The Education of Little Tree and Forrest Carter
That Forrest Carter, author of The Education of Little Tree, was born as Asa Earl Carter (also known as "Ace" Carter) is no longer in dispute. India Carter (his widow), Eleanor Freide (his agent), and Elizabeth Hadas (director of the University of New Mexico Press during the press furor over the book) have all publicly acknowledged this (Reid 16). Asa Carter was not an orphan at five years old; he was not raised by his grandparents; he was not an "unlettered" cowboy. None of the well-researched sources on Carter written since 1991, either praising or criticizing him, deny these basic points.What Is Known? What Is Knowable? Asa Carter was the eldest of four children, he had two brothers and a sister, and all were raised in Oxford, Alabama, by their parents. Carter's father lived at least long enough to purchase a farm on which the adult Asa Carter's family lived (he visited on weekends from his work in Montgomery), and his mother outlived him by nearly 20 years. Carter attended the local elementary school and Calhoun County high school, later studying at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Asa Carter's vocation was radio broadcasting, political writing, and political agitation (he was a salaried agitator).
Though some of the description of scene and Appalachian living may be based on Carter's observances, none of the dramatic events which comprise the plot of The Education of Little Tree could have occurred to Asa Carter outside of his imagination. The book may be based in part, as the publisher has claimed in the past, on family legends, but it cannot have been based on Carter's life experiences. Thus, calling the book "autobiographical," as it is called in the foreword to the book which the publisher persists in printing ten years after this information about Carter became widely known, is little short of a farce.
The 25th anniversary edition, newly published, does accurately categorize the book as "fiction" (the book reportedly began to be printed as a "novel" sometime during the latter 1990s), but the liner notes to the hardback edition contain inaccuracies. Not only is the tiny bit of biographical information about Carter incorrect, he died in 1979 not 1971, the liner notes state that Little Tree "is sent to an Indian boarding school run by whites" and "we learn of the cruelty meted out to Indian children in an attempt to assimilate them." This contradicts the book directly. Little Tree was sent to an orphanage, and the minister who runs it says, "We have no Indians here, half-breed or otherwise" (185). There is little active attempt to assimilate Little Tree, at least not into the religious group which runs the home, as he is told that he "did not have to go to church services and the evening chapels" (185). Unlike Native children who spent years in actual boarding schools--when they were lucky enough to survive them--Little Tree is soon "rescued" when this same minister is intimidated by a Cherokee adult and says "he did not want any trouble with savages and pagans and such" (204). It takes little imagination to determine what would actually have happened to a Native adult who attempted to intimidate a white schoolmaster into releasing a student. This trivialization of the plight of Native children in boarding schools is but one of the many oversimplifications of Native American issues in Carter's work.
Since 1991, much research has been done on Asa/Forrest Carter, and several excellent essay-length works have recently been published. Because Carter was, as Browder calls him, a "slippery character," he was careful to leave behind very little absolute evidence regarding his activities. However, as the years have gone by, available evidence has mounted to the point that we can negotiate between that which is absolutely known and that which is not entirely knowable, but for which a preponderance of evidence is available. Though this essay does not permit full coverage of the now substantial information on Carter, I will discuss in turn the major issues about Carter's activities and name what seems to me the best of the available sources on each issue.
That Asa Carter was a segregationist is absolutely certain. One can read a fine interview with Carter, done during the period when he was active, in the book The Deep South Says Never, by John Bartlow Martin. A simple check of the "Personal Names Index" to The New York Times will provide one with a list of articles on Carter's activities as a leader of the North Alabama White Citizens Council.
That Asa Earl Carter was a writer for George Wallace is beyond question. Dan T. Carter tells how Carter was not an "official" employee (Politics 300). Similarly, journalist Wayne Greenhaw calls Carter the most "literate worker in Wallace's camp" (Watch 125). Carter is credited as the author of a pamphlet biography of George and Lurleen Wallace which seems to have been authorized. Oscar Harper, a close Wallace associate, casually confirms Carter's role as a speechwriter in the book Me 'n' George by Taylor (28-29).
That Carter was the leader of a Ku Klux Klan branch is beyond reasonable doubt. Available evidence includes Klan incorporation papers bearing Carter's name and signature, courtroom testimony naming Carter as the leader of a klavern, and a confession from Asa Carter himself given to the FBI during a formal interview. Dan T. Carter offers the most complete published documentation available ("Southern History" 286-304). Research done by Diane McWhorter confirms it, Carry Me Home.
That Carter was a heavy drinker whose binges made him incapable of masking his views on African Americans and Jews is absolutely certain. During the latter 1950s the ADL had informants, disguised as Arabs, entice Carter to a hotel room under the pretense of discussing a business deal. After Carter imbibed a sufficient amount of alcohol, they made several anti-Semitic comments of their own, after which Carter flew into an anti-Semitic diatribe which was taped (McWhorter 100). Later in life, Carter was said to have "rage[d] about blacks more than once" and to have flown into a nasty tirade in a steakhouse in Abilene (Rubin 96). He also showed up to a book-and-author luncheon intoxicated and proceeded to make several anti-Semitic remarks before a stunned audience (Rubin 79).
That Carter knew very little of traditional Cherokee culture is claimed by some. Geary Hobson, an author and literary scholar who is an active member of the Cherokee tribe, tells us that none of the purportedly "Cherokee" customs, nor any of the "Cherokee" words in The Education of Little Tree, were accurate (68-70). Conversely, while Daniel Heath Justice agrees with Hobson's analysis, he also reports that some Cherokees of the Eastern Band claim that the book is an authentic picture of their lives. He goes on to explain that, while he believes Carter's Indian identity to be a fabrication, the racism in the book cannot be seen as absolute evidence that the writer was not Cherokee (34).
That Carter wrote white supremacist literature primarily as a way of making a living is unlikely. Those who wish to make this claim should read his writing in The Southerner, a white-supremacist publication which he edited, wrote many articles for, and published first under the aegis of the White Citizens Council and later on his own. The later publications were distributed during the same time period--early 1970s--that the Josey Wales books were published and The Education of Little Tree was (presumably) being written. Copies of the first volume of The Southerner, published in the 1950s, is available on microfilm from the New York Public Library and in the Birmingham Public Library's archives on Asa Earl Carter.
Whether or not the book, The Education of Little Tree, was written by a "racist" has been hotly debated. In Texas Books in Review, Western American Literature, and Southwestern American Literature, Lawrence Clayton, an acquaintance and defender of Carter, claims that Carter was no longer actively racist. More recent investigations (Roche) demonstrate that Carter was active in white supremacist organizations until 1974, when The Education of Little Tree already existed in at least partial draft form.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. argues that whether Carter was or was not "actually" Cherokee or "actually" a white supremacist is, in fact, irrelevant. He follows much current literary theory in suggesting that the author's personal history is not the determining factor of the quality of a novel. This argument rests on an acceptance of the book as a novel, and at the time Gates was writing, the book was still classified as an autobiography.
More recently, scholars have examined Carter's works for white supremacist ideology, imagery, and language. All three have been found. The best works discussing the white supremacist viewpoints and anti-Native American stereotypes in Carter's novels include Antelek, Browder, Huhndorf, and Justice. Selections from these authors follow:
Antelek discusses the white supremacy in Carter's works, saying: "Racial segregation, decentralization of government and social power, and the unquestioned, inalienable rights of the individual illustrate Carter's warped Utopian vision--which most importantly hinges upon the perceived supremacy of 'White Anglo-Saxon men, and the inferiority of everyone else" (31). On Native American stereotypes, she states: "Little Tree, the half-Cherokee child of the mountains, is mystically attuned to his environment. The naive American reader accepts this, because it seems true to liberal stereotypes about man's primary connection to Nature . . . as well as to the belief that Native Americans were the first environmentalists . . . . By playing with the reader's sentimental prejudices, Carter's mythologizing of the Cherokee people renders an important Native American heritage just another stereotype in a long string of stereotypes" (45).
Browder extends the point about stereotypes, saying: "The Education of Little Tree is not only a fantasy about Native American primal spirituality; it is also a fantasy perfectly attuned to an American public well versed in the rhetoric of self-actualization and, more specifically, the recovery movement. If previous impersonators have given us Indians as noble savages, romantic racialists, people specially attuned to the environment, and spiritual guides, Little Tree presents us with a new vision of Native American identity for the 1970s and beyond, what I call the inner child Indian, a figure that represents lost innocence and a sense of wonder" (134).
Huhndorf explains how this helps to reinforce Carter's own white supremacist views: "By poignantly relating this story [of the Trail of Tears] and by defining Natives, quite literally, as children of nature, the narrative raises an important problem: the legitimacy of white Southerners' claims to the lands previously occupied by the Cherokees and, by extension, white ownership of any Native lands. Like Gone to Texas, though, The Education of Little Tree immediately attempts to resolve this problem to the benefit of white Southerners by distorting historical facts. Those Cherokees who fled to the mountains during the removal, as the novel tells the story, found fast friends among the mountain folk . . . . [The novel] imagines a 'kinship' between the outlaw and the Natives: both Confederates and Indians ostensibly share both common values and a common enemy in the 'guvmint' that dispossesses and otherwise persecutes them . . . . these similarities between mountain folk and Indians ultimately render the former the proper heirs of Indian land and, in this particular case, the proper heirs even of Native cultures and identities as well" (152-53).
Justice discusses another effect of Carter's deployment of stereotype: "Throughout the book Carter connects the deceptively benign world and 'Cherokee' philosophies of Little Tree to his own racist beliefs with remarkable success, though with a veil of kindness, tolerance, and respect. The novel's popularity depends upon and encourages long-established and damaging stereotypes. Because Carter meets the reader's expectations through these stereotypes, the image becomes the reality, and the reality becomes artificial and indistinct. The construction assumes a hyper-reality with which Native authors, most of whom strongly critique colonialism and its legacies, cannot compete. Carter constructs an 'Indianness' that borrows shrewdly from the Noble Savage and generic, pan-Indian images, while giving the characters an historical (albeit skewed) context and some novel attributes to veil most of the stereotypes he manipulates" (26).
These brief excerpts do not fully explicate the range of problems identified by scholars in recent years. However, they are representative of the direction of scholarship regarding Carter's work. With the exception of Clayton, literary scholars are largely critical of Carter's works, particularly in terms of how Native Americans are represented. Even Clayton states that: "Carter was not an advocate of rights for contemporary Indians but was instead a critic of the government's record of inept and cruel handling of Indian affairs in the past . . . . In addition, Carter's apparent affection for Indians may stem from a less than completely benevolent attitude. Carter knew what kind of material would sell, and he wrote it in such a way as to align the half-breed image he projected for himself with his material" ("Forrest Carter / Asa Carter" 21). Carter's appropriation of popular Native American themes for commercial success is likely, since FBI files quote an informant as saying: "Carter said he had contacted some of the Indian tribes in the United States, the Choctaws, Cherokees, Creeks and some others on the reservations and would give them a part of the proceeds [from his first book]. Carter said maybe the Indians can get on the Johnny Carson Show." Interestingly, several journalists have attempted to find Native groups to whom Carter donated money, but none have so far been successful.
Today, we can say a great deal more about Carter or his book, The Education of Little Tree, than we could in the past. It is not autobiographical--at least not as we conventionally utilize the term. While the aesthetic value of the book is arguable, it contains messages which are thinly veiled pro-white supremacist and which are, perhaps unintentionally, anti-Native American.
The best biographical material on Carter include the three works by Dan T. Carter, the article by Dana Rubin, and the essay by Jeff Roche.
by Amy Kallio Bollman
SREB Doctoral Scholar
University of Oklahoma
Revised October 2001
Antalek, Eileen Elizabeth O'Connor. Deforrestation begins with a Little Tree: Uncovering the Polemic of Asa Carter in His Novels As Forrest Carter. Unpublished thesis. Clark University, 1994. Works on Forrest/Asa Carter
Browder, Laura. Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities. University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2000.
Carter, Dan T. The Politics of Rage. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.
---. "Southern History, American Fiction: The Secret Life of Southwestern Novelist Forrest Carter." Rewriting the South: History and Fiction. Eds. Lothar Honnighausen and Valeria Gennaro Lerda. Transatlantic Perspectives 3. Tubingen: Francke, 1993. 286-304.
---. "The Transformation of a Klansman." Letter. New York Times 4 Oct. 1991: A31.
Clayton, Lawrence. "Forrest Carter / Asa Carter: Little Enigma is Left." Texas Books in Review 12.1 (1992): 5.
---. "Forrest Carter / Asa Carter and Politics." Western American Literature 21.1 (1986): 19-26.
---. "The Theology of Survival: The Identity of Forrest / Asa Carter and Religion in His Fiction." Southwestern American Literature 19.2 (1994): 9-19.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. "'Authenticity,' or the Lesson of Little Tree." New York Times Book Review 24 Nov. 1991: 26.
[Greenhaw, Wayne.] "Is Forrest Carter Really Asa Carter? Only Josey Wales May Know for Sure." New York Times 26 Aug. 1976: A45.
Greenhaw, Wayne. My Heart Is in the Earth : True Stories of Alabama and Mexico. River City Press, 2001.
---. Watch Out for George Wallace. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1976.
Hobson, Geary. Letter. Wicazo Sa Review Spring 1995: 68-70.
Huhndorf, Shari M. Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination. Cornell University Press: Ithaca, 2001.
Justice, Daniel Heath. "A Lingering Miseducation: Confronting the Legacy of Little Tree." Studies in American Indian Literature 12.1 (2000): 20-36. [Note: bibliography for this article is missing.]
Martin, John Bartlow. The Deep South Says "Never". New York: Ballantine, 1957.
McWhorter, Diane. Carry Me Home: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. Simon & Schuster: New York, 2001.
Reid, Calvin. "Widow of 'Little Tree' Author Admits He Changed Identity." Publishers Weekly 25 Oct. 1991: 16+.
Roche, Jeff. "Asa/Forrest Carter and Regional/Political Identity." The Southern Albatross: Race and Ethnicity in the American South. Eds. Philip D. Dillard and Randal L. Hall. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1999. 235-74.
Rubin, Dana. "The Real Education of Little Tree." Texas Monthly Feb. 1992: 78+.
Taylor, Sandra Baxley. Me 'n' George: A Story of George Wallace and His Number One Crony, Oscar Harper. Greenberry: Mobile, 1988.