1936: CADDIE WOODLAWN by Carol Ryrie Brink
In 1864 Caddie Woodlawn was eleven, and as wild a little tomboy as ever ran the woods of western Wisconsin.
The most decorated American children's author who never won a Newbery would have to be Laura Ingalls Wilder, and I don't really have to explain who she is because you probably read at least one or two of her Little House on the Prairie books when you were growing up, or even watched the Little House television series. All of Wilder's novels are still enduring classics for grade school readers, and five of them were finalists for the Newbery, but none of them won. Still, as recognition for her lifelong contribution to children's literature, the ALA created the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal in 1945 as a lifetime achievement award for children's authors. In addition to Wilder, who was the inaugural winner, other winners include Beverly Cleary, Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, Tomie DePaola, Katherine Paterson, and E.B. White. We're talking heavy hitters here. The most recent winner was Mildred D. Taylor, who wrote, among many other works, the legendary Newbery medalist Roll Of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
Today, the medal is no longer named after Laura Ingalls Wilder, because Wilder has been, to use a library science term, turbo-cancelled. In 2018, the ALA revisited the award and Wilder's legacy, specifically the part of her legacy where she repeatedly emphasized throughout her writing that she did not consider indigenous Americans to be human beings. This wasn't just characters in her book playing "Wild Indian" or repeatedly saying "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" or telling each other "if you don't keep your sunbonnet on, you'll be brown as an Indian!" or putting on blackface shows that were accompanied by illustrations in the book that in turn were colorized in later printings of the book. Although, to be clear, all of those things happen in the Little House books.
Wilder wasn't just writing these words into her characters' mouths, this was also part of her overall narrative voice. Debbie Reese, a member of the Nambe Pueblo nation and professor at the University of Illinois, published a short (and good) article on this in 2008, confirming that:
"Through the characters of Laura and Pa, Wilder makes remarks that suggest a sympathetic attitude toward Native peoples and the ways they were treated. However, the predominant characterization of Native peoples is of the primitive savage…In short, she tells us, they are primitive….Wilder’s characterizations of Indians obscure their lives as members of civilized, self-governing societies."
Wilder describes the frontier, populated by these self-governing indigenous societies, as "empty" until the white settlers show up. Indigenous characters in Wilder's stories are compared much more easily to animals than they are to the other white human characters. Wilder's (and her characters') views on indigenous Americans were consistent with those of many other white Americans at the time, but that doesn't make them okay, and it certainly doesn't make them okay to, you know, actual indigenous people and people of color, who helped advise the ALA on the name change for what is now called the "Children's Literature Legacy Award"
To be clear, my calling Wilder "turbo-cancelled" was a laugh line, just like it's a laugh line when I say that Wilder is objectively the most cancelled author in the history of children's literature, narrowly edging out Roald Dahl and his very unique opinions about Jewish people. The ALA did not ever do anything that would have removed Wilder's books from schools or libraries, didn't suggest that her works be removed from any school curricula, and didn't say that her works didn't have literary or historical value. They did say that they really shouldn't name a major award after her, which I think is a perfectly reasonable point of view. Wilder's works are classics in their own way, but should be read in the right context and with the right understanding of how white settlers actually treated indigenous Americans. Deegan certainly didn't advocate for pulling Wilder's books from shelves and burning them, but she did advocate for engaging with and teaching the books critically if we were going to still teach them. As she, very memorably, put it:
"With books like these, children “learn” that Indians welcomed and helped the Europeans; they “learn” that Indians were primitive peoples, and, that friendly Indians are those that fight with whites, against other Indians, but who, in the end, willingly leave their lands for whites…As educators, we have at least two choices: avoid the books, or, approach them critically, teaching children how to deconstruct the information provided in the books. Teaching them uncritically is not an educationally sound choice…In November of 2007, a teacher wrote to me, angry at my critique of a book she enjoys. She said “I suppose you don’t like Santa Claus, or the Tooth Fairy, or the Easter Bunny either.” In her mind, and in too many minds, Native people are creatures of fantasy, occupying the same space as Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. That attitude has to change."
Now, is 1936 Newbery medalist Caddie Woodlawn, which is set in the same part of the country in the same era and features an extremely similar main character doing basically all the same stuff that Wilder did, better than the Little House series in its treatment of indigenous people? Yes.
Well, slightly.
To be honest, if you can look past the huge problems that I will soon be describing in detail, Carol Rylie Brink's novel Caddie Woodlawn is downright delightful. The title character, Caroline "Caddie" Woodlawn, who is based on Brink's grandmother, is one of seven Woodlawn children living on the Wisconsin frontier in the 1860s. Through the novel's episodic chapters set over the course of a year, the redheaded tomboy goes to school, dodges a prairie fire, meets the circuit preacher, shelters an injured dog, buys gifts for some of her classmates who recently lost a parent, learns her father's watchmaking trade, hears of the end of the Civil War, and pranks the hell out of her rich cousin visiting the farm from Boston.
Caddie is a great character, and her exploits with her older brothers are compelling, sweet, and, in many cases, hilarious. And through it all, this humble family - Caddie's father grew up in line to an obscure British title but prefers to be a self-made farmer on the frontier - take pride in where they live:
"'You have grown up in a free country, children,' began Mr. Woodlawn. 'Whatever happens I want you to think of yourselves as young Americans, and I want you to be proud of that. It is difficult to tell you about England, because there all men are not free to pursue their own lives in their own ways. Some men live like princes, while other men must beg for the very crusts that keep them alive.'"
While it may be difficult to imagine a country where some people are extremely rich and others are starving to death for no good reason, this was apparently the state of things in 19th-century England and apparently very different from America back then or at any point in America's history including right now. And towards the end of the novel, when Caddie's father gets an opportunity to reclaim his title and riches if he moves back to London and renounces his American citizenship, he gladly refuses, and his family is overjoyed to stay on the frontier. It's a fun, cheerful story that would make a great read-aloud book for young children or a great read for an elementary or middle school student.
However.
Caddie Woodlawn does, in its first chapter, hint that we're going to some difficult discussions ahead of us, as one of Caddie's brothers asks "Do you think the Indians around here would ever get mad and massacre folks like they did up north?” By chapter ten, the rumors of a massacre have become a major plot point, as the other settlers start to whisper that "a man from the country west of here came into the tavern tonight and told the men that the Indians are gathering for an uprising against us.” Soon, the white settlers are all gathering at the Woodlawn house and arming themselves, while Caddie's kindly father resolves:
"I am willing to stake my farm, and a good deal that I hold dear besides, on the honor and friendliness of the Indians hereabouts. Still, we must keep clear heads and be ready for emergencies. Whatever happens, the white settlers must stand together."
That's not my favorite thing I've read, but to Brink's credit, both she and Caddie seem to share the view that an armed conflict between the settlers and the indigenous tribes would be a bad thing. As the settlers' bloodlust grows, and as they notice that - hey wait a second - nobody actually is coming to massacre them, they decide they're going to just march on the Indians and massacre them first. Which - again, this is, I guess, a good thing - Caddie thinks is bad and tries to prevent. She rides to the indigenous people, meets with one she befriended, warns him of the possible attack, and then successfully convinces his tribe to flee. War is avoided.
This, obviously, isn't great. It's the same problem Deegan described above: Caddie's friend is a "good Indian" because he's willing to cede his land to the white people in the interest of keeping the peace. But there isn't a massacre, and the white settlers' hysteria is clearly shown as, you know, bad, as "fear spread[ing] like a disease, nourished on rumors and race hatred." That's, at least, something. You can get through this part of the book and come out the other side saying "well that wasn't great, but it also wasn't as terrible as it could have been, and I'm really going to try very hard to give this book the benefit of the doubt, so unless something happens in the immediate next chapter that makes me scream 'NO NO NO NO NO' in horror, I'm going to go ahead and say that this was a close call but overall the book is probably fine."
In the immediate next chapter, Caddie's friend, Indian John, comes to thank her for the advance warning, and ultimately for her help keeping the peace, offering her an invaluable gift:
"'Look, Missee Red Hair. You keep scalp belt, too?' 'The scalp belt?' echoed Caddie uncertainly. She felt the old prickling sensation up where her scalp lock grew as she looked at the belt with its gruesome decorations of human hair."
Yes, that's right, Caddie gets to keep the belt of human scalps that the primitive savage John values so highly (and inherited from his father). Caddie and her brothers know exactly what to do with this gift: they start charging the other neighborhood kids for a chance to look at it, making up gruesome stories about the scalps and calling it "Big Chief Bloody Tomahawk’s favorite scalp belt.” Like I said, a delightful novel, except for the extremely obvious and horrifying flaws.
Towards the end of the novel, Caddie ponders the amount that she's grown over the past year:
“What a lot has happened since last year…How far I’ve come! I’m the same girl and yet not the same. I wonder if it’s always like that? Folks keep growing from one person into another all their lives, and life is just a lot of everyday adventures. Well, whatever life is, I like it.”
This is a nice little passage for a young reader to see, but it's also very good advice for reading Caddie Woodlawn, or reading Little House on the Prairie, or reading about the white settlement of America in general. You're supposed to change over time. Your relationship to the books you read, even the books you read and treasure as a child, is supposed to change over time.
Sometimes, this change is very positive and you gain an increased appreciation for a book you liked as a child: if you revisit a classic like A Wrinkle In Time or The Phantom Tollbooth as an adult, you're sure to discover some new theme that you wouldn't have noticed as a child, something that resonates with adult-you that was never going to resonate with child-you, something you skimmed over as a child that can leave you sobbing as an adult. This book that dug a groove in your mind years ago can go off like a landmine if you trip over the right thing.
And then other books, like Caddie Woodlawn or Little House On The Prairie, change too, as you change alongside them. You realize that some of the things you loved as a child really don't work anymore, and that maybe some of those things never really "worked" but it took a long time before a lot of us figured it out.
But this can be a positive change, too. Because maybe it will lead you to hear some perspective from someone you never thought to listen to before. Maybe you’ll learn one or two things about how history actually happened, and maybe that will help show you that the world is bigger than you thought it was as a child. And, most importantly, you can start asking questions about who told the stories you heard and read growing up, and what kinds of stories those people would have been good at telling, what kinds of stories they wouldn’t have been good at telling, and what other stories you’ve heard before that you should maybe start asking questions about. You end up the same person who read the same books, and yet you and the books are somehow not the same. Maybe reading books like this is really just about how you keep growing from one person into another all your life. Well, whatever reading is, I like it.
Newburied is a series by Tony Ginocchio on the history of the Newbery Medal and a whole bunch of other stuff related to it. You can subscribe via Substack to get future installments sent to your inbox directly. The next installment will cover the 2020 medalist, New Kid by Jerry Craft.