Playing Indian, a consideration of children's books by Native North Americans, 1900-1940

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis explores a previously overlooked segment of Native North American literature: children's books by Native North Americans which were published between 1900 and 1940. In chapter one I examine the book market of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the boom in children's books during this period, and the role that Indians played in popular and children's literature. I also examine a set of constructs which pre-date the period directly examined here, but which, I suggest contributed, for a variety of reasons, to the large number of Indian books made available to child readers: the Indian as child, and the child as Indian. Chapter two examines two books, Mourning Dove's 'Coyote Stories' (1933), and E-Yeh-Shure's ' I Am a Pueblo Indian Girl' (1939), in order to demonstrate the problematic influence of the children's book market on Native writing during this period. The final two chapters examine those books which were almost certainly intended for children by their authors. The third chapter, aside from a brief examination of the texts based in part on Western models of literature, focuses on collections of traditional stories by Zitkala-Sa, Charles Eastman, Arthur Parker, and Luther Standing Bear. By writing children's books, these authors could make the foundational stories of their cultures available to a wide audience which needed to know them. Drawing on Indigenous traditions of storytelling, and particularly storytelling for children, these authors created books which teach, in the most concise yet profound ways, non-Native children about Native ways. The fourth chapter considers the personal stories written by Charles Eastman, Luther Standing Bear and Francis La Flesche. Working from traditions in which personal narratives were respected as authoritative accounts of experience, these autobiographers tell the truth about Native life and life ways to an audience of readers inundated with fictional accounts of Indian life.Ph.D