The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative

Chapter 3 opens with the same story about the earth being constructed on the backs of turtles. After the usual mention of stories being “all we are,” King recounts speaking at a small Northern California college, where he told the story of Ishi. Ishi was the last of his tribe and in 1911 was arrested by a sheriff who didn’t recognize him as an Indian. Two anthropologists took Ishi (and gave him the name Ishi) to a museum where he lived out his days as an exhibit for whites. King wowed the college audience with the story but then was dismayed to realize he and the other Native American speakers did not get paid, unlike the other speakers. He asks rhetorically, “What were we, I wanted to know, entertainment?” (66).

The chapter next discusses the early history of interactions between whites and Native Americans. While some explorers wrote positive reports on the Indians and their way of life, the Puritans saw the Indians primarily as an obstacle to their goal of acquiring land. Thus, “the Puritans set about creating the stories that were needed to carry the day” (75). These stories depicted Indians not as “strange and exotic” but as “graceless and savage people, dirty and slothful in their personal habits, treacherous in their relations with the superior race” (75).