Old Indian Legends
The first five entries in this section are written accounts of old Native American tales passed down through the centuries via the oral tradition. Iktomi is a spider fairy, a wily fellow, and the Sioux equivalent of the Trickster archetype. The stories tell of Iktomi all wind up turning the tables on his trickery, however. In the first story, Iktomi steals ducks for a meal only to lose them to a pack of wolves. Pray to the god Inyan in the next story for food after losing his ducks, he receives a deer only to lose that food when he sneaks back to the god to pilfer the blanket he gave as an offering after the night grows cold. Such is the nature of the lessons of these ancient tales: tricksters get tricked.
Itkomi appears in another of the next nine stories, but these tales are primarily comprised of standalone fables. Mice dancing in the skull of a buffalo become predatory objects of a cat mistaken for a mysterious beast in “Dance in a Buffalo Skull.” “The Toad and the Boy” tells the instantly accessible story of a mother leaving her baby alone in a tepee only to return to find the infant missing who, it winds up, had been stolen by a mother toad entranced by the sound of the baby’s cries. “Mans̈tin, the Rabbit” is both courageous and generous as he sets off for the hunt and it is both these qualities that serve him well after he comes upon a monstrous creature torturing a human baby. The rabbit’s actions set off a chain of events which eventually result in an unwise trade with nearly fatal consequences.
“Impressions of an Indian Childhood” covers seven individual biographical stories that tell the story of the narrator’s childhood. In the first story, the author introduces her mother. The rest of the stories will cover such topics as the value of learning beadwork, the first time she ever saw her mother make coffee, and the arrival of white settlers into Native American society.
“The School Days of an Indian Girl” would be self-explanatory were it not complicated by that arrival of the settlers. The opening section is actually a rather harrowing story of being uprooted from her home and taken along with seven other children “back east” to attend a “school” run by Christian missionaries. The actual lessons of most significance seem to be learning that a strange figure with no analogue in her own society’s spiritual tales seems to have been given the job of trying to lure innocent people to commit evil, learning that the white man’s word is law, and that rigid routine is the most important thing in white society.
“An Indian Teacher Among Indians” completes the process of assimilation as the author returns east after having been sent back home as a recruiter for the missionary school. It is truly a portrait of assimilation as she quickly becomes one of those Americans who comes to see the hypocrisy behind evangelical Christianity.
“A Dream of Her Grandfather” sets the stage of the next two sections of the book as this entry, told in the third-person, becomes a story which is heavily invested with autobiography. It is the story of a young woman who makes her way to Washington, D.C. to become a tireless activist for Native American issues.
Selections from American Indian Magazine
This section is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of articles the author published between 1916 and 1919 American Indian magazine. “The Red Man’s America” is one of the shortest pieces in the text and takes the form of a hard-edged parody of the lyrics of “America (My Country ‘Tis of Thee). The bulk of this section individual submissions titled simply “Editorial Comment” which takes on topics dealing primarily with the disenfranchisement of tribal peoples from the working processes of American government. “Indian Gifts to Man” somehow manages to avoid any hint of a snarky quality with its listings of various contributions to the world which were adopted by white society without recognition, much less compensation. “America, Home of the Man” is notable for the presence of perhaps the most jaw-dropping moment in the entire book when a white person, upon discovering that that member of the Sioux Nation had relatives fighting for America during World War I replies, “You are an Indian! Well, I knew when I first saw you that you must be a foreigner.” This absurdity exemplifies much of the tone of the rest of this section.
Poetry, Pamphlets, Essays and Speeches
This section features the most intensely written selections in the book. “The Menace of Peyote” is a precursor to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving waiting half a century in the future. This essay is a fervent call to the American government to regulate the import, sale, and distribution of peyote under the thesis that the only surefire way to stop a snakebite is to kill the snake before it bites. Of course, it surely cannot be mere coincidence that this essay was written just as Prohibition was ramping up across the rest of America. Much of the essays and speeches in this section are direct critiques launched at the management of the Bureau of Indian Affairs which, in the author’s opinion, amounts to almost no management at all. “Bureaucracy versus Democracy” is the centerpiece of this series of attacks which ends with not the first but the boldest expression of desire for full legal integration of the indigenous tribes into American society: “Let no one deprive the American Indians of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
