is the story of America also. Survival through assimilation. When Jane doesn’t want Billy to fight anymore, I think my great-great-grandmother may have spoken those words.

Tecumseh is a powerful, intelligent, heroic character in this novel. Tecumseh says it is time for war when a great sign in the sky is followed by the ground shaking. A greenish light then streaks across the sky as when he was born and named Panther Passing Across. Tecumseh shortly after stomps his foot and creates an earthquake felt even by President Madison. Tecumseh is articulate and charismatic.

The fight the Indians waged in an attempt to stop the Americans is presented realistically. Nothing is left out to present a different picture. The massacre at Fort Dearborn by the Native Americans is relayed in its horrifying detail as is the ruthlessness of William Henry Harrison in his pursuit of extermination of the American Indian. As is the deception the Americans pulled at Fort Dearborn, promising whiskey and ammunition they’d already dumped in the Detroit River, for safe passage out of defeated Fort Dearborn. And it is for these reasons, that I recommend this book for middle grade and above students of American history.

I do have some issues with Alder’s novel. Tenskwatawa is portrayed as an imbecilic alcoholic, at constant odds with his brother Tecumseh. Tecumseh does not even really believe that Tenskwatawa really had a vision from Grandmother Kokomothena, telling him that he is the spiritual leader she raises up in difficult times to lead others on the right path. Tenskwatawa is only interested in drinking and he cruelly harasses young children, scaring them with his knife into Billy’s arms. Tecumseh almost kills his brother when he returns and discovers that Tenskwatawa had battled with Harrison, resulting in the destruction of Tippecanoe. I cannot quote my sources but after much reading I had come to believe that Tenskwatawa had given up alcohol and this portrayal bothered me. It felt like a huge liberty to use Tenkswatawa’s real name and identity when Billy Calder’s had been changed. Tecumseh and his brother were very close, they built towns together.

Alder also claims in the novel that Tecumseh traveled to the Blackfoot and possibly the Sioux in his quest to build a coalition. That horse and rider swam across the Detroit River from Fort Malden to Amherstberg yet the current of the river was so swift it hardly ever froze over. That Tecumseh’s son, Cat Pouncing, and Billy are able to bury Tecumseh according to Shawnee custom, his face painted and his head to the West. That a genuine warmth was rarely accorded to outsiders by the Shawnee.

My reading on Shawnee history is not what it should be, but my impression is that the Shawnee often took in outsiders. That what made you Shawnee was the following of their customs and traditions and way of life rather than the color of your skin. That they adopted people willingly and warmly into their tribe.

I cannot imagine swimming across the Detroit River, it is ½ mile wide. The current runs fast, even on a horse. I could not find this information, as to whether or not they travelled across this way. Maybe the river has changed over time.

I have read that Tecumseh’s body was not ever identified, that no one knows where he was buried. That he was probably so badly mutilated no one could identify him. I rather think this is probably the case as he caused the Americans untold grief.

I have located a source that says Tecumseh met with the Sioux, but have not found one to say he traveled to Montana. If you can clear this up for me with a source, I would appreciate it.

Despite some of the dialogue being forced and irritating at times, the story is well-paced and holds the reader’s interest. I will have my daughter read Crossing the Panther’s Path when we study the War of 1812. We will discuss whether or not it is fair to portray Tenskwatawa as a drunk, when he had reformed himself. And by the way, my Ralston ancestors fought in the War of 1812 and for the Americans.