Fig Tree John

This is one more of those books I read when I was about 13-14 years old. While my parents were taking supplementary education courses, I would often find myself having time to kill at a University Library or a student commons. Because I was raised in a religious home, I didn't really want anyone to know I had been reading the book which had another title back then, ' Apache Devil' (Fig Tree John). There are some elements of adult content about the life of Apache John which I didn't assimilate as a juvenile. I couldn't understand the descent into alcoholism of the protagonist. Neither was I ready as a sociologist would be to connect it to the domestic violence and other sociopathic behavior of John. What I did understand was that the government mandate of a public education wasn't welcomed as a blessing. I'll try to illuminate this a bit more. But, another issue of this Indian who (as many others also) was confined to a reservation, was the resentment, call it `hatred' like in the editorial review, but it has aspects of frustration and helplessness, of abandonment of hope. It's more like an animal deprived of freedom, which wastes away in captivity because it would rather die. The tale of John is a sad story, but his son had hope to adapt. Primal insight into his resistance against public education goes beyond stories you may have heard about the abuses of Indian Boarding Schools. Those anecdotes weren't widely known to people who hadn't been in a school. The spiritual aculturation of the American Indian saw a different threat in those directives from Bureau of Indian Affairs. Consider the words of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perc'es. (p.318, `Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee', by Dee Brown) In 1873 some Indian Agency Commissioners met with Chief Joseph to try and persuade him of the advantages of schools for his peoples. His response is not atypical of other American tribes. The conversation played out as follows, when Joseph says the Nez Perc'es did not want the white man's schools. "Why do you not want schools?" the commissioner asked. "They will teach us to have churches," Joseph answered. "Do you not want churches?" "No, we do not want churches." "Why do you not want churches?" "They will teach us to quarrel about God," Joseph said. "We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that." If as an adult you have never contemplated the topic of psychological rape, it might nourish your soul to meditate on the meaning of the chief's words. I can't tell all of the travesty which made voluntary missionization impossible to much of Native America, but I firmly believe the necessity of Native American prophets, who restored hope in their people through various trials and regrouped their spirits. One such prophet of the Iroquois was Seneca prophet, Handsome Lake. He will help you to understand how Apache Fig Tree John lived all his life with h