Seasonal Notes on Indian Summer and a Cultural Artifact

Note--It's still Indigenous Peoples History month.  Worth considering.

Thanks to El Niño, we are enjoying a spectacularly beautiful Autum--a long string of days with dazzling blue skys, a touch of fog in the morning, temperatures reaching 70 degrees mid-afternoon, and settling into the crisp 40s overnight as day by day the trees turn golden.  Quite naturally the subject of Indian Summer pops up in conversation.  Even the prognosticators on TV banter about it pleasantly with chortling anchor folk.

The pedant scold in me wants to yell, "You got it wrong.  It says right here in the Almanac that Indian Summer only comes after the first hard, killing frost, usually in November before the last leaves fall and snow flies in earnest."  But that would be mere quibbling.  Like anything else in you-can't-nail-i-down-English, the phrase means what users commonly understand no matter any contrary dusty pedigree.

The original illustration was printed in black and white to fill front page space on a slow news day.  Staff cartoonist John T. McCutcheon whipped up the drawing and accompanying text in a few hours.  The annual reproductions were full color and full page after 1932, sometimes even reproduced on "quality paper suitable for framing.

For me, and a lot of other geezers in these parts, Indian Summer always brings to mind John T. McCutcheon’s Injun Summer which first appeared in 1907 the Chicago Tribune and was then reproduced annually from 1912 until it was discontinued after 1992 for racial stereotyping and using terms that were regarded as racist and demeaning.

But it was also a much-beloved tradition, a wistful nostalgia piece.  In the early years of its long run there were many readers who, like McCutcheon, could recall Midwestern rural farmsteads with stacked, shocked corn in the late 19th Century.  By the end of its run its urban and suburban admirers were generationally removed from the inspiration.  They were nostalgic for a cultural artifact, something that may have been passed around with the funny papers and spread out on the living room floor.

Complaints started in the '70's when the American Indian Movement was making waves at Alcatraz, Wounded Knee, and even in Chicago where a bunch erected teepees and occupied a parking area by Wrigley Field.  Injun and other derogatory names like redskin or savage, became the Native Americn "N" word.  Debates about it filled Tribune Letters to the Editor columns every year, and became part of anual media chatter and commentary.  I seem to recall some picketing right outside of WGN's glassed in studio at Tribune Tower.

Much of the opposition was usual knee-jerk stick-in-the-mudness that is always against any change.  For others it was an emotional hill to die on like Chief Illiniwek or the Washington Redskins. And yes, there were those who let their naked racism shine through.  But it was a losing battle.  They were ground down by shifting sentiments and generational change.  In the end the Tribune decided not out of conscience but because continued embracement was not worth placating traditionalists who would quickly find something else to be grumpy about.

John T. McCucheon at his drawing desk in Tribune Tower.

But even at the end there was some thoughtful regret.  Reliable liberal progressive Roger Ebert wrote that it was "a victim of political correctness."  Some noted that the accompanying text written in dialect might have been critically acceptable it was penned by Mark Twain, or local colorists like Bret Hart, or by McCutcheon's fellow Hoosier, poet James Whitcomb Riley who's famous "Frost is on the pumpkin" verse is a cousin to his prose.  Some suggested that McCutcheon's words could a minor classic in that vein.  

Yep, sonny this is sure enough Injun summer. Don’t know what that is, I reckon, do you? Well, that’s when all the homesick Injuns come back to play; You know, a long time ago, long afore yer granddaddy was born even, there used to be heaps of Injuns around here—thousands—millions, I reckon, far as that’s concerned. Reg’lar sure ‘nough Injuns—none o’ yer cigar store Injuns, not much. They wuz all around here—right here where you’re standin’.

Don’t be skeered—hain’t none around here now, leastways no live ones. They been gone this many a year.

They all went away and died, so they ain’t no more left.

But every year, ‘long about now, they all come back, leastways their sperrits do. They’re here now. You can see ’em off across the fields. Look real hard. See that kind o’ hazy misty look out yonder? Well, them’s Injuns—Injun sperrits marchin’ along an’ dancin’ in the sunlight. That’s what makes that kind o’ haze that’s everywhere—it’s jest the sperrits of the Injuns all come back. They’re all around us now.

See off yonder; see them tepees? They kind o’ look like corn shocks from here, but them’s Injun tents, sure as you’re a foot high. See ’em now? Sure, I knowed you could. Smell that smoky sort o’ smell in the air? That’s the campfires a-burnin’ and their pipes a-goin’.

Lots o’ people say it’s just leaves burnin’, but it ain’t. It’s the campfires, an’ th’ Injuns are hoppin’ ’round ’em t’beat the old Harry.

You jest come out here tonight when the moon is hangin’ over the hill off yonder an’ the harvest fields is all swimmin’ in the moonlight, an’ you can see the Injuns and the tepees jest as plain as kin be. You can, eh? I knowed you would after a little while.

Jever notice how the leaves turn red ’bout this time o’ year? That’s jest another sign o’ redskins. That’s when an old Injun sperrit gits tired dancin’ an’ goes up an’ squats on a leaf t’rest. Why I kin hear ’em rustlin’ an’ whisper in’ an’ creepin’ ’round among the leaves all the time; an’ ever’ once’n a while a leaf gives way under some fat old Injun ghost and comes floatin’ down to the ground. See—here’s one now. See how red it is? That’s the war paint rubbed off’n an Injun ghost, sure’s you’re born.

Purty soon all the Injuns’ll go marchin’ away agin, back to the happy huntin’ ground, but next year you’ll see ’em troopin’ back—th’ sky jest hazy with ’em and their campfires smolderin’ away jest like they are now.

Critic Douglas E. Neeland wrote:  

To me, there’s an innocence of context about the McCutcheon material that rightly defies efforts to label it as a threat to racial harmony in 1991. More to the point is whether its annual appearance, other than offering a nostalgic glimpse of the newspaper’s past, serves any real purpose that is worth the space in the magazine.

But I have to confess if it were a nostalgic cartoon from the same era about Southern plantation life that depicted slaves eating watermelons and described them as “happy darkies,” I would not find it benign.

Neeland's reluctant conclusion was correct.  

Two days ago, I posted a short poem in the Blog, Accidental Idaho, at Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout: From the Murfin Verse Archives--Accidental Idaho written in 2011, which unconsciously may have drawn from the same sort of inspiration as McCutcheon.  I used no pejoratives, yet I wonder if I too may have objectified Native people.  Should I stone myself?