CSotD: Black Robes for Kids
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Tom Spurgeon, keeper of the must-go site for comic book enthusiasts, "The Comics Reporter," offers a link to a Canadian history site that featured a brief discussion of this 1958 offering, "Apostle of the Hurons," a graphic biography of Saint Jean de Brébeuf that appeared in the "Indian Record," a publication of a religious order that ran residential schools and worked with First Nations generally.
The historian notes that the comic appeared on the same page as a kids' feature and that the magazine was distributed at the residential schools, so we may assume — if it weren't clear enough — that the comic was intended as pleasant, digestible educational material at the schools.
It's hardly a unique concept. Boys Life was full of features like "Scouts in Action!" that cheered on the heroism and presence of mind of boys who used their Scout training to help in crisis, and British boys were reading "Eagle," which likewise featured tales of plucky lads as well as biographies of famous men (such as Marco Polo, shown here), while I think I remember reading a similar biography of Marie Curie in my sister's issues of "Girl," the companion to Eagle.
(I certainly read it — I remember distinctly the panel of Pierre being struck down by a carriage in the street — but am not sure where. Can't imagine it being anywhere else.)
The biographies in Eagle were not as blatantly hortatory in tone as the tales of plucky British lads in G.A. Henty's victorian boys' novels, but they were clearly intended to instill character and I don't know that this is a particularly bad goal.
Residential Schools, however, are a particularly hot-button topic among Indians generally and very much so among the First Nations people in Canada, who have received both apologies and compensation for the physical and sexual abuse suffered in those institutions, as well as for the arrogance with which the entire enterprise was carried out.
To that extent, this feature has to understood within its historical context, but also within its own specific context, and seen as a well-intentioned but nonetheless conscious attempt at programming.
It should also be noted that, while Canada appears to have had a greater history of residential schools than the United States, it's not because we were anymore enlightened on this side of the white man's border. Rather, the Canadians tended to use missionaries rather than cavalry as their agents of outreach, and thus had very few Indian wars.
Which is to say, they put considerably more effort into directing their native people towards the "correct" version of the hereafter, while we tended to simply make sure they got wherever they were going as soon as possible.
We did have the Carlisle Indian School, where hair was cut, languages were forbidden and religious practice limited to Christianity, and the process of assimilation was often painful and is, today, seen (perhaps ironically) as barbaric.
Of course, not every child sent there was traumatized by the experience, though this is perhaps similar to our discussion Sunday of how not every football player suffers debilitating brain damage.
Jim Thorpe, for all the athletic glory he achieved, had enough personal problems that, if Carlisle and the other residential schools he attended didn't instill them, the process surely didn't prevent them, either.
Luther Standing Bear managed not only to get through the Carlisle experience but wrote about it dispassionately in his biography, "My People the Sioux," as an unpleasant parting with family, but as something that made him who he was.
Properly done, however, I think the old practice of creating biographies in graphic form remains a great way to get through to young people and am glad to see that the Center Cartoon Studies has spawned a series of them.
And, by the way, the new Core Standards being adopted nearly nationwide call for a greater mix of non-fiction in the curriculum, so there's the opening.
And now, courtesy of Luther Standing Bear (who was, at the time, still a Carlisle student but working at Wanamaker's Department Store in Philadelphia), here is your moment of zen:
One
evening while going home from work, I bought a paper, and read that
Sitting Bull, the great Sioux medicine man, was to appear at one of the
Philadelphia theaters.
The paper stated that he was the Indian who killed General Custer!
The chief and his people had been held prisoners of war, and now here
they were to appear in a Philadelphia theater. So I determined to go and
see what he had to say, and what he was really in the East for.
I
had to pay fifty cents for a ticket. The theater was decorated with
many Indian trappings such as were used by the Sioux tribe of which I
was a member.
white man came on the stage and introduced Sitting Bull as the man who
had killed General Custer (which, of course, was absolutely false).
Bull arose and addressed the audience in the Sioux tongue, as he did
not speak nor understand English. He said, 'My friends, white people, we
Indians are on our way to Washington to see the Grandfather, or
President of the United States. I see so many white people and what they
are doing, that it makes me glad to know that some day my children will
be educated also. There is no use fighting any longer. The
buffalo are all gone, as well as the rest of the game. Now I am going
to shake the hand of the Great Father at Washington, and I am going to
tell him all these things.'
the white man who had introduced Sitting Bull arose again and said he
would interpret what the chief had said. He then started in telling the
audience all about the battle of the Little Big Horn, generally spoken
of as the 'Custer massacre.'
He mentioned how the Sioux were all prepared for battle, and how they
had swooped down on Custer and wiped his soldiers all out. He told so many lies that I had to smile.
the white man said that all those who wished to shake hands with
Sitting Bull would please line up if they cared to meet the man who had
killed Custer. The whole audience got in line, as they really believed
what the white man had told them.
made me wonder what sort of people the whites were, anyway. Perhaps
they were glad to have Custer killed, and were really pleased to shake
hands with the man who had killed him!
lined up with the others and started for the stage, not intending to
say a word. But the woman who had first noticed me smiling from my seat,
watched me all the closer as I came toward them.
hand, not knowing exactly what to say and not knowing if I were really
an Indian boy.
you here?' I replied in Sioux, 'In winter we have so many cold days
here that I do not know really how many colds I have been here.'
that I had become lighter in complexion. All the Indians then crowded
about me, forgetting all about shaking hands with the crowd of white
people, who could not understand it.
white man who had spoken on the stage now came up to see what was the
matter and why the Indians had suddenly left off shaking hands with the
others. Sitting Bull beckoned him to come up, then he turned to me and
said, 'Tell this white man we want you to go to our hotel with us to eat.'
were very anxious to get back to the hotel where they could have a talk
with someone who understood them.
we reached the hotel, Sitting Bull said to me that he was on his way to
Washington to shake hands with the President, and that he wanted his
children educated in the white man's way, because there was nothing left
for the Indian.
then asked me how far it was to Washington, and in what direction it
was. I told him that it was toward the sunset, and that he was now in
Philadelphia, a long way east of Washington. Sitting Bull expressed much
surprise, saying, 'Why, we must have passed the place.' Then I told him he certainly had.
the white man entered the room, and Sitting Bull said to me again, 'Ask
this white man when we are going to see the President, and when we are
going home.' The man said to tell him, 'You are soon going home, and on the way you may see the President.'
Bull how the white man had lied about him on the stage.
I sit and think about that incident, I wonder who that crooked white
man was, and what sort of Indian agent it could have been who would let
these Indians leave the reservation
without even an interpreter, giving them the idea they were going to
Washington, and then cart them around to different Eastern cities to
make money off them by advertising that Sitting Bull was the Indian who
slew General Custer!
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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