The Education of Little Tree
A literary hoax with sinister origins.
Mr. F. was an amazing teacher. He was my social studies teacher in 5th and 6th grade and I even had him for a homeroom teacher. A main part of his curriculum was a game of, essentially, historical competitive Dungeons and Dragons, in 5th grade as colonists in the New World and in 6th as a wagon train headed to Oregon. Not everybody made it. As a class we were engaged with the first complex historical problems we'd faced, primarily it was about America as a nation of immigrants, sometimes working with but mostly displacing native populations. Native Americans, or Indians as I still think of them most of the time, were stressed as being neither noble savages or scalping heathens in his classroom, but people.
Well duh you might be thinking, but that is a rarer idea in classrooms than you think. Mr. F. (that's what we called him, I still can't spell his last name) was somewhere between my grandparents and parents in age, and he could be gruff and hard to approach but his projects and readings pushed thinking.
'Little Tree' was unquestionably a favorite. We watched the movie adaption, too, and I enjoyed the simplicity of Little Tree's life with his grandparents, the mischievous fox, the still, the talk of books, and when Little Tree has to go away for awhile the baffling stupidity of the Reverend and Orphanage was eye-opening. I still see those aspects in the story now, but a third or so into the book, which was already dragging, I learned about who Forrest Carter really was. Asa "Forrest" Carter first of all was not Cherokee and apparently knew nothing about Cherokee culture, but an anti-semite, segregationist speechwriter and founder of a violent Ku Klux Klan splinter group? Because of course the Ku Klux Klan wasn't doing enough? Wow. I wanted to stop reading right there. But I figured I should see it out, Mr. F. assigning this in the late 90s must have known about such a high-profile controversy, and thought it was still an important book. Not a word was said to the class of course. I feel a little betrayed, to be honest. He trusted us with moral issues in other matters, reading this book and talking about the author might have been a great opportunity.
Mr. F. didn't 'sell' the book to us as non-fiction (the book was marketed as a memoir until 1991) but I thought it was safe to assume that it was accurate. Nope. I believe that people can change, but Carter was either a liar or delusional, not apologizing or even acknowledging his actions before he adopted his 'Forest Carter' identity. Denial is worse to me than the open committment of a crime. Even with all of this, I thought 'Well, I enjoyed it as a kid, maybe the story and its message is powerful enough to overcome my feelings knowing the facts as an adult'....It's not. The book is too simple and so many of the attitudes, actions and stories from Little Tree's eccentric grandfather and other characters are tinged with different meanings now. I can't escape it. I think the book still has something to offer, thus the two stars, but I couldn't in good conscience give this to anybody, least of all my nephew. My copy is going out the door ASAP and I wish the University of New Mexico Press the best of luck with the buckets of money they're still earning with this title.
