Volume 13 Number 1
October 1973

R. Clark Mallam

WHILE SOME recent studies have been concerned with the treatment of Jews and American Negroes in public school textbooks, an even greater neglect and distortion is discovered when the role of the Indian in American history is analyzed. Over the years, a great body of myth surrounding the Indian has been incorporated into texts and passed on to each generation of students as part of the enculturation process within the framework of American education.

Enculturation practices are always selective, and nowhere is the problem seen in greater perspective than in the social studies field which is permeated with gross instances of academic charlatanism. A heavy reliance on previously published textbooks manifests a repetitious and frequently inaccurate rendering of the American lifeway in the kindergarten to-grade 12 program. [Marcus 1963:31; Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, U. S. Senate 1969:24]

Within the last decade, major efforts were launched to rectify this travesty. Several members of the American Indian Historical Society undertook an analyization and evaluation of 43 textbooks used in California schools in 1963. [Henry 1967:22, 241 Their findings culminated in 1970 with the Indian Historian Press publication, Textbooks and the American Indian, in which 32 Indian scholars, native historians and students examined more than 300 social studies books. [Costo and Henry 1970:11]

A complementary corollary to this is the book on library and audiovisual materials, American Indians: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Library Resources, published by the Library Services Institute for Minnesota Indians. [Antell, 1970:iii]

Together these two organizations have initiated a movement towards eradication of the stereotyped "Indian" along with much of the negative mythology currently taught in public schools. These preliminary studies must be followed through with continued programs to properly position the Indian in American history, or they will be only an illusory goal.

The reason for the pessimism above can be attributed to the findings of this writer who conducted an evaluation of texts and library materials at an elementary school in Lawrence, Kansas, during the fall of 1971. As two of my children attended this school, I was interested in examining the materials they would use, and to hypothesize what concepts about the American Indians they might derive if they were to remain there through grades K-6.

Initially, I developed a three-point research design involving (1) the interviewing of administration and faculty to determine how American Indian curricular materials are selected, (2) specific faculty interviews concerning the amount of time allotted to teaching units on American Indians (construction of units, objectives, behavioral attitudes developed and measured), and (3) examination and evaluation of curricular materials used.

Because my study was concerned with only one school, approval of the research could be granted by the principal. However, scheduling interviews with the administration and faculty proved to be difficult because of their instructional loads and extra-curricular activities.

Units dealing with American Indians are now taught only at the fifth grade level, and the principal teacher possessed almost no knowledge of the subject. An interview with the previous teacher (in third grade) determined that six weeks were usually allotted for this unit, and that the emphasis was on "technology."

Children were assigned creative tasks such as building wigwams and making arrowheads. The teacher’s objectives were prefaced with ambiguous infinitives such as "to learn, to discover, to note, to find out," and were factually rather than behaviorally oriented. Hopefully the children would understand that the Indian was "closer to nature and more dependent on it than we are today because they were not as technologically advanced." No emphasis was given to the role of the Indian in the 20th century.

Three significant facts emerged from this part of the investigation: Little attention is given in the curriculum to the American Indian--only one unit in the elementary program occurs in the fifth grade, coinciding with the segment on American colonial history. The Indian is interpreted as living in the past and does not figure prominently in contemporary society. The distinct possibility exists that what attitudes are created--in the absence of instructional expertise--emanate partially from history texts replete with instances of distortion, inaccuracy and misrepresentation.

Together these two texts contain material potentially capable of developing warped and stereotyped impressions of the American Indian and little hope exists for more objective examples. Perhaps the major reason explaining these inaccurate, biased and overgeneralized accounts is to be found in the credentials of the authors. Of the five authors and two consultants, only one comes from a discipline other than education. In other words, professional educators zealously concerned with developing "important understandings, values and skills that are the basis of informed, responsible citizenship" [Fraser and Yeager 1964:Gl] have accomplished none of their objectives and instead have produced a corpus of superficial pap. [Fraser and Yeager 1964:24, 60, 75-76, 80; Samford, McCall and Cunningham, 1964:9, 42-43, 54, 65, 235]

Supplemental library materials served only to amplify the inaccurate, biased and overgeneralized accounts found in these two volumes. In determining the scope of the American Indian holdings in the elementary school library, I evaluated each book in terms of accuracy and relevance. The materials soon revealed a consistent theme of amateurish knowledge resulting from the production of the previously encountered myths, distortions and half-truths. Johanna Lyback’s Indian Legends of the Great West exemplifies the distortions inherent in these books. (1963:i-v):

Some books, like the fictional Red Feather series, purport to be background material in an historical context preparing the junior reader for the study of American history in the middle grades. Not only is the Indian portrayed as childlike in this series, but also a skulking coward preying upon the brave colonists (Norcomb, 1963:104-107). However, Payne and Driggs (1963:11) in Red Feather’s Homecoming do make an attempt, although abortive, to portray the Indian authentically. Unfortunately, this better side is never accurately described. Red Feather and his friends become so romanticized that all relationship to historical reality disappears.

The above-mentioned books are representative of the American Indian historical and fictional works to which the elementary student is exposed. Attempts to depict the Indian in the 20th century setting are limited, and inevitably lead to romanticized and unrealistic accounts of reservation life.

One might inquire if there are any accurate books available to students; the answer is a qualified yes, about seven. One in particular, Two Knots on a Counting Rope (Carpenter and Bluenose 1964), is a beautifully illustrated, 12-page story of how a Navajo grandfather teaches his grandson to count in Navajo. The reader, completely engrossed in the relationship and the teaching process, is abruptly confronted with reality when, after the horses have been counted, the two walk slowly from the corral to meet the waiting yellow school bus that will take the child away to an alien classroom and an alien culture. Two Knots on a Counting Rope testifies to the potential which could be achieved in the public schools in terms of attitudinal development and the recognition of cultural pluralism, but, sadly, it is only a brief glimmer in an otherwise dreary collection of disparagement.

In the absence of a defined program adequately familiarizing students with American Indians, the social studies texts and library materials may be viewed as constituting the foundation for myth formulation and ethnic misinterpretation which subsequently provide the structure for future Indian-white relations. Possibly accounting for the future development of distorted attitudes is the fact that 60 of the 66 library books reviewed depicted the Indian as a being of the past. The image presented is of the Indian living in a one-dimensional framework--having a simplistic childlike past but incapable of remaining culturally distinct, either in the present or the future. In effect, he has become a fabricated being, relegated romantically and distortedly to the position of an anachronistic, sociological artifact. This is a situation that might have been expected to exist in the 19th century, but not in a period priding itself on mass literacy and rationalism as over 50% of the books in the library, including the majority containing the greatest distortions, were published within the last decade.

The explanation for this paradox may be discovered by reviewing the backgrounds of the authors. Almost to a man, each has had some teaching experience in the public schools but no formal training in anthropology. An interesting situation frequently occurring in these books is the combination of the white writer and the Indian artist. The white writer creates the fabrication and the Indian supplies the visual aids. If inspected closely, two different stories appear: one written, the other expressed. And only one Indian writer is represented in the entire collection. From these limited backgrounds and inaccurate books emerge a self-contained sphere of ignorance. Spawned by literary and instructional ignorance, these writers, in turn, perpetuate this travesty by producing additional works of ignorance.

In conclusion, I would suggest that the American Indian educational materials of this elementary school are in large part ethnocentric, inaccurate, distorted, and denigrative. This assessment should in no way be construed as a disparagement of the faculty, for they assisted and promoted my study throughout its entirety. All labor under conditions of overwork and bureaucratic trivia with insufficient time for attaining proficiency in all aspects of the curriculum. If there is blame for this discouraging situation, it must be partially directed toward those anthropologists who have failed to involve themselves in the area of the enculturation process relative to their fields of interest. By neglecting the public school curriculum materials, they have promoted an academic void which has been filled by unsupervised and largely incompetent amateurs. Lowell John Bean voiced similar sentiments in The Language of Stereotype (1969:11):

In a time of resurging interest in the culture heritage of America, a great lag persists between classroom reality and academic idealism. As professional anthropologists, it is indeed time we came "down from the verandah."

Antell, Will and Lee Antell. American Indians: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Library Resources. University of Minnesota: Library Services Institute for Minnesota Indians, 1970.

Carpenter, Walter S., and Philip Bluenose. Two Knots on a Counting Rope. Chicago: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1964.

Bean, Lowell John. "The Language of Stereotype." The Indian Historian. Vol. 2, No. 3. San Francisco.

Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate. Indian Education: A National Tragedy--A National Challenge. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969.

Costo, Rupert, Ed., and Jeannette Henry. Textbooks and the American Indian. San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, Inc., 1970.

Fraser, Dorothy M., and Helen F. Yeager. The Adventure of America. New York: American Book Co., 1964.

Haines. Francis. "Where Did the Plains Indians Get Their Horses?" American Anthropologist. Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 112-117.

Henry, Jeannette. "Our Inaccurate Textbooks." The Indian Historian. Vol. V, No. 1, pp. 21-24. San Francisco.

Lyback, Johanna R.M. Indian Legends of the Great West. Chicago: Lyons and Carnahan, 1963.

Marcus, Lloyd. The Treatment of Minorities in Secondary School Textbooks. New York: Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith, 1961.

Norcomb, Margaret E. Red Feather--A Book of Indian Life and Tales. Chicago: Lyons and Carnahan, 1963.

Payne, E., and George and Howard Driggs. Red Feather’s Homecoming. Chicago: Lyons and Carn, 963.

Russell, Solveig P. Navaho Land. Chicago: Melmont Publishers, Inc., 1961.

Samford, Clarence, Edith McCall and Floyd Cunningham. You and the United States. Chicago: Benefic Press, 1964.

Vestal, Stanley. Happy Hunting Grounds. Chicago: Lyons and Carnahan, 1963.