"I certainly like this job you have given me..."

28 November 2023: I am working on my next entry and really loved this fun piece by Cari Carpenter, about (in part) the investigation Zitkala-Ša and a friend, Charlotte Jones, conducted into claims by “Princess Chiquilla,” who claimed Indian ancestry.

Here’s a great part (everything in color is directly quoted from the article): In a letter, Zitkala-Ša gives “ominous warnings about the mission's potential danger. Still we have to go on trying to show that the majority, a large majority of our race is morally clean and it is well to find out the "fakers," perhaps they are not real Indians. That sometimes happens. Then, knowing them, we need never be misled by anything they attempt to do. Be very cautious,—say nothing on this matter for publication. Just quitely [sic] secure information, but do not attempt to see them alone, always have a good friend with you.

Jones's response indicates her delight in this task: ‘I certainly like this job you have given me. One of my chief literary dissipations is to read good detective stories, and now I feel almost as if I were acting one’” (Carpenter 146).

Work Cited

Carpenter, Cari. “Detecting Indianness: Gertrude Bonnin’s Investigation of Native American Identity.” The Wicazo Sa Review, vol. 20, no. 1, 2005, pp. 139–59. JSTOR.