BLOG # 11: Indians in Unexpected Places

Philip Deloria must have listened to his history professors when they reminded him to have a central argument and thesis. His biggest shortcoming may well be excessive repetition of the word expectation. No one can mistake that he is going to look at and question white cultural expectations about Indians and discover how much of what whites have called anomaly is more accurately a typical human engagement in modernity and change. He is going to trace changes in expectation over time and share “a secret history of the unexpected” (p. 14). He is going to introduce us to Indians in places we never knew they were and help us overturn myth, stereotype, and assumption about expected Indian cultural behavior.

In the process, we will meet people, events, and works we have never heard of. Although we have looked at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in other texts, I continue to find it a fascinating phenomenon. Ironically, when Cody tried to move into film, he flopped because of the very authenticity he had successfully promoted in the live shows; audiences wanted a dramatic narrative and a good story line in the new medium of film. The surprise here was that Cody had done a movie at all; and that from 1910 to 1913, over one hundred films about Indians appeared each year (p. 74)—some, surprisingly, about cross-race romance, Indians going off to Harvard, etc. This was the narrow time window of opportunity that Deloria concentrated on in his book: the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the public was more receptive to a more complex look at the Indian’s place in culture and society—before the audience demanded the clichés of the whooping savage Indians surrounding the wagon trains. It was amazing to me that James Young Deer and Princess Red Wing could be Indians AND in charge of making films, even if for only a short time (see, I harbored expectations!). Their challenges to white’s familiar expectations unfortunately marginalized them and the studio system finished them off professionally.

Another subject I found interesting was the Indian boarding school system; other than reading about Carlisle Indian School in previous texts, I had not realized there was a general educational system like this. It seemed amazing that Carlisle could actually beat Harvard in 1907 and I had never heard about it. As a woman who seldom watches football or baseball, I appreciated Deloria’s observation of how “the unifying power of spectator sports offered a sense of community” (p. 118). I don’t think I had ever really considered watching sports en masse a potentially equalizing experience.

Although it seems logical and understandable that Indians could make particularly good use of automobiles on the wide plains and that they would enjoy mobility and freedom like any other human being, the pairing of an Indian with such a piece of technology seemed like an anomaly to most whites. They both criticized Indians for not being modern, then they criticized them for “squandering” their money on modern automobiles; Indians couldn’t win white approval either way. Expectation cut two ways, both of them unfair. The introduction of the automobile was a parallel to the introduction of the horse: Indians took to both immediately—in other words, adapted transportation “technology” to their needs (a very “modern” thing to do).

Probably the most fascinating chapter to me was the one on music. I consider myself knowledgeable on classical music, yet I have never heard of Cadman or Farwell, and I didn’t know there were Indian operas. Alice Fletcher’s admittance that she initially found Indian music “so much distressing noise” made me think of similar comments I have heard when eating in restaurants in the Far East. Native American music—and much music of countries outside the European/American musical tradition—can sound atonal, unmelodious, primitive, and chaotic to the unaccustomed or uneducated ear. Fletcher and Fillmore failed to understand the structure of Omaha melody, and the two wrongly introduced harmony into their transcriptions, which negated its accurate representation. It is a lesson to all those who expect certain things AND expect their way to be the “right” or only way. Do any of you remember the night Dan brought up the relatively unknown film "Songcatcher" and I agreed with him that it was an under-acclaimed gem? That movie reminded me very much of Deloria’s chapter on music and the difficulty in “transcribing” unusual music of the people, most often vocal, to the masses, with concomitant appreciation and understanding. (The one familiar composer mentioned by Deloria was Dvorak. Those of you who listen to FM103.5 know that Washington listeners perennially vote his “New World Symphony” in the top five of their favorites. Yet here was a non-American composer writing music that supposedly defined America, whereas music composed by a Native American could never be expected to do such a thing!)

If I might use a Giffordian analogy, I am NOT going to tip my cards tonight to show what I think of our second text, Becoming Mexican American. Since this blog is over 850 words already (groan, zzzzzz), I will delay any such revelations until I present tomorrow night. Hopefully I will follow in the unexpectedly vociferous Kent’s capable footsteps as Part Two of “Revenge of the Quiet People” possibly unfolds (but I’m not making any promises...)