ONE LITTLE, TWO LITTLE, THREE LITTLE INDIANS, FOUR LITTLE, FIVE LITTLE, SIX LITTLE INDIANS, SEVEN LITTLE, EIGHT LITTLE, NINE LITTLE INDIANS, TEN LITTLE INDIAN CHILDREN

     There were one little, two little, three little Indians,four little, five little, six little Indians, seven little, eight little, nine little Indians, ten little Indian children. 
     Actually many more were all around the school, when I started the second grade. They were from rural areas around Clinton, Oklahoma. The Indian children did not outnumber the white children but they were well represented and were noticeably present. They dressed poorly and wore their hair in long braids. When their  parents dropped them off at school, they wore long braids as well, with long skirts, moccasins and dingy looking blankets around their shoulders. I guess that's why my father called them "blanket asses"(a pejorative term, to say the least). 

      I showed concern the first day of class when I saw these unfamiliar faces. The only Indians I was familiar with were those I saw in the Saturday matinee movies and they weren't very friendly when they fought the white cowboys in the films at the picture shows.

     My mother tried to comfort me and told me they were harmless. In fact she said that she and I were part Indian. She told me when she was twelve years old and visiting her Grandmother Ellsworth in Stillwater, Oklahoma they attended a funeral. In walked a party of grieving relatives of the deceased. She laughed as she told the story and described her first encounter with similar people. They too wore their hair in braids and blankets over their shoulders. As mother described it, she asked Grandmother Ellsworth who were the strange looking people who came into the funeral home unannounced.

     Grandmother Ellsworth said "Shhh child, those are some of your relatives."

     Mother said she answered her grandmother and said, "They may be your relatives, but they aren't mine". She said Grandmother Ellsworth told her they were Cherokee. 

     I walked to school every day. It was only a few blocks from the hotel where we were temporarily living and I soon became adjusted to my new school and the young Indian children.

     When I got home from school, mother would search my head for lice that she said could hop from the Indian kids' heads to mine. She washed my hair every day when I bathed, parted my hair in sections, and looked closely at my scalp.

      One week-end our family went to the edge of town to a Pow Wow. The Indian families  dressed in their finery with long head dresses, made of colored feathers, beaded leather shirts, pants or skirts and  leather moccasins. They danced in circles and the drums went, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. The pounding went on and on. I can still hear it today. The sound was unending.The circle was unbroken. They didn't go anywhere, but in their circle, over and over.  (Below is an address of a modern day Pow Wow by the Cheyenne  on Youtube.)
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2kZqknfkvg 
     The Indians were from the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribes. One of their best strategies for survival, in the nineteenth century, was to merge. They could protect themselves better from the advancing white settlers. They were descendents of the nomadic Plains Indians, who had moved freely throughout the middle United States for centuries.

     They were unlike "The Five Civilized Tribes", the Cherokee, Chicasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole, who were traditionally settled and farmed their land in the southeastern states. They were called "civilized" because they lived in  settlements similar to Europeans. When President Andrew Jackson ordered the "civilized" tribes moved to Indian Territory in Oklahoma years earlier in the 1830s, they were forced to the the eastern part of the Indian Territory and again took up their traditional farming that eventually became reservation land.  

     The Cheyenne-Arapaho, on the other hand, were forced to the western part of Indian Territory a little later, after the Civil War. These Indians were free and lived off the land but not in the same sense as the more settled tribes. The Cheyenne and Arapaho roamed  where the buffalo roamed.  When the railroad was built, it dislocated their hunting and  game. The white settlers slaughtered the buffalo and they became almost extinct.  They massacred Cheyenne tribes unmercifully, broke treaties, and then it was only a matter of time, before the military with their more advanced weapons,  conquered and restrained  the Indians on reservations in Oklahoma. They became an impoverished conquered people, much due to the disappearance of their main culture of the buffalo, but particularly to the relentless forces by the white man to destroy the Indians at all costs.

     After the forced relocation of  Indians, across the country,  the federal government used several policies that worsened the Indians' situation. From thousands and thousands of acres, the Indian lands were divided into 40-160 acre allotments by the Dawes Act (1891). See relative youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8uGr6JJdkE&feature=related
     The Cheyenne-Arapaho who were formally nomads were expected to become agriculturalists, with little tradition for it, and few tools or equipment. Not to mention the fact that much of their land was arid and unproductive, unsuitable for farming.

      Eventually, conniving land dealers and legislators grabbed the Indian lands. They also stole the Indians' oil rights and leases on land that eventually became valuable, when oil was discovered. By the 1930's, Indians in western Oklahoma were poor, jobless, landless, and wards of the state. And by the middle 1940's when we arrived in Clinton, they were still an impoverished people. 
      Today, Indians continue to live in poverty conditions all across the country. In fact more of the Indian population live in below poverty conditions, than any other ethnic population. 
      Clinton is not any different. Indians comprise only 7.1 percent of the town's population Like other Indians their poverty rates and the number of social problems they have are staggering. They have a high rate of diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. There are many teenage pregnancies, alcohol, drug abuse and parental neglect. Children lack the parental support in school, which hampers their ability to succeed and get ahead.

      Churches, like the Methodist Church, work with the Indians because the churches are aware of the Indians' social needs. Please see the following link:


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9XhXBH08rs

      Until recently, Oklahoma has had the highest number of Indians in their state, which is formerly Indian Territory. Arizona now ranks the highest. I've always had empathy for the Indian people. I don't know if it's because I went to school with the dark skinned children when I was young. Or if it's because mother told me that we were related to them. Maybe it's because I now know more history of the Indians. Or maybe, it's a combination of all three. 
     But I do know that whenever I hear or think of one little, two little, three little Indians, four little, five little, six little Indians, seven little, eight little, nine little Indians, ten little Indian children, I think of the little Indian children I went to school with in Clinton, Oklahoma.