Injun Summer 1907 By John T. McCutcheon (Redux)

In 1907 these two cartoon panels debuted in the Chicago Tribune. This artwork and accompanying story written in 1900's simple folk speak was the formal declaration of fall and all that was magical about the season:

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. 

Cedar's Take:

On every Sunday before Halloween up until the 1990's the Chicago Tribune ran Injun Summer by Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist John T. McCutcheon on the front page and in later years on the front cover of their Magazine section. 

It was a Halloween tradition as much as the Night Before Christmas was to December 24th. 

I suspect that if you are over forty it was a part of your Halloween as well since papers across the country usually found the column inches to print the generations old story. 

But the tradition of running the story on the Sunday before Halloween ended in 1992. 

According to the Tribune: "The "Injun Summer" era ended on Oct. 25, 1992, when it appeared for the last time. The drawings may be timeless, but the text had outlived its day. Complaints had been voiced for several years about its offensiveness to Native Americans. Wisps of smoke have continued to rise from those smoldering leaves, however. Every fall, some readers complain that they miss it." You can read more from the Tribune about McCutcheon's "Injun Summer" here.

Throughout my life, American Indian folklore has played a substantial part. I'm married to girl from Maine where nearly everything from the county Penobscot, to the mountain Katahdin has Indian significance. I have marveled at the lands once held by the famous Indian tribes out west the from the Badlands of South Dakota named Mako Sica by the Lakota Indians to Mesa Verde in Colorado, and Gila Cliffs in New Mexico.

As a boy scout, from my first introduction it was a given that Indians, their ways and stories where important and offered endless knowledge and understanding.  

Today wokeness has removed most of Indian culture from our classrooms. All references to the old stories have been washed away as insensitive. 

Their names like the mist and smoke in McCutcheon's story, have vanished from text books.

Ask a fifth grader about who was Red Cloud, or Sacagawea you'll get a puzzled look. Mention Tecumseh and they think go-cart engines. But say George Floyd and you get an endless stream of misinformation. 

Redskins have become Commanders, Indians are Sentinels, and Land-o-Lakes has removed the Indian from the land once and for all, saying it was demeaning cultural appropriation to use the image of the woman, who had been depicted as kneeling for nearly 100 years. 

Like the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond, the renaming of streets in Charlotte, woke idiots are erasing American History daily because the dumbing of America prohibits free thought. In other words you aren't smart enough to understand history.

Just another reminder that Socialist liberals what to control every aspect of your life from vaccines to history and what you share with your children.