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Troisième partie. L'amour animal comme conscience de la relation de l'humain au monde

Johnny Half-Breed, American Indian Identity as a Communion with Animals and Nature

Brendan Firth
p. 233-249

Abstracts

Tribal societies have been considered archaic savages, between animals and civilised man. This stems from a culture fighting against nature, whereas American Indians view themselves as having a specific place in the world, as brothers to the animals in nature. This perspective, admitting a closeness to animals but reversing the judgement to be positive, became an identity battle upholding the agency of American Indians, who, indeed, needed to valorise their ways of life and integration in natural society in order to defend their sovereignty and self-determination. Peter La Farge's song, “Johnny Half-Breed,” presents this perspective in a folk protest song. “Johnny Half-Breed” shows a positive, mythical, and heroic outcast Indian hero, who is at one with the animals in nature but rejected by people of the city, proves his value and affirms his stance in favour of the animals he loves, and of humanity towards the Other.

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1In the 60s, my father, John Firth, was a beatnik painter in New York, and he knew Peter La Farge, who was a painter as well as a singer. I grew up with the Peter La Farge albums, Peter La Farge Sings of the Cowboys, As long as the Grass shall grow, and On the Warpath.

2This article will address questions regarding the song “Johnny Half-Breed” by Peter La Farge, from the album On the Warpath, issued on Folkways in 1965, a protest song about discrimination against American Indians.

3The development of American Indian militancy in the 20th Century owes a lot to the humanitarian investment of white intellectuals. Oliver La Farge—Peter La Farge’s father—was such a man. An anthropologist who studied American Indians, he was the president of the Association on American Indian Affairs, or AAIA, for 30 years up to the 60s, defending indigenous rights and interests.

  • 1 D’Ambrosio, Antonino, A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears (New Yor (...)
  • 2 Rosier, Paul C.,The Association on American Indian Affairs and the Struggle for Native American R (...)
  • 3 “[Olivier] La Farge’s phrase, ‘assimilation of the Indians into our general population,’ meant the (...)

4For most of the 20th Century, American Indian tribes faced policies of assimilation and of termination, meaning “that all federal aid, services, and protection for Native people living on reservations would end.1 Importantly termination came down to “unilaterally stripp[ing] individual tribes of their sovereignty without their consent.2 American Indians were typically treated as objects, and not actors, and they were subjected to federal policies which were decided for them. Even defenders of American Indian interests were divided on the questions of self-determination and Indian agency. Olivier La Farge considered that Indians needed protection until they were ready to assimilate, in contrast with others who defended the principle of American Indian agency.3 By the 60s, the civil rights movement presented a model of self-affirmation and agency.

  • 4 Cobb, Daniel M.,Indian Politics in Cold War America: Parallel and Contradiction,” The Princeton U (...)

5The 60s mark a transition from whites being the defenders of Indian rights on the national scene to Indians taking agency and organizing at the national level to defend their own rights, with the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC)4 and the Red Power movement. Singing played an important role in these developments, as had traditionally both in Indian culture and in the protest songs of American militancy.

  • 5 “The counterculture inspired La Farge, exciting and challenging his creative sensibilities. He move (...)
  • 6 Johnny Cash at this time was in his period of passing for American Indian.

6Peter La Farge was knowledgeable about American Indian affairs, thanks to his father, but revolted against his father’s paternalistic stance. He changed his surname from Oliver Jr. after his parents’ separation, and invested himself in a cowboy and Indian identity. He was a Korean war veteran, had been a boxer, and had worked as a bronc rider in rodeos and an actor in Chicago before coming to New York in the late 50s. When Peter La Farge came to New York as a singer and painter, Greenwich Village was a hub of folk protest singers, and he was recognized as an authentic voice on Indian issues.5 It was then that he became friends with Johnny Cash and wrote most of the songs for Cash’s album Bitter Tears which was released in 1964.6

7The particular role played by Peter La Farge is due to the overlapping of American Indian and personal issues. Despite being of white origin, thanks to this Indian identity, Peter La Farge took up Indian issues as an Indian. Deeply knowledgeable of Native American plight thanks to his upbringing, but in an identity revolt which linked rejection of social integration and assimilation, Peter La Farge’s inner struggle reflected that of American Indians. We may view Peter La Farge’s voice as a bridge between white and Indian cultures.

  • 7 D’Ambrosio, Antonino, A Heartbeat and a Guitar, 40.

8A loose ballad and a protest song, “Johnny Half-Breed” displays simple rhymes in following couplets, and uses unstressed starter words and iambs with feminine endings to add fluidity. It tells its story straight. Peter La Farge’s music follows in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston and Josh White, a tradition of ballads and protest songs. “While White served as his guitar teacher, La Farge’s songwriter mentor was Cisco Houston.7 In its first two stanzas, “Johnny Half-Breed” presents an image of the seemingly atemporal relationships between the eponymous character and the townsfolk, on the one hand, and between him and animals in nature on the other. This double portrait articulates two opposite perspectives on nature and those that are close to it. The following three stanzas relate the simple narrative which resolves the original conflict. The traditional view of the forest as dangerous is counterbalanced and then superseded by a vision of an Indian in harmony with the wild.

9This re-evaluation serves an identity protest which is quite personal and intimate for Peter La Farge, but which is also intimately connected to Native American issues. The identity battle contained within this song constitutes a remarkable contingency between personal and social issues. Although Peter himself died on the year this album was released, cutting short his career after only a few years of recordings, the connections made in this song inspired many and still resonate in American Indian identities today.

10This study aims to show how the song re-appropriates and revalorises the image of American Indian by reversing the values attached to animals in nature, and their relationship to American Indians. After a short presentation of the song itself, we will analyse the two opposing perspectives on Johnny. Following the development of the narrative will then lead into a consideration of how closeness between American Indians and animals is given value.

Presentation of the Song8

  • 8 Many technical descriptions did not make it into the final draft of this article, but the reader is (...)
  • 9 The entire booklet of liner notes is freely available on the Smithsonian website: “Peter La Farge o (...)

11The album On the Warpath includes a leaflet giving the melodies, chords and lyrics to the songs. In effect, the leaflet acts as a songbook, allowing musicians to learn to sing the songs.9

12Interestingly the leaflet opens with “Notes by Skip Weshner” which are remarkably political. From the theme of fairplay, as a value of white culture that is not lived up to, Weshner (1965) underlines black Americans’ fight for civil rights, with “organisation, leadership, sympathy and assistance,” before turning to Native American’s case:

  • 10 Weshner in La Farge, Peter,Johnny Half-Breed,” On the Warpath (New York: Folkways Records, 1965), (...)

his leaders command little attention from the various governments he must live with in this land, and he has a considerable list of grievances that you, and all of us have some responsibility for correcting and redressing; if we are Americans, and if we are at all fair.
We have stolen his land from him. […] we have solomnly [sic] enticed him into treaties, which we have broken again and again […].
He had a culture when we came…a rich symbiosis with all of the elements of the natural world around him. […] It’s about time that we who are stripping the land of its wealth at suicidal speed […] who are becoming more alienated every day from our natural heritage, by isolation; by every kind of polution [sic] and by the inexorable commitment to a barely perceived and hardly controlled irrationality which we call by the smug name of urbanization…we the conquerors of all except ourselves, whom the gods have paid the awful complement of relinquishing the power of absolute decision over life and death…perhaps we might learn about symbiosis…about ecology…about living with nature, including our own…and not despite it. We had better learn—soon.
The Indian has known these things…has learned these mysteries…these laws of living for thousands of years. Is it too late for us to ask him? Are we too proud to seek the path of salvation or sanity from the so recently vanquished, and the stubbornly unassimilated? Where he has found a voice that can bridge the worlds between his thought and ours, had we not best listen?
Peter La Farge is such a voice.
Listen.
10

This long excerpt displays perspectives on ecology, nature and the need of voices for the socially excluded that continue to be quite up to date. It validates Peter La Farge as a voice for American Indians, both in defending their political interests and bringing their wisdom to white culture. Importantly, American Indian culture is defined as a rich symbiosis with animals and the natural world.

  • 11 The four variations from the liner notes text tend to make the text warmer and more colloquial. In (...)

13Folk music is a loose and free medium, where the message and the feeling imparted are more important than any fidelity to a preconceived version, thus the actual music on the record differs from the text given in the liner notes.11

14Peter La Farge and Nick Navarro create a distinctive style by merging Indian drums with popular American folk song guitar techniques. La Farge’s approach to guitar and lyrics was inspired by the protest song tradition. Indeed we must note that in the American tradition singing played an important role in social protest, fostering solidarity and courage, as well as being used strategically to keep situations with a strong risk of violence between protestors and the police under control. The protest song as we know it is related to this tradition, as singers were activists and very socially conscious of their roles both in protest and that of spreading knowledge of injustices. Peter La Farge, along with Johnny Cash, his close friend, takes this tradition to American Indian causes.

15The song presents a simple narrative, but like blues ballads character is more developed than action. The first two stanzas of the song describe the state of affairs before the action starts, when the mayor’s child gets lost in the woods.

Two Opposing Perspectives on Johnny

16Johnny is a generic name, a diminutive form. It may not be his birth name but one bestowed upon him by the townsfolk. The character seems to have no origins:[n]o parents and no land.” He lacks a past or a story. He exists as in stasis, as a type, eternal, during the first two stanzas. The term Half-breed appears as a rejection, a common expression of racism. The term half-breed functions like the “one drop rule,” as a pretext for exclusion. Importantly, this insult projects the target as an animal. Just as Johnny is projected in the chorus as a dog in the two negatively connoted terms “cur” and “mongrel” (which is a canine half-breed).

17By passing for an Indian Cowboy, Peter La Farge experienced the same social rejections as Indians. In rejecting his white father and embracing Indianness, he himself straddled ethic groups.

18Interestingly the very idea of Half Breed relates to a recent incident in which American Indians successfully stood up against violent discrimination projecting them as animals. D’Ambrosio writes:

  • 12 D’Ambrosio, Antonino, A Heartbeat and a Guitar, 28.

The threat arose for the Lumbee in 1957 when Klan wizard and Free Will Baptist minister Reverend James W. “Catfish” Cole of South Carolina launched a campaign of terror targeting the tribe. “The Lumbee are mongrels,” Cole told the Greensboro Daily News. “There’s about 30,000 half-breeds up in Robeson County and we are going to have some cross burnings and scare them up.” […] Cole took his campaign on the road, speaking throughout the country against the “mongrelization” of the races. […] Cole decided to stage a large rally on January 18, 1958.12

19Five hundred armed Lumbee warriors came and routed the Klansmen, in what they call “the battle of Hayes pond.” The final word on the affair was said when Cole got sentenced to 2 years in prison for inciting a riot. Thus Johnny Half-Breed can be said to connect up with Indian pride. Importantly, the Half-Breed theme functions in the song as an affirmation of Indian identity, despite the phrase “not a white man nor an Indian.” We will see later how this affirmation is upheld by a positive identification with animals. D’Ambrosio quotes Oscar Brand, a musician:

  • 13 D’Ambrosio, Antonino, A Heartbeat and a Guitar, 45.

He had a great head start on everybody. If he sang ‘Ira Hayes,’ he was Ira Hayes. The way Ira Hayes was treated was the way Peter felt he had been treated, […] I thought when he performed he carried the whole weight of the Indian nation with him.13

  • 14 Schulman, Sandra Hale, Don’t Tell Me How I Looked Falling: The Ballad of Peter La Farge (New York: (...)

Likewise, when Peter La Farge sang “Johnny Half-Breed,” he was Johnny Half-Breed. Peter La Farge might have hung out with Indians, to his father’s dismay according to Schulman,14 but he was not accepted as one of them. The phrase “not a white man nor an Indian” can be understood by considering the song to be an autobiographical fantasy.

20The phrase “nor an Indian” also serves to explain away the total absence of American Indian society from the narrative. Johnny is a single character immersed in the wild but he represents American tribal cultures in their totality. The absence of other Indians permits this generalisation, while the complications that would arise from the negative portrait of tribal cultures excluding the Half-Breed are too complex to be rapidly thought through and, lacking an echo in the rest of the song, tend to be forgotten. On the contrary, with the development of the portrait of Johnny representing Indians as outcasts in general, the notion of inter-Indian injustice is at odds with the subject and has no place in the affective construction of the narrative structure.

21Johnny’s exclusion is a major character trait. Similar to a wild animal, he is characterized by his absence from human spaces. They run him off. He is out-cast, not around, cannot be found. He isn’t welcome, invited or allowed, and is told to “get out and get out now.” Negatively charged description continues as he is described “roaming” the woods and “rambling around.” In stanza four he will be called a “bum.”

22Yet exclusion implies a relation, it’s not a personal trait. Johnny's exclusion, although used to describe him, is logically the attribute of the townsfolk, who are its active perpetrators. They are only referred to through the impersonal forms “they,” “the people,” “someone,” and “some.” The social structure of the ballad is an opposition of “him” and “them,” “animals” and “civilised people.” This dichotomy of the generic norm and the rejected Other contributes to the simplistic feeling of the song as a folk tale. The positive attributes of the character are all in connection with nature and animals. Johnny is knowledgable: he knows how to hide, about eagles, where to find honey, and how to live in nature.

  • 15 Emerson, Ralph W., Nature (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1849).

23He is able to learn from trees. This depiction of an idealized meditative state in nature is an intertextual connection to the American transcendentalist philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau. Emerson explains that “the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind. [...] The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics,” arguing that natural fact is the source of moral truth.15 Thoreau testifies:

  • 16 Thoreau, Henry David, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854), beginning o (...)

Instead of calling on some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees, of kinds which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far away in the middle of some pasture, or in the depths of a wood or swamp, or on a hill-top [...]. These were the shrines I visited both summer and winter.16

24Importantly Johnny’s relation to nature is that of belonging to it. His perspective, validated by his very existence, proves the traditional fear and hatred of the forest and wilderness so deeply ingrained in European based cultures wrong. That animals are “his clan” shows him not as being alienated, as the townsfolk perceive him, but in a spiritual union with nature and the universe. He personifies Emerson’s ideal, living in tight knit community with all the animals and plants in nature around him. This hero is indeed a mythic character, an aspect which ties well with his atemporal existence.

25The theme of harmony with animals, hence with nature, is not simply alluded to, but strongly developed. To express the connection between his hero and nature, varied and subtle forms of language are described as linking them.

26Some of the animals he is thus linked to are generic. The fishes and birds that he talks to, but also the wildcats are plural and thus express categories of animals in an impersonal manner. These concepts, ideal forms of animals, serve to aggrandize the importance of animals and contribute to the mythical aspect of the story.

27Others have a specific status thanks to the use of the definite article “the”. The otter, the bear, the whippoorwill and the wild goose are not single animals either, they are types. This is a way of referring to a category in a personal manner. Again they have a symbolic existence representing not specific animals in the deixis, but each animal as a principle or a form.

28The determination of animals as generic plurals and as types supports the characterization of Johnny as a generic type representing Indians in general.

29The associations between verbs, the actual communicative acts linking them to Johnny, and animals reflect the construction of their characters. Conversing with otters is fitting as they do communicate over distances, responding to each other with a variety of vocal signals. That “he held forth with the bear” is an interesting construction, to hold forth means speaking at some length, but it also signifies giving an opinion, even preaching or lecturing, and more rarely making an offer or a proposition. In this case none of these semantic possibilities can be excluded, as there is little determining context. The richness of the semantic network simply evoked by the words “held forth with the bear” gives the characterization of the type texture and depth. The polysemy involved serves to underline Johnny’s rich relation to bears.

30The whippoorwill serves to show the chasm between Johnny and the townsfolk, for him whippoorwills are common birds that give indications with their clearly recognizable songs; for the townsfolk these are meaningless and listening to them will not help them to find Johnny.

31The sound of wild geese moaning brings us back to a passive awe of nature. Indeed, in contrast with the generic “talking” to wildcats, which conjures a somewhat mythological image, “hearing” the wild goose moan, with the use of a passive verb, brings to mind a sound that most of us can remember and which is associated with a respectful state of observation. This also suggests learning from nature’s wisdom, this time transmitted by animals.

  • 17 Allen, Maximillian L., et al., Patterns in bobcat (Lynx rufus) scent marking and communication beha (...)

32The wildcat, presumably a bobcat or a lynx, shows Johnny having a high degree of intimacy with an extremely independent animal. Wildcats generally are discrete and solitary, and do not attempt to communicate, barring aggression, outside of courting and rearing their young. A study of wildcat communication mentions that bobcats made vocalisations only in 0.2 percent of cases studied.17 But in American Indian mythology, bobcats are associated with socially unacceptable behaviour, thus in preferring to talk to wildcats Johnny denounces white culture as even more socially unacceptable: despite their offer to accept him, they remain in a logic of opposition to animals and Otherness.

  • 18 Rekow, Alec, “Telling about Bear in N. Scott Momaday’s The Ancient Child, Wicazo Sa Review vol. 12 (...)

33Among all these characterizations, we must note the virility involved in holding forth with the bear and talking to wildcats. Here Johnny faces up to situations with some of the most dangerous animals in nature without being troubled. In the case of the bear, this relates to the meaning of the verb “to hold forth which relates to being on equal footing, originally in a race, but also significantly in negotiation. Significantly, Johnny’s relation to the bear can be traced to Indian myths in which bears signify great power, sufficient to threaten a tribe’s very existence.18 Thus bear myths teach “that an individual’s actions are intricately tied to the entire tribe’s survival,” and explain:

  • 19 Rekow, “Telling about Bear, 156.

the delicate and unpredictable relationships between men and women, between kinship families, and between humans and animals. [...] Such human-bear tales in Plains traditions are shared in relation to a people’s survival and enable a community to tell of its existence in relation to human, animal, and natural forces.19

34By holding forth with the bear, Johnny acquires its power, and becomes he himself a bear figure as he stands by the animals, his clan, in the face of white civilisation which menaces their existence by rejecting his way of life.

35Importantly, barring eagles which appear inaccessible, but which he still knows all about, Johnny communicates in one way or another with each animal mentioned, even the wildcats. He exchanges as both a listener and a speaker, he defends his positions. His is on equal footing with the animals, and partakes in the natural truth. Care and consideration, respect and devotion, deep knowledge of animals which does not preclude listening to animals, this is an image of oneness, of harmony and love.

36To sum up, Johnny has a double characterization, a negative one that corresponds to the perspective of the townsfolk, and a positive one that is the narrator’s view of Johnny in communion with nature. From the third stanza the narrative takes its course.

The Narrative Plays its Course

37Interestingly, the flying-squirrel is the only animal that is determined by an indefinite article. It is actualized in the deixis of the narrative as a singular character and not only as a type, although it also carries symbolic value, as we will see. This is indeed an animal that can inspire curiosity. The child, whose characterization reflects Johnny’s, as she is often “wild” and she “wanders” (a sibling of rambling and roaming) is tempted to outright roam by the flying-squirrel.

38The flying squirrel is thus presented as actively tempting the girl. While such a discrete animal will hide from view and move on when it feels observed, thus leading the child on, the temptation is that of nature with the richness of the forms it expresses. This could be a Trickster character, who invites openness and the quest for knowledge, in a way inviting to learn from trees. But when the squirrel no longer captivates the girl’s attention, she remembers herself, and the spell is broken. With her identity as a white child she remembers the fear of the wild, the fear of the forest which is inscribed in her culture and fairy tales. Because of the squirrel she had forgotten herself, but she panics when she realizes her transgression. She finds herself out of the accepted boundaries, in the domain of the unknown. The transcendentalist opening is lost to her.

39Likewise, the forest is depicted as actively turning and twisting around her. This very visual evocation of twisty branches and roots shows the confusion in the child’s mind as she is overwhelmed by fear. This is also a hypallage, as it is the girl—having lost her bearings—who turns and twists through the forest.

40This may be compared to the following passage from Thoreau:

  • 20 Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, chapter “The Village,” accessed 1/03/2021, https://www.gute (...)

I frequently had to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to learn my route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint track which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees which I felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably, in the darkest night.20

41In contrast with Thoreau, La Farge’s character, a little girl, lacks maturity and, though she gets a glimpse of the inner life of nature, is unable to enter into it confidently. Here two opposing identities are developed, the civilised identity of the mayor’s child, and an animal identity which is expressed through the innocence of childhood, and connects up to the wisdom of nature, but she is not strong enough to grasp it, to take foot in it. This shows the real human challenge to be living with animals and nature, rather than living against them.

42The negative perspective on the forest is fully developed with the reaction of the adults to her being missing, in which the fear of the forest is equated with fear of death, expressed either as murder, that is being killed by a person (presumably alien to the town, perhaps an Indian or a Half-Breed) or as mauling, that is being killed by an animal.

43The fuzzy boundary created, linking the human with the animal as a menace, sums up the lack of perspicacity inherent in the stance against animals and nature. Their rescuing seems like fighting, their tramping the woods contrasts with the wandering, roaming and rambling of Johnny and the girl. As a walk, tramping evokes heavy footsteps, crushing whatever they encounter, it is a decisive walk, with a precise goal and no concern for anything that might be between them and their objective. In a word, it could be described as an invasion.

44The evocation of war, in the context of the Vietnam war, with anti-war militancy developing among artists and intellectuals, is strengthened by referring to helicopters, which are clearly associated to Vietnam. These are overpowering means, giving a dominating perspective on the forest as a whole, but not adapted to finding a small girl under the cover of trees. Indeed, here the villagers come to represent the aggressive ways of white men, and of the United States more specifically. The situation of helicopters and forest thus may suggest, by extension, that the Vietcong were in harmony with their forests thus lending them some validation, contrary to the Vietnam War propaganda which, at the time Peter La Farge was writing the song, was building up support for the deployment of US ground troops. The reaction of those considered responsible is portrayed as aggressive and disproportionate, insensitive, and not effective. They debate asking Johnny for help, and despite how it goes against their feeling of superiority, finally do. For Johnny finding the girl is as simple as A, B, C. He starts searching, tracks her, then carries her back. The rapidity of the sequence underlines Johnny’s oneness with nature and mastery in reading the signs of the forest.

45Johnny tracking the girl follows her footsteps as she tracked the squirrel, but he is of the forest and has no reason to panic. Yet the narration, still following the point of view of the townsfolk, depicts the forest as “wild,” used as a negative epithet related to danger. Johnny is depicted as a protective, fatherly figure, taking the child back from the forest in his arms. This brings us to the moral of the little tale, from the townsfolk's perspective, the lesson that they say they have learned: that “all people are the same.

46This sounds good, superficially, and they become inclusive as they ask him to remain, reversing the prior rejection. It seems as if the original problem, Johnny’s social exclusion had found its moral resolution. Yet we must measure the phrase “all people are the same” and their inclusiveness against the doctrines of assimilation and termination. They show some recognition for Johnny, but none for his way of life and his kin, the wild animals and the trees. What they offer is assimilation, the townsfolk have in fact learned nothing, but believe they are doing him a favour by offering to Johnny a status of marginal or minority instead of that of outcast.

47Ironically the sameness of “all people are the same,” in cold-war America, evokes totalitarianism, and is a denial of American individuality. Peter La Farge himself invested images of individuality, associated with the Frontier, both as a cowboy and as an Indian. (We might hypothesize that the only people still on the Frontier since it closing in 1890 are the American Indians and that the myths of the Frontier flow into them.) In Peter La Farge and Johnny Half-Breed the rugged identity of virile cowboy merges with that of the Indian, paradoxically making the Indian—whose tribal ways are actually quite communal—an archetype of deep individualist American values. The re-appropriation of virile individualist American values connects with the principle of self-determination central to the transformations in Indian Affairs of the 60s.

48Johnny takes a stance and refuses to “be the same,” and thus to be included in the town. Denouncing the hypocrisy of handshakes, which echo with broken treaties in La Farge’s songs, the logic of confinement inherent in side-walks, where walkers are constrained to a small portion of the available space, Johnny rejects the moral they wish to give his narrative and their morality. Simply by refusing their offer, on the grounds of his preference for talking to wildcats and listening to wild geese, he affirms his belonging to the animals of his clan, and to nature.

49Indeed, rather than being the object of their good will, he takes agency and writes the end of his own story, with the affirmation of his return to his home, wilderness, and to his atemporal mythical existence in nature. The agency of Johnny in the song is also that of Peter La Farge, giving voice to Indian American issues as an Indian and rejecting that the historical narrative of Native Americans be written by white people.

50He affirms his specificities, preferring wild animals to people, by telling them to “ask for him by the whippoorwill,” he invites them to follow the trail of curiosity in nature and develop feeling for animals and nature. It is indeed by listening to nature, and thus gaining knowledge and abandoning their prejudices, that the townsfolk could move towards where Johnny is, towards sharing his perspective.

51The portrait is completed with the phrase “the forest is my home. Johnny will not turn his back on his own, and what he knows is right. Here all of the positive qualities of home are present: warmth, care, love and family, understanding and a sense of belonging. In contrast this shows that the role of “assimilated” minority in American society is not an acceptable place to occupy.

Animals and American Indians: Forging a Positive Identity

  • 21 Mid-century American society was starting to express a malaise, or loss of meaningfulness in life, (...)

52In conclusion, Johnny Half-Breed wins an identity battle, investing the identity of the out-cast Indian with positive values through the glorification of harmony with nature. More specifically, the archetype of the American Indian, Johnny, is shown in communion with the animals of the wild, belonging to an animal family, and connected to deeper meaning.21

53With Johnny Half-Breed Peter La Farge builds both personal and collective American Indian agentivity. He defends the right to Otherness, be it human or animal, to equal footing and consideration, and denounces social exclusion as well as alienation from nature. Importantly, while defending Indian cultures, Peter La Farge also diffuses values in favour of animals and nature in larger American culture.

54While personal and intimate reasons contributed to give the song strength and depth, its argument is an essential theme for the American Indian cause. It validates Indian ways of life as philosophically and spiritually superior, inverting the rejection that stemmed from an image of backwardness.

55The place given to animals in tribal cultures is full of love and respect, animals can be teachers, leaders, equals, children, husbands and wives. They are symbolically included, and are thus lent a voice, and this leads to real relationships towards real animals that are impregnated with feeling, attention and in which animals are allowed to have agency. This is in stark contrast to white culture, at war with nature and in a quest for such power as depends on a denial of agency, both to animals and to humans.

56Indeed, Peter La Farge was able to connect the folk tradition denouncing exploitation up with American Indian values, effectively answering several important issues together.

57Importantly, the song re-appropriates the image of the Indian outcast by attaching positive values to nature and to caring for it. It connects Indian identity with ecological and philosophical perspectives, underlining the importance of positive relations to animals, and the significance of natural wisdom. This re-appropriation is possible precisely because Peter La Farge is able to connect discourses in American culture, in favour of harmony with nature and against racism and discrimination. Finally, it is the relation and communion between Johnny Half-Breed and animals that link these themes, allowing them to resonate together and thus build a positive identity model of the American Indian.

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RODNITZKY, Jerome L. “The Sixties between the Microgrooves: Using Folk and Protest Music to Understand American History, 1963-1973.” Popular Music and Society vol. 23(4), (1999): 105-122.

ROSIER, Paul C. “The Association on American Indian Affairs and the Struggle for Native American Rights 1948-1955.” The Princeton University Library Chronicle. Vol. 67, n° 2 (2006): 366-391.

SCHULMAN, Sandra Hale. Don’t Tell Me How I Looked Falling: The Ballad of Peter La Farge. New York: Slink Productions, 2012.

STENSLAND, Anna Lee. “American Indian Culture: Promises, Problems, and Possibilities.” The English Journal. Vol. 60, n° 9 (1971): 1195-1200.

THOREAU, Henry David. Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854. Accessed 1/03/2021. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/205

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Notes

1 D’Ambrosio, Antonino, A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears (New York: Nation Books, 2009).

2 Rosier, Paul C.,The Association on American Indian Affairs and the Struggle for Native American Rights 1948–1955,” The Princeton University Library Chronicle vol. 67, n° 2 (2006): 368-369.

3 “[Olivier] La Farge’s phrase, ‘assimilation of the Indians into our general population,’ meant the ‘wiping out of all distinctive Indian traits of character or culture, in line with the ‘melting pot’ idea of wiping out all non-Anglo-Saxon traits in immigrants.’ […] Cohen was especially concerned with the question of Native Americans’ participation in the debates about their fate: ‘perhaps it comes down to a question of whether the Indian is mentioned as an object of a process or as a prime mover in a process,’” Rosier, Paul, “The Association on American Indian Affairs and the Struggle for Native American Rights 1948–1955,” 371-374, citing “Felix Cohen to Alexander Lesser,” May 18, 1948, box 36, folder 5, AAIA Archives. “As Roosevelt’s commissioner of Indian affairs from 1933 through 1945, Collier fostered traditional culture and community. As Truman’s commissioner from 1950 to 1953, Myer promoted instead assimilation and individualism. Previous accounts attribute the weakening of Collier’s Indian New Deal from 1945 to 1953 largely to conservative opposition in congress.” Koppes, Clayton R.,From New Deal to Termination: Liberalism and Indian Policy, 1933-1953,” Pacific Historical Review vol. 4, n°4 (1977): 544.

4 Cobb, Daniel M.,Indian Politics in Cold War America: Parallel and Contradiction,” The Princeton University Library Chronicle vol. 67, n°2 (2006): 417.

5 “The counterculture inspired La Farge, exciting and challenging his creative sensibilities. He moved closer and closer to a life in music that would allow him to give voice to the plight of Native people. Thanks to his upbringing, La Farge was already sharply attuned to the issues. The significance of the black civil rights movement offered a glimpse of what could happen for Native people if a movement addressing their marginalization were to take root. While the force of the civil rights movement indirectly informed other organizing efforts, including those in the Native community, the objectives of integration and full citizenship were in stark contrast to what many Native activists believed was needed for their people.” D’Ambrosio, Antonino, A Heartbeat and a Guitar, 33.

6 Johnny Cash at this time was in his period of passing for American Indian.

7 D’Ambrosio, Antonino, A Heartbeat and a Guitar, 40.

8 Many technical descriptions did not make it into the final draft of this article, but the reader is strongly advised to listen to the song for himself/herself, if possible.

9 The entire booklet of liner notes is freely available on the Smithsonian website: “Peter La Farge on the Warpath,” accessed 25/03/2021, https://folkways-media.si.edu/liner_notes/folkways/FW02535.pdf

10 Weshner in La Farge, Peter,Johnny Half-Breed,” On the Warpath (New York: Folkways Records, 1965), 1-2.

11 The four variations from the liner notes text tend to make the text warmer and more colloquial. In the second stanza “eagles” becomes “the eagle,” making it a subject matter, a type, with an aggrandizing effect; and “with fishes” becomes “to fishes,” a more colloquial construction. In the fourth stanza “when all that they finished” becomes “when all that was finished,” a simplified, more direct version (not implying “they had finished”), and more neutral. In the last stanza the line starting with “But Johnny” drops the “But,” making the fact that his answer is in opposition to their proposal less explicit, allowing the listener to discover it directly rather than have it pre-interpreted.

12 D’Ambrosio, Antonino, A Heartbeat and a Guitar, 28.

13 D’Ambrosio, Antonino, A Heartbeat and a Guitar, 45.

14 Schulman, Sandra Hale, Don’t Tell Me How I Looked Falling: The Ballad of Peter La Farge (New York: Slink Productions, 2012).

15 Emerson, Ralph W., Nature (Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1849).

16 Thoreau, Henry David, Walden; or, Life in the Woods (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854), beginning of chapter “Baker Farm,” accessed 1/03/2021, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/205

17 Allen, Maximillian L., et al., Patterns in bobcat (Lynx rufus) scent marking and communication behaviors, Springer, 2014, accessed 25/03/2021, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267332222_Patterns_in_bobcat_Lynx_rufus_scent_marking_and_communication_behaviors

18 Rekow, Alec, “Telling about Bear in N. Scott Momaday’s The Ancient Child, Wicazo Sa Review vol. 12, n°1 (Spring 1997): 149-164.

19 Rekow, “Telling about Bear, 156.

20 Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, chapter “The Village,” accessed 1/03/2021, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/205

21 Mid-century American society was starting to express a malaise, or loss of meaningfulness in life, related to consumer culture and the risk of nuclear war.

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References

Bibliographical reference

Brendan Firth, Johnny Half-Breed, American Indian Identity as a Communion with Animals and NatureCaliban, 64 | 2020, 233-249.

Electronic reference

Brendan Firth, Johnny Half-Breed, American Indian Identity as a Communion with Animals and NatureCaliban [Online], 64 | 2020, Online since 30 July 2021, connection on 02 November 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/caliban/9118; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/caliban.9118

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About the author

Brendan Firth

PhD student, CAS, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France
Brendan Firth is an American who lives in France, with his girlfriend and daughter. He is a student of the Alph@ doctoral school, in the CAS research team, at Université Toulouse 2-Jean Jaurès. He is particularly interested in the intimate relationships between language, thought, and social structures. He currently studies American political language looking to test hypotheses related to the concepts of racial coding and dog whistle politics with quantitative linguistic methods.

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Copyright

CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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