LIFE:

      As a child in England, Paul Goble became fascinated with Plains Indian culture and acquired a sizable library of books on the subject. His mother had read him books by Ernest Thompson Seton (stories of wild animals mostly) and Grey Owl (an Englishman who adopted a false Native persona as an adult).  After secondary school, he served in the British Army from 1951-53 and then studied at the Central School of Art in London and worked in England as a furniture designer and, later, as an art instructor at another London art school.  He first visited the U.S. in 1959.  His first book, Red Hawk’s Account of Custer’s Last Battle (1969), published while he was still in England, retells the Battle of the Little Big Horn from the Indian point of view; he reportedly wrote it after seeing a television program glorifying Custer and the 7^th Cavalry (100 Most Popular 190).  Goble emigrated to the United States in 1977, living in the Black Hills area, and became a U.S. citizen in 1984.  In the early ‘90s he moved to Lewiston, NY (near Niagara Falls and a Mohawk reservation); he later moved back to the Plains, living in Lincoln, Nebraska, and in 1998 moved to Black Hawk, SD.

      Goble received the Caldecott Medal for The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses (1978). His original illustrations for this and other works are in the South Dakota Art Museum at Brookings.  Goble has extensively studied Native American painting, especially the historical chronicles recorded on buffalo blankets (“Winter Counts”) and in ledger books.  His books are notable for their accuracy – as Stott notes, e.g., pictures of villages with tipis scrupulously observe traditions of placement (facing the sun, the source of life) and decoration (121). Although his works use traditional motifs and symbols of the people he is writing about, one can nevertheless recognize “a distinctive Paul Goble style” that blends tradition with his personal reinterpretation of the old stories (Stott 123).

      Goble works with India ink and watercolor to produce paintings that echo traditional Indian styles.  “Goble applies the brightly colored watercolors in layers and leaves a thin white line between the black outline and the colored inlay to suggest brilliantly colored bead and quill work.” (100 Most Popular 192)

      Goble said:

      My first four books were written when I was living in England and I had young Indian readers very much in mind. On my long summer visits I only made contact with native Americans, and back in England when working on the books

      Elsewhere, he notes:

    Among the specific symbols he adapts from his native sources are these:

        The War Bonnet design around sun in The Legend of the White Buffalo Woman = indication of future fulfillment

        Waving lines on thunderbird wings = traditional iconography for personal visions

Whose Stories Are They?

      Goble says that a lot of traditional Indian culture has been lost in the adaptation to modern society, so that for instance Iktomi, while still popular, has lost some of the godlike aspects of the character (6-7).  “I am trying to take these stories out of the dusty museum and folklore journals, in which they appeared so long ago, and to use them as the closest glimpses we can have today of what American culture was like in the buffalo days.” (7)  However, while his work was initially accepted by most segments of the Native American communities about which he writes, it has more recently come under criticism.  [InsertSlapin comments, pendingpermission.]  Specific issues include the sacred nature of the stories in their original culture (this applies particularly to the legend of the White Buffalo Calf Woman, a central story in Lakota spiritual belief), specific alterations made in more recent works such as his series of books on Iktomi, and his reliance on ethnographic sources that are controversial among Native Americans because of the manner in which they were obtained.

    Other commentators who are sympathetic to the concerns of the Native American community (but who themselves are not Native American) acknowledge concerns about the rights to these stories.  For example, Schmidt and Hettinga ask:

Who then today has the right to tell those stories?....One group might argue that the stories are distinct to a culture; for someone outside the culture to retell them is to violate the parent culture….Others would argue that even those writers who work to obtain permission from a tribe for the retelling of its stories are on shaky ground, for the stories are communal.  What one tribe can give permission for a retelling when no one tribe owns any tale?  Still others argue that it is impossible for a non-native writer to retell the stories, for the stories are in their essence oral, not things of print.

While sharing these concerns, however, these authors appear to exempt Goble from their criticism:

The answers to these questions are of course somewhat qualified.  Writers like Paul Goble have immersed themselves in the culture – both its past and present – for decades, with the result that they have deep understandings of the traditions of the culture and how the stories reflect the Native American culture. (2)

The Great Race of the Birds and the Animals

      This story is an origin myth, explaining the dominion of humans over the animal world (just as in the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve are given dominion over the rest of creation) and, coincidentally, the presence of a fertile region of red earth around the Black Hills.  It contains, almost off-handedly, several other “origin” tales – e.g., explanations of the jackrabbit’s extreme nervousness, the mole and gopher who continue to tunnel thinking they’re still in the race, etc.    Magpie’s role in this story also reminds one of the trickster role that Raven (another member of the crow family) plays in Northwest Coast Indian stories (Trafzer).

      In specific reference to this book, Trafzer comments on Goble’s respect for Native cultures: “he offers a preface about the oral tradition, describing the tribal origins of the stories he retells in his books. He also provides a bibliography of his impeccable sources. His works are authentic and colorful in words and pictures.”

     Trafzer comments:

      After reading Paul Goble's The Great Race of the Birds and Animals to Tess Nashone, my five-year old daughter, I took the book with me to the university. The night after reading it to her, Tess asked me to read it again to her. She was upset and disappointed when I told her I had left it in my office. She insisted that I tell her the story, and so I did. When I forgot to mention how Magpie got on Buffalo's back at the beginning of the race, she stopped and explained the importance of the point to me. The night before, Tess had not listened with careless ears or mind. She had listened well, and she had learned. She knew a good story when she heard it, and she knew that Goble had presented the old story well. And so it is with the children.

SOURCES: 100 Most Popular Picture Book Authors and Illustrators: Biographical Sketches and Bibliographies, Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited, 2000; Contemporary Authors Online, Gale/Thompson, 2002; Paul Goble, “On Beaded Dresses and the Blazing Sun,” in Sitting at the Feet of the Past: Retelling the North American Folktale for Children, Ed. Gary D. Schmidt and Donald R. Hettinga, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992, 5-14; John C. Stott, “Horses of Different Colors: The Plains Indians in Stories for Children,” American Indian Quarterly, 8, 2 (Spring 1984) 117-25; Clifford E. Trafzer, “‘The Word Is Sacred To A Child’: American Indians And Children's Literature,” American Indian Quarterly, 16, 3 (Summer 1992);  Rebecca Tsosie, “Changing Women: The Crosscurrents of American Indian Feminine Identity,”  In Vicki L. Ruiz and Ellen Carol Dubois, Eds., Unequal Sisters: A Multi-Cultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History,  Second Edition,  New York: Routledge, 1994, 508-531 [Rpt. From American Indian Culture and Research Journal 12, 1 (1988)]

A. Waller Hastings
Professor of English
Northern State University
Aberdeen, SD  57401

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