Blue bird (book)
Blauvogel - son of the Iroquois by choice is a book by Anna Müller-Tannewitz , which was published in 1950 by Neues Leben . The author Anna Müller-Tannewitz published the book under the pseudonym Anna Jürgen. She did not use this pseudonym for any of her other works, which mostly appeared under her real name.
Summary
The novel describes the life of the white border guards and the Indians in the middle of the 18th century using the fictional character "blue bird". "Blauvogel" is a white boy who is kidnapped by Indians and grows up among them. He realizes the truth about the white settlers and the Indians. After his forced return to his white family, he is no longer able to return to their world. He recognizes them as wrong and voluntarily goes back to the Indians because he can no longer get along with the whites.
The book is set in North America at the time of the battle between the British and the French in the mid-18th century for supremacy in the area between the Ohio and Lake Erie . Georg Ruster is the nine-year-old son of white settlers on the border with the Indians. His life is characterized by constant work and the fight against Indian raids. He knows little about the Indians and, according to the world conveyed to him by his parents, he regards them only as primitive savages who must be destroyed. However, in the course of the story he is kidnapped by Indians. He is to be taken in as a son instead of a deceased boy. In the Indian village "Wiesenufer" he made his first experience with the Iroquois, with whom he ended up. He is massively bullied by the Indian children , does not know their language and fails at everything they can and can play. Only his friend Malia, who speaks broken English, helps him over the initial problems. His intimate enemy "Squinting Fox" from the Delaware goods present in the village also makes life difficult for him. He also shoots a dog that Georg grew fond of in memory of the Rusters family dog. Georg tries to flee from the heartless Indians, gets lost and is found in the forest by his future adoptive father .
With him and Malia, who will be his adoptive sister, he wanders to “Fertile Earth”. There he, who slowly adopts the language and habits of the Iroquois , becomes at home. Numerous events allow him to dive deep into the world of the Indians and every further thought of escape disappears. The previously intact world of the white border guards is increasingly incomprehensible to him and ultimately collapses violently. He recognizes the lies and prejudices of the border guards and he surrenders to the natural world of the Indians. He realizes that the Indians are the real owners of the land and that they have a much greater knowledge of the land and its nature.
When he had to return to his white relatives a few years later, as this was the only way to prevent a war between his tribe and the British, their world became completely alien to him. He can no longer understand their insensitivity and contempt for the Indians. Blauvogel turns away and voluntarily goes back to his adoptive parents.
action
In 1755, North America was still largely white-populated. However, the English have established themselves on the east coast and the French claim an area of what is now Canada , around the Great Lakes over the Ohio Valley down to the mouth of the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. The English and the French are fighting for supremacy in North America. Blauvogel's story takes place in the northeast of today's USA in the area of today's Pittsburgh and Lake Erie , in today's US states of Pennsylvania and Ohio . Georg Ruster, the later blue bird, lives in Pennsylvania, in the Shawnee Valley, named after the expelled Shawnee Indians, approx. 100 km away from the "border" to the areas claimed by France, in the forests north of Raystown (dem present-day Bedford). France did not colonize the areas claimed by it like England and did not settle any French there, so that the Indians living in the area of the great lakes , who were mainly assigned to the Iroquois , could still live relatively freely. However, France maintained military bases , forts and trading posts in its territory .
The life of the white border guards is tough. Again and again there are raids by Indians in the border area, which often end fatally for the attacked families in their individual farms . Otherwise their lives are determined by hard work. They clear the forests in this hill country, the western forerunners of the Appalachian Mountains , to gain arable land , and so are busy with heavy physical labor from morning to night.
The novel begins with an attack by Indians on the farm of the nine-year-old Georg's family in 1755. This consists of him, his younger brother Peter, two older sisters, father John and older brother Andreas. His father and brother Andreas are members of a militia at the time of the Indian attack. They ride around to protect the farms. Only with the last of their strength does the family manage to repel the attack on their settler's hut and the arrows on its roof, which is where Georg stands out. The defense only succeeds because the militia can reach the farm in time. Georg finds a tomahawk from the attacking Indians and gives it to Andreas. He recognizes a symbol on the shaft. It shows an oval round with six points. "The tomahawk belonged to a man from the turtle family," says Andreas slowly. In Georg Ruster's family, pejorative opinions about Indians are shared, as is the prejudice that “these Indian hordes” are being set on them by the French. However, General Braddock was on the march to drive the French and especially the Iroquois allies with them from the Ohio Valley , which is located across the border.
Everyone counts on General Braddock, who is supposed to chase away the Indians and French and move the border further west. However, there is a problem here. The militia assembly has decided that each border guards household must send two men to the road construction department in order to pave the way for General Braddock and his supply troops through the undeveloped wilderness. Since Georg has fought bravely, it is decided that it is not his father, who is actually indispensable for the family, but he, the nine-year-old, and his older brother Andreas who have to go to the road construction department. He is used there as a rider. This previous construction team crossed the border with Indian land to build General Braddock a way to the French Fort Du Quesne , today's Pittsburgh.
On a ride between the loggers of the road construction department and the supply troops following them, Georg is attacked by some Indians lurking in ambush . His companion and his horse are killed and he is taken prisoner by Indians. They bring Georg, who was wounded in the ankle by falling from a horse, to Fort Du Quesne. Here he is looked after by the French, but even more so by a tolerably English-speaking Indian. Georg does not understand it yet, but learns that he is being handed over to the Indians and that he is to be accepted into a tribe in place of a deceased son. But he relies on General Braddock and hopes to be freed soon. The French, however, win the battle of Monongahela together with the Indians allied with them over Braddock's militias. Georg now also sees how the Indians, mainly Lenape , torture their prisoners to death . Georg reckons that this fate is intended for him too.
The Indian who cared for him is now taking him on a boat trip. For days it goes first down the Ohio and then a broad tributary (Scioto River?) North again upstream. After four days they reach the Indian village "Wiesenufer". Georg is astonished when he sees the large fields with corn , sunflowers , pumpkins and tobacco as well as the long houses of the village. Here he is warmly received by the Indian's wife and introduced to the Indian world. He doesn't understand a word, but understands that the woman means well with him. After initial problems, which a slightly older girl named Malia, who speaks a few bits of English, helps him over, he settles in, but constantly forges plans to escape. To his horror, he also has to realize that he is with the clan of turtles, the clan that raided his parents' house. Malia speaks a little English and helps him learn the language of the Iroquois with whom he is staying. He learns that she is the niece of the Indian who brought him here. Much in this new world is unimaginable for him, such as the fact that all food supplies belong to everyone and he can use whatever he wants from any kettle. Anyone in the house can also use the clan's supplies, not just their own. For the first time, this leads to a conflict with his ideas about property and theft.
He learns that Malia's uncle is called “Smoky Day” and his wife is “Roundish Cloud”. The two have no children of their own and are strict educators towards Georg. Georg slowly learns archery and begins to speak and understand Iroquois. But he also clings to Malia, because only with her can he really communicate. However, she repeatedly calls him a "fool" when he does something wrong or speaks wrong.
Georg slowly learns the games of the Iroquois children. He has big problems here. Since he neither knows their games nor the rules for them, and also acts very clumsily and clumsily with them due to lack of experience, he becomes the target of scorn and ridicule from children. But there are also positive things. So far only used to the busy days of the border guards, he is now amazed at how relaxed and calm the life of the Indians and especially the children is. Beatings and beatings were the order of the day at home, but they don't exist with the Indians. He wins a friend in the dog "Schnapp". He gives it its name because of the resemblance to the dog in his family. Both become inseparable.
When the children play, Georg makes “cross-eyed fox” an enemy. "Cross-eyed fox" is a Lenape (also called a Delawaren ). They live as guests on the outskirts of the village and live less from farming than from hunting and the constant struggle with the white settlers. The Lenape are refugees. Their home is on the Atlantic, from which they were expelled by white settlers. "Cross-eyed fox" annoys Georg wherever he can and one day he even shoots Schnapp, for which Georg beats him violently. The act of the “cross-eyed fox” feeds his prejudices against the Indians as a bloody, callous pack and he makes his first attempt to escape, which has been planned for some time. However, he quickly gets lost in the forest and is found by a foreign Indian. This carries the exhausted back to the village, where he is surprisingly welcomed with understanding and loving by “Rauchiger Tag”. “Smoky Day” gives him a little dog that looks very similar to the dead Schnapp, and nobody says a word about his attempt to escape.
Georg now also learns that the foreign Indian is Malia's father and a chief who has come to take his daughter home, who was only visiting "Wiesenufer". The fear of being separated from Malia is great, but then he learns that they will stay together because it is the chief who wants to adopt him as his son. Georg is happy because he, who now speaks broken Iroquois and learns the habits of the Indians, can leave behind the “cross-eyed fox” and other Indian children who harass him and make fun of his mishaps at the Indian games.
He follows his adoptive father “Kleinbär” and Malia on a long hike to their village “Fertile Earth”. This long hike, well over a hundred kilometers, shows Georg the enormous extent of the settlement area of the Iroquois. He reaches the eastern foothills of the prairies and sees the endless expanses of this grassland for the first time. Georg arrives at Lake Erie in the area of what is now Cleveland and also absorbs these impressions, because for him this lake is huge and endless. You finally reach the Iroquois village "Fertile Earth", which is not even 100 km from Fort du Quesne and his old homeland, which Georg does not know.
"Kleinbär" trains him on the hike and Georg not only experiences the principles of Indian hospitality. "Kleinbär" cannot speak English and so Georg is forced to speak Iroquois with him, which he finds increasingly easier. It is helpful that “Kleinbär” has something that “Smoky Day” and Malia lacked: patience. Georg begins to understand and absorb the world of the Indians. He takes in their living spirit world, their principles and their closeness to nature almost unconsciously, all of which is in stark contrast to the world of the border guards, which is increasingly incomprehensible and alien to him. Without Georg consciously realizing it, he becomes "blue bird", the Indian. His old parents' house is moving back and starting to fade.
The village “Fertile Earth” lies on the Beaver River and here too it consists of a settlement of Iroquois with their longhouses and on the edge of a group of huts of the Lenape. Georg feels safe here. He gets to know his adoptive mother “Midday Sun”, who immediately takes him into her heart. The other residents of the nave fully accept him and Georg is now increasingly becoming a blue bird, an integral part of a large family. Blauvogel recognizes that these Indians have similar problems, needs, but also joys as all other people known to him. He's still habitually rethinking his escape plans, but the old parental home and the world of the border guards are fading, as they no longer want to fit in with the experiences he's now had. In “Fertile Earth” he finds friends like “Deer Calf” among the Indian children. He is no longer clumsy in their games and the Iroquois language is no longer foreign to him.
He is now diving deeper and deeper into the world of the Indians. Their nature-loving faith opens up to him thanks to the logical explanations of his new parents, and he slowly accepts their rites. Without being aware of it, he is integrated into the world of the Iroquois. Even when his enemy “Squinting Fox” appears in the Indian village, he no longer gets a chance, because the Iroquois children are with him, Blue Bird.
In the new year Kleinbär goes hunting with the blue bird and the begging "cross-eyed fox". It remains inconclusive. On the march back, however, “Schielender Fuchs” uses Blauvogel's interest in a trail that crosses their path in the deep snow to cover up his and the little bear's trail with a branch. Blauvogel loses its track and gets lost. In a hollow tree he can still get to safety from the upcoming snowstorm, but has lost all orientation afterwards and his shelter is blown over. In his mind he is only with his Indian adoptive parents. When the storm subsides, he manages to clear the snow in front of his shelter with the last of his strength, and his dog Schnapp helps him find his way back to the village. Once in the village, he collapses. The search party for him was just ready to march, but had little hope of finding him alive. Kleinbär is full of pride about the achievement of his son, with which he saved himself, but Blauvogel is seriously ill with pneumonia and has been weakened for a long time.
“Squinting Fox”, on the other hand, shows remorse and asks every day how Blue Bird is feeling. Both unconsciously apologize and bury their enmity. Blauvogel now also learns the story of the Lenape, who once settled on the eastern Salt Sea , but were driven out by the whites. Blauvogel begins to understand why the Lenape are fighting the white settlers. They just want their country back! Georg's ideal world of the settlers is collapsing more and more, and he realizes that something is wrong with the people of Raystown, or Philadelphia and its residents ...
He was ailing for a long time the following year, but by the beginning of his second year with the Iroquois he recovered completely. He has not yet forgotten his thoughts of flight, but he no longer seriously pursues them. He is completely immersed in the world of the Indians, and his parents' house is a long way off. He absorbs the rituals of the Indians, experiences the maple sap harvest, which is actually a sugar harvest, he learns to fish with locks, but also to work in the fields. The Iroquois grow corn, sunflowers and pumpkins, but not in the hurry of the white settlers, who always want to cultivate more land in order to become even richer. The work with the Indians is also much faster because not every family does the work for themselves, but all members of the clan do the work together.
The Lenape warriors are now on the warpath. When Blauvogel asks where they are going, he learns from his clan's grandfather, Weißhaar, that they are leaving for his almost forgotten homeworld. White Hair is a Shawnee who was inducted into the tribe. Blauvogel's former family settles in the Shawnee Valley, which was taken from the indigenous people. Blauvogel is now finally beginning to understand what drives the Lenape to her war campaigns.
Outside the village, however, there are changes. The white traders pay lower prices every year for the skins the Indians sell them, doubling the prices for powder, lead and guns. The traders are also becoming increasingly arrogant and insulting the Indians. Blauvogel is horrified when his father, returning from a trade mission, asks him to translate words he has never heard of before. These are the English swear words that were the normal term for Indians in his white parents' house, such as "Indian dog".
In the fall, his father moves to the trading post again to replenish supplies, because the harvest was very bad because of the heat that year. The clan goes on a journey to the Salzbach to boil salt. This brook is already in the border region to the white man. When the Indians, mostly just women and children, begin to boil salt, they are suddenly taken under fire by white border guards. Blauvogel and his adoptive mother are wounded. Others, such as an aunt and her small child, are killed or shot with the butt of a rifle. The fawn pulls its mother away, Malia pulls Bluebird up and supports him because his leg is wounded.
Blauvogel realizes that his father and brother Andreas could have been among the attacking border guards. But he now finally understands why the Lenape fought against the white settlers every year. They only repay what they themselves first had to endure a thousandfold.
For Blauvogel, it is only wild satisfaction when his adoptive father, returning from the trading post, sets off with all available warriors on a campaign of revenge on the border. The last thoughts of escape dissipate; the bullets of the border guards have torn wounds that no time can close.
The campaign is successful. When attacking a supply column, Kleinbär was also able to steal the urgently needed salt, but a lot of gunpowder was also consumed. However, blue bird does not recover for the time being. It takes all the skills of Indian medicine and the commitment of the medicine man to finally get him back on his feet.
A difficult time lies ahead of the Indians. Winter is coming and the poor corn harvest is accompanied by a lack of ammunition. The chief decides to take a tour of the trading post to obtain powder on credit. One morning Blauvogel takes a rifle and wants to succeed on his own. However, it does not find any targets, as the crusty blanket of snow announces its arrival to every game from afar. On the way back, however, he fell into a blown pit, in which he found an unusually large brown bear hibernating . He shoots him with the only shot he has, but cannot move the heavy animal. For this he got help from the village, where he is celebrated as a hero. After all, he killed his first bear and thus gained the right to wear a necklace made of bear claws. With this meat, the hunger in the long houses was satisfied for the time being. Since the hunters of the deer clan are also successful and kill four bison, the food for the near future is secured again. The chief comes back from the trading posts without success, but Indians of a friendly tribe have given him some powder so that you can go hunting again to a limited extent.
However, one remembers the time before the white man and takes out old hunting weapons. The frozen "lake without drainage" is fished with fish spears . Here blue bird learns once more from the great knowledge the Indians have about animals and their behavior. Ultimately, the winter is survived, which was only a lean winter and not a starvation winter. Like all other Indian boys, Blauvogel knows how to hit safely with a bow and arrow, he knows their hunting methods, can imitate calls and has found a friend in “Schielender Fuchs” himself. He belongs to them and their world, and nobody questions that anymore.
The years go by. Outside the village of “Fertile Earth”, however, the world changed until 1762 (seven years after the capture of Georg, who was only nine years old at the time and who has since developed into a sixteen-year-old Iroquois Bluebird). The English drove the French out of Fort Du Quesne and call it Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh ). Blauvogel would have long since forgotten if Uncle “Smoky Day” hadn't reminded him of it during his annual visits. The French were ultimately defeated and retreated to Canada. Your allies, the Lenape, are desperate. The Indian leader Pontiac gathers the tribes to fight the English and is ultimately defeated. Chief Kleinbär foresees his failure and does not take part in the fighting with his tribe.
English traders appear in the village next summer. Blauvogel displeases her appearance, which does not at all fit the principles of Indian hospitality that he has internalized in the meantime. The traders recognize him as a white man and offer to take him to his white parents. Blauvogel refuses this immediately and leaves, but the traders call after him: " Colonel Bouquet will get you one day!" He threatens to raid every tribe, destroy their supplies and burn down their villages and fields if this order is not obeyed and does not allow himself to be changed by the fact that the Iroquois of Fertile Earth are not fighting Pontiac or the French at all the English have helped and are therefore actually bystanders. Powerless, Blauvogel and his family have to realize that they have to hand him over, otherwise they don't want to destroy the whole village.
Blauvogel surrenders to his fate and Colonel Bouquet. In his mind he searches for memories of his former family and realizes that there is hardly anything left of them. He no longer has any real pictures of his family in his head and they only remain phantoms. After days of walking they reach Bedford, formerly Raystown. Nothing reminds Blauvogel of this place anymore. When he is introduced to his brother Andreas as Georg Ruster, he only recognizes a stranger and hears a name that is alien to him. English is difficult for him, but he understands enough to learn that his parents are dead. You spend the night with an aunt in Bedford. It is not only the food she serves him that remains alien to him in the white world.
The next day they reach their parents' house, but here too everything is strange. His brother liked the big beech, the playground of the yellow sparrows , which Blauvogel still has as one of the last memories of the old home. It sucks out the soil - in “Fertile Earth”, on the other hand, you sacrifice the big beech after every thunderstorm, because it protects the long houses from lightning. Andreas had torn down the old parental home and built a larger new one. The landscape has also changed. Where there used to be dense forests, the family has created many new fields. The greeting from his siblings is short. Your questions are pounding wildly at Blauvogel, but nobody wants to hear the answers. Nobody is interested in his experiences.
Another strip of forest is to be cleared the next day and Blauvogel is woken up early. Blauvogel is not used to the hard work and Andreas rebukes him again and again when he doesn't work hard enough. A family relationship does not want to set in. The felled trees are pulled together and burned with the help of day laborers and oxen. Blauvogel is injured in the hectic pace. The bruising of his hand is not bad, but he needs to be careful.
When Blauvogel's younger brother Peter precociously notes that nothing fertilizes better than the ashes of the trees, Blauvogel answers wisely: “But the trees are dead.” With this he expresses his knowledge that a power is raging here with ax and fire against something long before this power was there. His brothers look up because there is something special in the voice of Blauvogel.
The next day, Blauvogel cannot work with his swollen hand, which annoys Andreas. Blauvogel now also learns that Andreas killed his beloved dog Schnapp when he got sick. His brother becomes a monster for him, and Blue Bird would no longer be surprised if he had been among the criminals of the massacre boiling salt. He also misses the clan's evenings with their songs and games, and he hates the constant rush of his family. The parish pastor visits him the next day. He is horrified when he realizes that Blauvogel gives himself completely to the natural deities of the Iroquois and no longer has any tendency to allegedly Christian and for him meaningless abstract rituals. The pastor does not understand how deeply Bluebird is immersed in the now tangible and real world of Indian mythology with its nature-loving deities.
Since Blauvogel needs to be protected, he is sent to his aunt in Bedford, because the visit was promised anyway, and Blauvogel cannot work in the fields with his injured hand for the time being. In Bedford he is treated by the other children as an outsider, as a savage, godless. From his aunt, however, he gets to feel a love that he only knows from his Indian parents, but which none of his siblings was capable of.
When Andreas sent him a few weeks later that he should come back because he needed him as a worker, he made a decision. He says goodbye to his aunt and joins a supply line that leaves Bedford for Fort Pitt. After Fort Pitt he follows the Ohio to the mouth of the Beaver River , where his home village is located. Here he meets Indians again for the first time, Lena hunters, and enjoys their hospitality when he introduces himself to them according to the Indian rites. He follows the beaver river back to “Fertile Earth”, where he finds his Indian parents and returns to his clan. He is greeted warmly and happily. The cold and hectic world of white people has nothing left to draw him back to it.
expenditure
- Anna Jürgen: blue bird. 13th edition. Kinderbuchverlag, Berlin 1963. The fourth edition of the novel was published by Beltz, after it had up to 26 editions from Ravensburger.
Awards
In 1950 the author received first prize in a competition organized by the GDR Ministry for Popular Education to create new literature for young people.
Film adaptations
The book also served as a template for a DEFA feature film from 1979 and a ZDF series from 1994, both of which differ significantly from the plot of the book.
literature
- Kristina Kroll: blue bird in class. Beltz, 2008, ISBN 978-3-407-62634-9 .