Bear Grease - Ep. 102: Conman - The Education of Little Tree (Part 1)

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

On this episode of Bear Grease Clay Newcomb talks with New York Times best selling author Steve Rinella and Dr. Dan T. Carter, professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina about black-listed book “The Education of Little Tree.” The book, an alleged semi-autobiographical story about a Cherokee boy growing up in southern Appalachia, was written by Forest Carter, which was the false identity of famed white supremicist, Ku Klux Klan chapter founder and speech writer for Governor George Wallace, Dan Carter. In part 1, Clay reflects on the honest, insightful, and empathetic context of the book and explores the nuance and dissonance of what to do with with art in light of an artist’s beliefs. I really doubt you’re gonna to wanna miss this one…  Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. And I sat down and read it, and I realized I could see why it was so popular, but I could also see the traces of the real author. On this episode, we're going to learn about one of the greatest American literary cons of all time, or was it a con at all?

The good news is that at the navigation helm will have author and Southern historian, Dr. Dan T. Carter, Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina, and New York Times bestselling author and Crow Call extraordinaire Steve Runella of Meat Eater. These guys are going to talk to us about a book called The Education of Little Tree and the Wild Life of its author. There aren't any better guests on planet Earth to tell us the story of a double life, lies, and racism that produced a brilliant piece of literature. so rooted in American wilderness and values, it'll make you want to barred Al Hute and kiss your mama after the trill. I really doubt you're going to want to miss this one.

And hey, I want to let you know that my friend Brent Reeves has a new podcast coming out on this feed starting on April 21st called This Country Life. It's incredibly fun and we're thrilled to bring it to you But on this bear grease feed. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.

Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Grandpa stopped and pointed by the side of the trail. There she is. Turkey run. See? I dropped to my hands and knees and saw the tracks. Little stick-like impressions coming out of a center hub. Now, Grandpa said, we'll fix the trap.

And he moved off the trail until he found a stump hole. We cleaned it out, first the leaves, and then Grandpa pulled out his long knife and cut into the spongy ground, and we scooped up the dirt, scattering it among the leaves. When the hole was deep so that I couldn't see over the rim, Grandpa pulled me out and we dragged branches to cover it, and over these spread armfuls of leaves. Then with his long knife, Grandpa dug a trail sloping downward into the hole and back toward the turkey run. He took the grains of red Indian corn from his pocket and scattered them down the trail and threw a handful into the hole. Now we will go, he said, and we set off again up the high trail.

Ice spewed from the earth like frosting, crackling under our feet. The mountain opposite us moved closer as the hollow far below became a narrow slit, showing the spring branch like the edge of a steel knife sunk in the bottom of its cleavage. We sat down in the leaves off the trail, just as the first sun touched the top of the mountain across the hollow. From his pocket, Grandpa pulled out a sour biscuit and deer meat for me, and we watched the mountain while we ate. The sun hit the top like an explosion, sending showers of glitter and sparkle into the air. The sparkling of the icy trees hurt my eyes to look at it, and it moved down the mountain like a wave,

as the sun backed the night shadows down and down. A crow sent three hard calls through the air, warning we were there. And now the mountain popped and gave breathing sighs that sent little puffs of steam into the air. She pinched and murmured as the sun released the trees from their death armor of ice. Grandpa watched same as me and listened as the sounds grew with the morning wind that set up a low whistle in the trees. She's coming alive, he said, soft and low without taking his eyes from the mountain. Yes, sir, I said, she's coming alive. And I knew right there that me and grandpa had an understanding that most folks

didn't. Your ears and the engine of your imagination have just partook of the writings of Forrest Carter in the opening chapter of his book called The Education of Little Tree published in 1976. Carter identified himself to the world as a Cherokee Indian raised in a cabin with his grandparents in East Tennessee. This is the story he told to Barbara Walters in 1975 on The Today Show. It would be my guess that you've probably never heard of this book, even though it became a New York Times bestseller in 1991, selling over one million copies. And in the heyday of Oprah Winfrey's book club in the late 1990s, it made her list staying there until 2007 when she removed it. And it isn't surprising because it's incredibly good with descriptive prose, intriguing plot themes, and brilliant displays of the beautiful and functional

connection the protagonists have to the natural world. That's why I was originally interested in it. It's got some turkey trapping, foxhunting with hounds, corn and watermelon planting, mules, moonshining, and some insight on deer management. It even takes some big swings at the establishment. It has a where the red fern grows feel with a young orphaned boy learning moral and practical lessons from his Cherokee grandfather in the Great Depression era of the 1930s. A big delivery of the book, however, is a deep empathy for Native Americans and a display of their wisdom and how they got a raw deal. Remember that. If something hadn't happened to this book, it would have been an American classic like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or Charlotte's

Webb, but something did happen. And I've got to fess up. You've already been misled. Forrest Carter wasn't a Cherokee Indian at all, and his name wasn't even Forrest Carter. Here's my friend Steve Ronella. He knows this book. Steve, when is the first time that you read The Education of Little Tree? When you and I first started talking about this book a while back, it forced me to try to recollect how I became familiar with it. I know now, absolutely.

I became familiar with it when I was. in college, I was in a class called the literature of political rhetoric by taught by a guy named Dr. Gillis and he gave us that book to read. In addition to things like some of the works of Martin Luther King Jr., writings of the Unabomber, writings of Camille Poglia, just wild stuff all over to all over the place. We read works

from people who had like an axe to grind. Okay. And you threw that in the mix. People with an ax to grind. I really wish we could have done this different. And you could have read this book before you know what you're about to know. But I wasn't afforded this privilege either. I read the book after I learned

that Forrest Carter wasn't Forrest Carter at all, but rather his name was Asa Earl Carter. I'd be really impressed if you knew that name from American Southern History. and you will. Dr. Dan T. Carter, who is no relation to Asa Carter, is a University of South Carolina professor emeritus and renowned Southern historian and acclaimed author.

He wrote a biography of the Alabama governor George Wallace, who became famous for opposing desegregation. Most recently, Dr. Carter wrote a book called Unmasking the Klansman, just published in April of 2023, More on that in a minute, though. I wanted to ask Dr. Carter about the education of Little Tree's unusual rise to national fame after being published in 1976, but not becoming a New York Times bestseller until 1991. This is an extremely rare thing.

Here's Dr. Carter. That book was reissued in 1988, and then just by word of mouth, it had not. advertising it was published by a university of New Mexico press it just kept picking up picking up more and more people reading it and by the summer of 1991 it had climbed on to the New York Times bestseller list then I did become interested in it and as it as it continued I realized I'd never read the book but I knew about it and I sat down and read it and read it and I sat down and read it And I saw on one level why people loved it so much.

I think we love books about coming of age. And as one agent said who represented Carter at one time, Indians were hot by the 1980s and 1990s. People were interested in Native Americans, and particularly at a time when you're trying to develop broader ranges of books for adolescents and young people. And the education story seemed to fit right within this. You've got a story about a young Native American growing up in the mountains of East Tennessee.

And it's an appealing story. And it seems to have a kind of moral core to it. Because obviously he's learning moral lessons from his Cherokee grandfather. And it's the kind of moral lessons that you like to believe you'd teach your children or grandchildren. children, but it's also embedded in what Americans were coming to, if not revere, at least respect a lot more, and that was the Native American frame of cosmic reference and morality. And so it was just a winner all the way around. And I realized, as I read it carefully, I could see why it was so popular, but I could also

see the traces of the real author. traces of the real author. In storytelling, the listener, you have to be handled with great care. Like a little baby Ducklin trying to jump out of your hands while you're carrying it to the pond. The listener will try to jump out of your hands if you don't tell them the hook at just the right moment. They've got to be intrigued enough by the unknown to keep listening, but not get bored. So get ready for the hook. The down low, the dirty scoop, and here it is. The author said his name was Forrest Carter, that he was a Cherokee Indian,

and that his story was semi-autobiographical of his upbringing in Tennessee. But his real name was Asa Carter. We know that. He wasn't a Cherokee. We know that. He wasn't raised by his Cherokee grandfather. We know that. But he was actually from Anniston, Alabama. And he was a leader in his own strict sect of the Cluclux Klan. He was a vehement segregationist and an ardent prophet of the white supremacy movement.

And his message was carried by his successful print publication he founded and his radio broadcast. Dr. Carter's book Unmasking the Klansman is the one and only biography on Asa Carter. Asa Carter was the Klansman. And Dr. Carter, of no relation to Asa Carter, is undoubtedly the nation's exasperated. on Asa Carter. The book is fascinating. I wish I could have thrown all this information on you at the end after we've learned about the education of Littletree because it's an amazing book and it won't make a lick of sense when you understand who this man was and as we understand what the book's about. We're trying to understand how this dude wrote this book. It just doesn't add up.

And I haven't even told you the wildest part. It involves. a man by the name of George Wallace, who on January 14, 1963, gave his inaugural speech on the steps of the state capital of Alabama after being elected governor. Wallace would become the face of opposition to the civil rights movement when he delivered his infamous segregation forever speech. In the name of the greatest people that have ever taught this earth, I draw the, a lion in the dust and tossed the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever. Wallace's words, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever would be an unforgettable moment in American history branding him as the face of racism.

However, these weren't his words. He had secretly hired Asa Carlin. to write this speech. Those are A's words. How could this man have written a book so brilliantly empathetic and authentic that he fooled the world? And I can tell you, we're going to have to guess because Aisa Carter died unexpectedly and tragically in 1979 at the age of 54 years old. There is just drama stacked on top of drama with this story and with the sky. And I want to say up front that I am uninterested in villainizing Asa Carter. He didn't need any help with that. And I'd like to say that 43 years after this man's death, we should not be affected or

damaged by the things he said or believed. However, we can learn something about the extremes of human nature from his life. We're in pursuit of uncovering the true identity of Asa Carter and decide if he was a changed man when he died or a con man. Here's more from Dr. Carter on how he learned about the double life of Asa Carter. Your original interest in Asa Carter was you were doing a biography on George Wallace. Right. And then you went to meet Seymour Trammell, who was George Wallace's right-hand man. Right-hand man.

Yeah. Tell me about meeting him, but then him telling you, About. About the book. Yeah. Well, of all the people, and I interviewed about 40 people for the bike. I started this in the late 80s, so there were still a lot of these people around. Many of my own now. Of all the people I interviewed, by far, the most interesting and insightful was Seymour Trammell.

He was a country boy from South Alabama who became Wallace's finance commissioner and his right-hand man, as smart as he was really smart got in trouble ended up in prison and by the time i knew him he was a different person he just prison had changed him he had trouble drinking he stopped all that and he was introspective in a way that he never was as a young man you know looking back on his life he could see all the mistakes he had made and all the things he said i've done wrong you know But he was the one that gave me insight. When I started talking to him one day, we had several long conversations. And I was talking to him, and I said something about this guy, he's a Carter.

I said, I keep running into him. I said, was he really George Wallace's speechwriter for that famous segregation today's segregation? And he began laughing. He said, of course he was. He said anything that was, he said George was good, but he said the best stuff was always from ASA. He said, you know, he was a real writer. And I knew that ASA had Carter, who was a white supremacist and a radio announcer, had written a bunch of radio programs in the 50s. Published a very slick magazine called a Southerner.

And he said, you know, he wrote novels. He, one of them was made into a movie. And I just thought, I think Seymour, he's not that old, but clearly his mind is slipping away here. And because I didn't know about the double life, you know. All I knew was Asa Carter had written this, and he was a writer. So that was in 1990, I think it was. And it wasn't more than about six months later that my son and I were watching a film called The Outlaw Josie Wales. by Clint Eastwood, sort of his breakthrough film.

And I don't know why, as I was come, came to the end of it, it said, based on the book by Forrest Carter, I thought, Forest Carter didn't think about it. And the next morning I woke up. And I said, Forrest Carter, Asa Carter worshiped Nathan Bedford Forest, General Nathan, the Confederate General Nathan. So I started, it didn't turn out to be hard at all. It was like something that was in plain sight there.

All you had to do was go back to the, original publication of the book, which was called Gone to Texas, but became the Outlaw Josie West. And it had the copyright. I went to the copyright thing in Washington. And there was his address, Asa Carter's address in Alabama, the exact same address. You'll be ten bears? I am ten bears.

I'm Josie Wales. I have heard. You're the gray rider. You would not make peace with the blue coats. You may go in peace. I reckon not. Got nowhere to go. And you will die.

I came here to die with you. I'll live with you. It ain't so hard for men like you and me. It's living. It's hard. And all you've ever cared about has been butchered or raped. Asa Carter didn't just write the education of Little Tree. He wrote a book originally called Gone to Texas,

and Clint Eastwood turned it into his breakout movie the outlawed Josie Wales. In this scene, the Comanche Ten Bears respects Josie Wales because he didn't give in to the Union Army and the Civil War. This is an incredibly good movie and it's hard not to love

the protagonist Josie Wales, the Confederate soldier, played by Clint Eastwood. AESA was a prolific novelist. Here's more from Dr. Carter. And then I began looking in this forest, writer, operating out of Abilene, Texas, had written four books, the Outlaw Josie Wells,

a Vengeance, Shraylo, Josie Wells, and a book called Watch Farmer Me on the Mountain, which is a fictional biography of Geronimo. It's a really good book. I mean, I think it's the best book he ever wrote, and it's pretty accurate. But it's also, it's just powerfully written. In fact, one of the major writers and reviewed it in New York Times said this is the best book ever written by a Native American. And then... They believed Forrest Carter was a Cherokee Indian from East Tennessee. From East Tennessee who had spent years as a cowboy out in the way moved out west and was a cowboy out there, a Cherokee cowboy.

So if Seymour Trammell knew this? Yes. Who would have known this? Lots of people. So all the people in Alabama? Not all, but his close friends knew it. that Asa Carter was Forrest Carder. Yeah, yeah.

And I guess there wasn't, they were, they just kind of, what, why wouldn't they have brought that up? Or was it just, they thought it was his pen name. They just didn't see any relevance to it. A whole range of things. Sometimes, some of them said, well, you know, he'd never have gotten anything published as far as Asa Carter because of all the trouble he got into in the 50s. It's a white supremacists.

A lot of it, though, Clay was, I'm going to share. those Yankee liberals. A lot of his close friends, I mean, for example, as Forrest Carter, when the Outlaw Josie Wales came out, he was introduced and interviewed on the Today Show with Barbara Walters,

which is one of the most watched television shows in America at the time. And he told several people back in Alabama that he was going to be on the Today show. And his friends thought, it was hilarious that he was tricking this Yankee newspaper reporter. And it was kind of a big joke. I mean, one of his closest friends, Ray Andrews, said,

I literally lay down the floor laughing. And another one of his friends kept saying, oh, my God, I hope she doesn't ask him about the Ku Klux Klan, which he had a Ku Klux Klan group. So that was part of it. But here's the other thing that's so fascinating to me, Clay, is when that show ran, the switchboard at the Today Show lit up with people from Alabama who were not his friends, saying, you people are stupid.

This isn't Forrest Carter, it's Asa Carter, and they totally ignored it. His editor said, that's nonsense. You know, I know him, I've known him for years. Of course, he's an Indian. Absolutely, he's an Indian. His movie agent, she wrote a wire, she said, I couldn't believe that. I'd had him in my house. I knew he was an Indian.

He looked like an Indian. He talked like an Indian. He acted like an Indian. And it was just kind of, to me, it's an example of how you get your mindset in a certain way and you just don't change it. The other thing that was critical, I think, you think about this now. This is the 1970s. There's no internet. No internet.

And there's no way for social media to catch up, amplify any of this. This could never have happened after 2005 or 2010, you know. But at that time, it simply disappeared. The story simply disappeared in the claims. Wayne Greenhall, a friend of mine, I discovered, I didn't even know this at the time. He wrote a story in 1975 saying that there are a lot of similarities. he said between Asa Carter and Forrest Carter. This is when he was big time with the movie with Clint Eastwood and everything.

And he pitched it to the New York Times. And they were so scared of being sued that they changed that story. And it appeared the New York Times, but it was so ambivalent that you couldn't figure out whether he really was or wasn't. Really? So in 1975, in New York Times, they basically said. Asa Carter. There's some. There are a lot of similarities.

between the two. Talk about pulling the wool over the eyes of America, and before he died, he would outright deny that he was Asa Carter. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the tarotry. rain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote

mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In part two of this series, we're going to learn a lot more about Ace's life and why he did what he did. But before we go any further, we've got to understand this book. The first thing we have to do is understand. the education of Little Tree because it will show us a window into the mind of Asa Carter. Here's Steve Ronella and I. The education of Little Tree was written in 1976 by a man who went by the name of Forrest Carter. Yeah. And it was initially understood to be a autobiographical. It was taken to be autobiographical. Autobiographical of a young Cherokee Indian boy and his parents die and he goes to live

with his grandparents in the mountains. It's very light on backstory. I mean, it opens with a collection of people trying to figure out what to do with an orphan child. Yeah. He latches onto his grandpa's leg and stays there without saying anything, without crying, holding his legs so long

that eventually it's just determined that the grandpa will bring him home. He's five. No one's got a better idea. The boy's five years old. And so the story is this boy being, leaving his mother and father who have died. No, I think we're just like out of, let's agree to use the terminology used by the author.

Okay. The boy is, it's clear up front. The boy is regarded as a bastard child. Okay. He's, he's, but he's not. His parents were married in the Cherokee way. But there's a treatment of him as such. And he goes to live with his full Cherokee grandmother and his half Cherokee, half white grandfather, who is,

Very much presented to be very much of the Cherokee. And so the book is basically just a few years of his of the boy's life. It's just a it's a small sliver of time when his grandfather teaches him essentially how to how to be a man and how to be a Cherokee and how to survive in the modern modern world and time. The opening chapter of the book, they go and trap turkeys. They fox hunt with hounds. They, the grandfather in later chapters teaches the boy how to make moonshine. That's his trade. He's in the whiskey trade.

Right. And so the book is about the education of Little Tree because the boy quickly when he comes home with his grandfather is named Little Tree. He's learning very practical skills, when to plant, how to fertilize soil, how to make whiskey, how to catch catfish, all these very practical skills. But what he's really getting, the education is how to be. What is your obligation to your family? What is your obligation to the natural world around you?

He gets a moral, a very pure moral education by doing very practical things. The book, like from a literary perspective to me, the book just reeks of you feel like you're in western North Carolina. You feel like you're in the mountains. Oh, it feels completely authentic. Yeah. Well, let me say this. You know when you're watching. some kind of poorly done show or movie and there's a scene that involves a contractor okay and

the contractor's doing something the like someone's doing a construction thing or repairing something and you're watching it and you know that that actor has never repaired anything yeah and you know that no one on that set has ever watched someone repair something and it's all just a stab in the dark about how someone repairing something might approach that and there's zero authenticity. I'm sensitive to that. I don't like to see that. That'll make me turn something off when I see that. In reading this and I have a lot of exposure, not as much in the South, but I have a lot

of exposure to rural culture all across America. In reading this, I would say that person knows what they're talking about. that person, when it comes to the physical stuff, right? That person has fished. They've been there. That person has been to a still. That person has worked in corn patches. That person has raised melons, right?

That person has dealt with dogs. Let me read you another section, Steve, about when he was out at night. And as a coon hunter myself, when I read this, I was like, this guy has been in the mountains at night. Because he described it better than I could. they were going fox hunting and he said dark fell in close and the mountains moved in on either side as we walked before long we came to a while in the trail grandpa had taken the left and there was no more room in the trail except for right on the edge of the spring branch grandpa called this the narrows seemed like you could stretch out your arms on either side and touch the mountains straight up they went dark and feathered

with tree tops which left a thin slice of stars above us I loved that when I read that, like a thin slice of stars above us. Yeah. This author had been there. He went on to say, way off, a morning dove called Long and Thrody, and the mountains picked it up and echoed the sound over and over, carrying it further and further away until you wondered how many mountains and hollows that call would travel. And it died away so far. It was more like a memory than a sound. He said that the call of a morning dove was more like a memory than a sound.

I mean, that's some good writing. It's poetic without being pretentious. There's just great. All the metaphor is great. They hide their still so well. He says that a bird couldn't find it. I mean, it just is good writing. Like, it's good writing.

Steve said he recognized authenticity in this author. I want to read an excerpt where grandpa is telling a childhood story about a Civil War vet named Coon Jack who gets offended in church. Coon Jack stood up and said, I hear tell they some in here been talking about me behind my back, and I want you to know that I'm aware's. I know what's the matter with you. You're jealous because the deacon board put me in charge of the key to the songbox.

Well, let me tell you, and if you don't like it, I got the difference right here in my pocket. Grandpa said, sure enough, Coon Jack lifted his deer shirt and showed a pistol handle. He was stomping mad. Grandpa said that churchhouse was full of some hard men, including his Paul, who would soon as not shoot you if the weather changed, and nobody raised an eyebrow. He said, as Paul stood up and said, Coon Jack, every man here admires the way you've handled the key to the songbook box.

Best handling ever been done. If words have been mistook to cause you discomfort, I hear and now state the sorrow of every man present. Coon Jack set down, total mollified and contented as was everybody else. On the way home, Grandpa asked his Paul why Coon Jack could get away with such talk. And Grandpa said that he got to laughing about Coon Jack acting so important over the key to the songbook box. And he said, as Paul told him, son don't. Don't laugh at Coon Jack. You see, when the Cherokee was forced to give up his home and go to the nations,

Coonjack was young and he hid out in the mountains and he fought to hold on. When the war between the states come, he saw maybe he could fight that same government and get back the lands and home. He fought hard. Both times he lost. When the war ended, the politicians set in, trying to get what was left of what he had. Coon Jack fought him and run and hid and fought some more. You see, Coon Jack came up in a time of fighting. All he's got now is the key to the songbook box. And if Coon Jack seems cantankerous, well,

there ain't nothing left for Coon Jack to fight. He never knowed nothing else. Grandpa said he'd come might near crying for old Coon Jack. He said that after that, it didn't matter what Coon Jack said or did. He loved him because he understood him. He loved him because he understood. That's powerful empathy and deep insight into human nature. When we heard Forrest Carter write about the natural world, it's clear he had experienced it.

But also, when I hear him talk about empathy and understanding people's issues, it feels just as authentic. I want to read you one more excerpt. And it's a window into the home of Little Trees, Grandma and Grandpa. We'll learn that Grandpa's name is Wales. Grandma's name was Bonnie B. I knew that when I heard him late at night say,

I can you, Bonnie B. He was saying, I love you. When they would be talking, Grandma would say, Do you kin me, whales? And he would answer, I can you. It meant I understand you. To them, love and understand. understanding was the same thing. Grandma said you couldn't love something you didn't understand.

Nor could you love people nor God if you didn't understand the people in God. Grandpa and Grandma had an understanding and so they had a love. Grandma said the understanding run deeper as the years went by and she reckoned it would get beyond anything mortal folks could think upon or explain. And so they called it kin. Grandpa said back before his time, Kenfolks meant any folks that you understood and had an understanding with. So it meant loved folks. But people got selfish and brought it down to mean just blood relatives.

But that actually it was never meant to mean that. You can't love something you don't understand. These uneducated hill folks mapped out and functionalized love in a way, they suspected mortal people couldn't understand or explain. They recognize that genuine love and understanding should be spread much wider than the rudimentary understanding of blood relatives. Kenfolks are all the people that you truly understand and that understand you and thus you love them. This is deeply philosophical and it sprung from the creative loins of a racial supremacist.

this would be the last thing that we think he'd understand. Incredible writers usually have a uniquely comprehensive grasp on their topic of expertise. And in this situation, Asa Carter's expertise was on the inner gold and purest character of these marginalized people. This man seemed to truly understand love, which begs the question of where did he get access to this? We're roiling towards a deeper and more difficult question, though. Does the outside life of an author matter? Or should the content simply be taken for what it is? Can we draw meaningful ideas from a flawed source?

I want you to be thinking about that. And Dr. Carter has some ideas. And he's going to show us a place where Asa didn't get it quite right. writers are not perfect people and their backgrounds are often things that make us cringe and yet we can still look at their books and their works their writing works is great worthwhile we don't know Shakespeare may have been a jerk you know for all we know but the other thing I think it was mixed in with this clay was having having interviewed Native Americans who did know something about Cherokee culture.

And they found the book, some of it interesting. They didn't dislike the book at all, but they found it false in some respects. And they talked about how he got some of it right, but he got some of it fundamentally wrong. And they talked, I think the thing they found most bewildering

and they dislike the most, was that they felt reading it that it was more kind of new age philosophy in which you're embracing Native American ideas, but not really authentically capturing. I'll give you just one example. I mean, there's some examples. One of them is a language which was made up. It's not Cherokee.

But that didn't bother them, you know. What bothered them, both of them, was that the, ideas he expressed about the cosmos, about the world religious view of Cherokees, tended to be vague, earth mother, you know, this kind of thing. And what both of them said is that Cherokee's ideas about God, the Great Spirit, whatever you want to call it, is very deeply rooted in specifics. And one of them was very eloquent talking about how he talks about how beautiful the mountain is, and he said, he's a good writer, you know,

he could really describe just, but he said, a Cherokee would describe precisely the mountain, the name of it, the exact river. Everything has to be specific, because it's very specific to their worldview. And he said, this doesn't, site-specific religion.

Yeah, site-specific religion, everything. And one of them said very, He grew up in an area where there were lots of whites as well as... And he said, it struck me reading it that it's this mixture of both Indian life and white life. He said, for example, virtually no Indians made corn whiskey. It was a white man's thing. And it was, they didn't drink it. They did.

But he said, Scotch Irish were pretty tight about that. And you get into trouble if you started. They were the ones that controlled the whiskey-making business. So it was those things that they didn't think nullified the book. But it wasn't quite consistent. But it's not really. And so their whole thing was read it as a kind of novel. But don't give it out to students and say, this is Cherokee life.

Shakespeare may have been a jerk. That's funny. Dr. Dan T. Carter, and the truth is we don't really know much about Shakespeare's private life. And if you remember, we've heard about site-specific religions and our Tecumseus series. Dr. Dave Edmund said that that was part of why relocating Native Americans was so devastating to their culture. We're going to now get back into the fabric of this book with Mr. Steve Ronella. Did y'all hear that CBS called him the Julia Childs or the Keele? Camp fire? That's funny. Here's Steve.

Part of the education of Little Tree beyond the things that we spoke about being how to utilize the landscape through hunting, fishing, agriculture, how to treat the landscape with respect, how to treat the people around you and the people you love with respect and empathy, and how to not be balsful or prideful, and how to behave in a discreet fashion. There is also another thing that Little Tree is educated on are the evils of pretty much everything that is organized. He has taught to understand that politicians are by definition corrupt, that the education system is corrupt in and of itself. Government is corrupt. Organized religion is corrupt.

you have your word, you have the promises of the people around you, but anything that comes from you that has been institutionalized, you should be very suspicious of. And that is like a key part of the education. And it comes about in such natural ways inside the book. Sure. Like for instance, the grandfather is making whiskey and there's a whiskey tax so they have to hide their steel so they don't pay the tax. So in the book, the grandfather loves George Washington, until he finds out that Washington is the one that instituted the whiskey tax. And then he really tries to justify, like, how could Washington have done that? It must have been a mistake. He sees. Yeah, he seeds. He can't get it out of his head. He normally refuses, he likes to walk, refuses to be picked up by a car,

allows himself to get picked up by a car just so he can ask the driver of the car what he thinks about what Washington did. He can't get it out of his head. In his mind, if I grow corn on my land and I have a contraption I made on my land and I can take my corn and make a beverage with it, how in the world is this anything?

How does this have anything to do with the government? Yeah. Explain, like what has gone bad when I've done this all with my hands on my property. Beautifully laid out because the grandfather, you trust him so much, he's so straightforward, he's so certain, he's so naive, but he's so honest. The writer wants you to think this man sees the world in its most simplistic terms, but the right way.

It's hard not to love Grandpa. He and Little Tree once had to bury a fox dog named Ringer that had died on the hunt, and Little Tree was very sad. This is what Grandpa said. And it's important to know that this book is written in dialect, so sometimes it sounds kind of funny when you take it out of context. Grandpa said everything you lost, which you had loved, give you that feeling.

He said the only way around it was to not love anything, which was worse because you would feel empty all the time. Grandpa said, supposing old ringer had not been faithful, then we wouldn't be proud of him. That would be a worse feeling, which is right. Grandpa said when I got old, I would remember old ringer and I would like it. He said it was a funny thing, but when you got old and remember them you loved,

you only remembered the good, never the bad, which proved the bad didn't count nohow. The bad didn't count nohow. That's deeply philosophical too. It makes me wonder if Asa hoped his life would be judged. by the same rules as ringer. Here's more from Steve Ronella, and we're going to get into something a bit more serious. There's a thing we haven't looked into,

which is the philosophy and viewpoints on poverty. Almost everybody in this book is exceptionally poor, very, very poor, like cash economies of sub-a-thousand dollars annually. When Little Trey and his grandpa go to sell their bootleg whiskey at a store, the storekeeper will always have Little Tree do an errand for him. The storekeeper wants to reward Little Tree with a piece of candy,

but he knows that he cannot give Little Tree a piece of candy for free. So he needs to put it to Little Tree that he has expired candy. He can't sell it. Feels very wasteful throwing it out, and that Little Tree would be doing him a favor to take a piece of the candy. Under those conditions, Little Tree will eat that candy. Little Tree meets the dead. daughter of a sharecropper at the store.

She has no shoes. Little Tree's grandma makes her a pair of moccasins. He gives the girl a pair of moccasins the next time they go to the store. When the girl's sharecropper father sees her in the moccasins and sees how glad she is, he gets a stick and whips her until she bleeds. Makes her give the moccasins back to Little Tree. You think the grandpa's going to condemn the man. The grandpa says, I understand.

They can't get used to nice stuff. they'll never have nice stuff there's no reason for her to want things she won't get them so I understand why he had to do what he had to do like a great reluctance to condemn and then sometimes some like

it's like a vicious scene but he's like I understand not for me to judge the grandfather was very empathetic towards people and that's a word that we'll go back to because when you see that whoever wrote this book

was trying to I mean it feels like they were trying to promote a message of empathy. On the issue of empathy, and it is, there is a very strong environmental message, like a rigid, very strong environmental message. There's a lot about empathy. Now, where is there an environmental message in this? The environmental message of that trees are sentient life forms. Okay.

You don't cut one down for no reason. Yeah. They would mostly try to only use trees that had been felled by lightning strikes. or that fell over, you could communicate through trees, not to take more than your share of anything, that if you didn't love birds, birds won't show themselves to you. If you didn't love game animals,

game animals won't come near you. They know that you love them. They want to be near you. It's a really strong environmental message. And it's got teeth, right? Bad things can befall people that disrespect nature. It's not just appealing to emotion and beauty. Like, these are like real things with real implications.

Like, you can cut yourself off from life by disrespecting nature. Yeah. But within all that, all the messages of empathy, there's another message there, too. And it can be read in a way that reflects on what I said to you when I talked about institutions. It teaches empathy, but it teaches something else, too. I mean, it teaches distrust. Distrust for the organized systems of man, primarily the government, are strong themes of the book. However, they're presented in such conjunction with the lovable protagonist,

I feel like it would be hard for anyone to disagree with its sentiment as it's presented. And the fact that a Cherokee Indian is the one making the judgment, it feels very just, like he's got the right to believe that. And in general, I'd say, I feel the same way. Here's Steve bringing closure to this book. There's something that happens really interesting. in the book from a structural standpoint. The main plot point, the main conflict, isn't even introduced until the end of the book. There's a definition of story that goes that a story is someone or something wants something,

but there are obstacles to them getting it. A story is someone or something overcoming obstacles to get what they want. That's true of the tortoise and the hair. It's true of Shakespeare's works. Right. It's like, that's what story is. The conflict in this book only comes up in the end. The conflict, the real conflict in the book comes up that eventually the institutions, that Little Tree has been trained to be suspicious of, the institutions come for him.

It emerges. You don't even know who. It emerges that people have complained that this boy is being raised, that this bastard child is being raised by heathens and isn't going to get a formal education. and that they don't have formal custodial rights over him. They're just sort of, they fell into being his caretakers. And all you've seen is the extremes the grandmother and grandfather have gone through to give him like the best of everything, the best moral education, the best work education. He has a study from the dictionary. They have the librarian recommend books to bring home that neither of them can read so that the grandma can read them.

The books, he's getting a formal education. and then the suits show up and say he's not being educated. And they take him away. No sooner does he go away, though. That conflict is resolved and he's back home. It's like the thing you expect to be coming the whole time comes in the end and it gets resolved very quickly. But then you quickly launch into this other thing.

And then the heartbreak because then everyone he cares about dies. His friend that we haven't talked about, Willow, John dies. The grandpa dies. The grandma dies. Then you go through all of the dogs dying. One by one. Until he's alone. Then the book without any, the book just ends. He buries the last dog and it's done. There's not even a sentence. The mule dies. So it's southern literature. There's a dead mule. All the dogs die. It's done. Yeah. And you have no idea. Like, yeah, you, you're left, we don't know what happened. We don't even know.

We don't know what kind of person he became. Because even when you get into the end, when he leaves home, he just walks away. When he leaves, he walks out, shuts the door behind him and walks out. And we don't see him come up against anything moral. We don't see him come up against any conflict. We don't see him interact with any other human. We just see him go through the act of burying everything he loves in an area is alone. You assume that he can.

carries with them this strong moral compass, but we don't see it. Spoiler alert, everything dies. If you choose to read this book, which I would recommend, you'll have to take the big boy approach knowing all the while what's coming while still allowing it to take you on a journey. It's a double whammy because you'll also know Asa Carter's story too. In this closing section, Steve asked me a very difficult question. and then delves into a very serious topic in today's America.

It's good insight from Steve. When you were working on this, I spoke to you, and you mentioned talking to an academic who said to you, you know, that book's been blacklisted. I understand that, and I understand why. I was given the book, not as a kid, but as a student, as a college student. And I was very quickly after giving the book, I was invited to wrestle with the identity of the author.

Here's a question for you. Do you read this to your kid? I can't decide. Man. 8, 10, and 12. My kids are 8.10 and 12. Do I read them that book? And then say, let me tell you something about that person.

That's a tough question. I haven't. But that is the biggest question here, is that I read this book and was fascinated by it. Not even looking at what we know about the author, but just the connection to nature, the way the grandfather presented the world. to Lilitry was just so interesting. And it would be hard to find fault with much of it. Even the stuff about the government, I mean, a lot of people, I think, would read it and be like, yeah.

After the fact, after the revelations came out, people came forward and they're like, well, you know, it is very stereotypical and the character's very stereotypical. But go find me people that were saying that in the 70s. Yeah. They weren't. It's a real. It's a real tough one. Once people were armed with the truth, then they found all kinds of things.

Well, once they knew it, you know what, once they knew what they were looking for, they found it. But they didn't find it ahead of time. Right. Steve, you tell me what you think happened here. I could not find an academic person. It's someone that worked for a university literary professor that would talk to me about this book. And it wasn't necessarily, at first I thought this book, well, the first person that did respond said, hey, you realize this book has been blacklisted. That was essentially his response.

And I said, yeah, that's why I want to talk about it. And then I began to get the feeling that people didn't want to talk about it. Yeah. Because it's just like, hey, don't even go there. But I also think that I was sending emails out to a bunch of people and contacting a big, wide web of people, which we did, to which we had very little response, which is unusual. I've rarely found a book that I couldn't find somebody willing to talk to me about. I think that might also be a response to the thing being blacklisted 30 years ago. Oh, absolutely.

So just nobody's read it. Nobody's read it in 30 years. And they're going to be afraid to talk about it now. I know you don't like to get overtly political. I'm not going to get political, but I'm going to make a point about something. Sure. At a time, Republicans, at a time, the Republican Party was free trade and nation building. Okay.

You just go back to the neocons, free trade and nation building. It's now not, right? So there's protectionism, not free trade, emerging as a predominant thing in the Republican Party, protectionism and isolationism, not meddling in foreign affairs. Okay. Protecting our own trade, not meddling in foreign affairs. Had you said 10 years ago, what a Republican is, you'd have brought up nation building and free trade. So things change. Universities used to be heralded as a place where there was a free exchange of ideas, where you could talk about dangerous.

stuff. Right. They're not now. By and large, universities have become places where you need to tread very lightly. You do not talk about dangerous stuff because you will get reprimanded and you'll get blacklisted and you'll lose your job. Universities have somehow become somewhat anti-intellectual and they have become places where people are afraid of the exchange of ideas. So that you're now not going to be able to get someone to talk to you about this book is because they're, they probably want to, they're scared.

Yeah. Because someone's going to come for them for talking about dangerous stuff. Yeah. I guess now, if you want to talk about dangerous stuff and free ideas, you've got to listen to the Barry Grease podcast. That's right. Steve Rinella, the only guy in the country that would talk to me about the educational little tree.

We ended on a light note, but the content was very serious. Often it seems the people who demand tolerance in their pursuit of enforcing it are incredibly intolerant. We live in a messed up world and the most powerful contribution we have. Bigger than voting, bigger than shouting down the crazies, bigger than fighting foreign armies, bigger than our political doctrine, is to build our individual lives and families intentionally, introspectively, empathetically, and with an unembittered, humble boldness towards truth. And it helps to have a macro perspective of.

history that shows us that life is short and our lives are like the flowers of the field. We pop up then fade away. And I believe with great certainty that we'll give account for our lives after our death and that knowledge is a powerful driver in my life and actions here. I want to have integrity. That's why fearlessly looking back into our history at some bad stuff and sorting through will help us navigate the future. I think this is powerful stuff.

And man, as crazy as Asa Carter was, I cannot lie. My life was enriched by reading the education of Little Tree. I don't fully understand it. You have to make that decision for yourself if you'd read this book to your kids. On the next episode, we'll again have Steve Ronella and Dr. Dan Carter, and we'll look even deeper into the double life of Asa Carter and try to make sense of his life to decide if he was a changed man, a con man, or a crazy man. It's going to be really good.

Thank you so much for listening to Bear Grease. And don't forget our big news about my bro Brent Reeves and its new podcast, This Country Life, that'll be on this Bear Grease podcast feed. I hope you have a great week, and I look forward to discussing this with the crew next week on the Bear Grie. grease rendered. First Light's fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use, hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters, no shortcuts, just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out.

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