My Favorite Books Part One

It’s said that life always looks different and perhaps better through the eyes of a child, but try looking through the eyes of a Native American child during the Depression.

The Education of Little Tree, by Forrest Carter (1925-1971) tells a fictional account of his life beginning when he was orphaned at the age of 5 and taken in by his grandparents. “Little Tree” as he is called, learns the way of life of the Cherokee in the Appalachian mountains. He is taught to respect nature by taking only what he needed, and leaving the rest for nature. He is taught planting, reading, writing and the basics of education. He is also taught how to sustain himself in the cash economy by making and selling whiskey with his “Granpa.”

Little Tree learns how cruel people can be to those who are different in any way, particularly when he is sent to an Indian boarding school run by white Christians. They attempt to assimilate him into “proper” culture, while simultaneously dismissing him as a “savage.”

Carter wrote the book but apparently never lived to see it published as he died in 1971 and the book was first published in 1976. He also wrote Josey Wales: Two Westerns, among others.

Little Tree is told in the first person vernacular of a 5 year old boy in the 1930s, which may seem oversimplified at times, but it makes for a charming read. This truly captures everything that Little Tree saw, felt, and experienced.

It makes you laugh at times, and it makes you cry at times, but most of all it makes you think all of the time.