Broken Arrow: The Arrow Over the Door by Joseph Bruchac

In October of 1777 a battle between a war party of Indians loosely allied with the English generals and significant assemblage of American settlers did not take place.

On the eve of the pivotal Battle of Saratoga, a confrontation between the English generals and the rebel forces seemed certain. Loyalists and rebels both sought support from Native American tribes in the regions, and innocent Indians and settlers were slaughtered in terrorist raids on small villages throughout the region. Indians loyal to the French in what is now known as the French and Indians War were being hastily recruited by both sides in the ongoing struggle with what the British held to be an insurgent rebellion.

Into this setting of hostility and unsettled loyalties Bruchac puts his two characters. Sam is a Quaker boy of fourteen, who is stung by the charges of cowardice hurled at his family by the supporters of the rebellion and who is determined to fight, against his faith's injunction against violence, in defense of his family. Stand Straight is an Abenaki boy of the same age, whose family was killed by the English, and whose uncle Sees-the-Wind is leading a scouting party in rebel territory in a loose alliance with these same English forces.

When the armed Indians, accompanied by two French allies, approach a large log structure filled with settlers, they do not know what to expect. Inside the rough shelter an assembly of Friends prepare to hold a regional meeting with the noted Quaker leader Robert Nisbet. As the Quakers wait in their customary silent worship, seeking inspiration from the "light within," the Indians approach the structure. Noting that the door has been left open and the settlers are unarmed, they enter quietly. Surprised to be welcomed with the usual egalitarian handshake of the Friends, the scouting party take seats among the congregation quietly and seem to join in the silent worship. Later they share a simple meal of bread and cheese with the Friends, and leaving an arrow shaft, feathered but with the point removed, over the door as a sign of peace, quietly leave.

The event, revered in Quaker history as the "Easton Meeting," is one of the few instances of peacful encounter in what was a series of bloody and vengeful skirmishes between the army of the Crown and the American rebels. Bruchac tells the true story simply and with insight into the minds of both sides through alternating narratives of the boys who witnessed the peaceful meeting. In a time of war, in which the combatants demonized each other as irrational, souless, and murderous, The Arrow Over the Door tells another story of thoughtful humans finding an inner light of peace and understanding in each other.

The Arrow Over the Door is a short, suspenseful piece of historical fiction which should appeal to middle graders because of its skillful use of exciting setting and characters who face the kind of moral decisions which engage young readers.

Little Wigwam on the Lake: The Birchbark House and The Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich

Insightful reviewers have likened Louise Erdrich's novels of an Ojibwe family in the mid-1800's to Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, and for good reason. Both document life on the developing frontier in the upper mid-West, with detailed descriptions of the tasks and tools of daily life, the warmth and demands of family relationships, soft, evocative pencil drawings, the hardships of life in a harsh environment, and the push and pull of living near the "other" people of the frontier. For Laura Ingalls, it is the Indians who frighten and fascinate, and for Omakayas it is the chimookomonag, the white settlers who threaten the bond to their land.

In her first book, The Birchbark House, Erdrich introduces Omakayas, a seven-year-old Ojibwe girl living on the shores of Lake Superior in 1847. Omakayas has strong parents, an older sister who is beautiful, sometimes kind and sometimes belittling of her tag-along little sister, a thoroughly annoying little brother, Pinch, and a baby brother, Neewo, which she loves deeply. Omakayas is loved and taught by her kindly grandmother Nokomis and her cousins and aunt.

As the family moves from fishing camp to rice camp to winter cabin, Omakayas observes matter-of-factly the increasing encroachment of the white settlers nearby. When the settler's small pox epidemic reaches Omakayas's group, she and her family hover near death, and Omakayas is saved by the attention of a solitary woman, Old Tallow, who takes her apart and nurses her to health. Although most of her family live, Omakayas' beloved baby brother Neewo dies. Before the family can deal with their grief, a bitter winter almost kills the weakened people by starvation. At last spring comes and with it healing and hope:

Omakayas...closed her eyes and smiled as the song of the white-throated sparrow sang again and again through the air like a shining needle, and sewed up her broken heart.

In the sequel, The Game of Silence the family is camped in their summer birchbark house when a raggedy, starving group of Ojibwe approach the island in waterlogged canoes, bearing the news that their entire tribe is soon to be removed into the lands held by their feared Lakota and Dakota enemies. As the strongest men of Omakayas' clan set forth to find out their fate, the family waits though summer and fall to learn the nature of their future.

Eventually, the travellers return with word that the people must indeed leave their ancestral home and make their way into the western lands allotted to them by the settlers. Heavy-hearted with sadness, Omakayas goes out to the forest to seek her spirit helper who sends a dream vision of her life to come in the new land in the West. Omakayas resolves not to look back as their canoes enter the unknown river that takes them out of sight of their old home:

The children bit their lips and held their tongues, for they all understood...that the game of silence was now a game of life and death.

Omakayas gazed into the crush of green. Here, after all, was not only danger but possibility. Here was adventure. Here was the next life they would live together on the earth.

As Laura left each homeplace behind to take her seat in the Ingalls' wagon, so does Omakayas turn her face toward a new life to the west. Both series tell a vital part of the story of our people from the clear eyes and with the true voice of two young girls of their time.

Family Secrets: Hidden Roots by Joseph Bruchac

Eleven-year-old Howard Camp knows that there is some secret behind his mother's evasive answers, his hard-working father's anger and physical abuse, and the way his father avoids "Uncle Louis," a grizzled old woodsman said to be a former handiman for his deceased grandparents. Still, Uncle Louis comes to them, always when his father is working, to pick berries or do some of the hard chores, or to take Howard to watch a sunrise from a mountain top.

When his father's hand is mangled rescuing a green employee from a machine at the mill, even harder times come to Howard and his mother. With winter coming Uncle Louis comes to stay, chopping wood for their stove and being with Howard while his mom works part time in town. As Howard grows through his sixth grade year, he no longer can put off the questions about his family's strange and reclusive ways. At last Louis takes Howard apart and shows him a yellowed document which begins to explain his parents' long kept secret and reveals that he is in truth his mother's father.

Joseph Bruchac sets Hidden Roots in the mountains of upstate New York to recount the story of the Abenaki Indians of nearby Vermont, the victims of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing beginning in 1931, a time in which forced sterilization threatened their extinction. In this period many of the Abenaki moved out of Vermont, sometimes giving their children to be raised by white families, and hid their Native American origins from their neighbors. This fictional account shows how the stress of this exodus and the fear of being revealed as Indian took its toll on families, although some, like the fictional Camps, found the strength to hold together and find pride in their roots.