Historical Lyrics and Teachers Gone Wild

www.childhood101.com/preschoolcountingsongs This is an actual website, but when I looked, it didn’t have a Thanksgiving section or a counting section, so they might have taken those down when the play made it to Broadway.

​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Nzx6bVVgc

This song gives the idea. However, two of the listed items are different from the ones in the play. 

​

The part about what the teacher says is most likely from one of the forums or Reddit posts that have most likely been taken down.

The original song is 5 Little Turkeys, but it was most likely changed to 4 since four actors in the play double for these scenes. In the extended version, the third turkey says, "I want to get fat," which was cut for the version in the play. It seems it was cut down to fit the cast size. Also, my guess would be to avoid anything from the fat comment. The first section before the Two Little Indians line is from the song Five Little Turkeys linked above. The part after the middle section is from Five Turkeys Sitting on a Gate. Many versions of the second poem are put into music, but they all involve a twist, with Turkeys worried about being eaten for Thanksgiving.   ​​

10 Little Indians was invented in 1868 by Septimus Winner, the lyrics go: 

"One little, two little, three little Indians,
Four little, five little, six little Indians,
Seven little, eight little, nine little Indians,
Ten little Indian boys."

​

Then, it counts from 10 to 1 in the same pattern. The song became adapted for a minstrel show and retitled 10 Little I****'s. The lyrics are viewable in the YouTube link below, which sings the song accurately to the sheet music. ​

​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yKyf7yC-mQ

​

That was the first iteration of the song. With the growing popularity of the song, Frank J. Green adapted the song into10 Little N*****'s, which became a staple of Minstrel shows being picked up by the famous Christy's Minstrels, known for creating the structure act and stock characters that became popularized and the standard practice for Minstrel shows, and toured all over America and Europe. 

Agatha Christy would see the show and adapt it into a murder mystery novel of the same name in 1939. Later, the title was changed to And Then There Were None, although the original title remained in the UK until 1985. The Russian and Spanish titles of the books are still the offensive title to this day. The book was adapted into a movie in 1945 titled And Then There Were None. They took the lyrics from 10 Little N*****'s and changed it to Indian for a less offensive version. The last two lines are:

"Two little Indian boys sitting in the sun;
One got all frizzled up and then there was one.
One little Indian boy left all alone;
He went and hanged himself and then there were none."

​

Larissa FastHorse took the line "Two little Indians foolin' with a gun.." from the original Minstrel show 10 Little I****'s and the second line, "One little Indian left all alone..." from the adapted show 10 Little N*****'s. The teacher's comment is interesting because the teacher says to replace the word with the slur equal to the N-word of I****, which returns the song to the minstrel show's original title.

Home On The Range never appeared in Dr. Brewster Higley's original text and was published under the name My Western Home in 1876 in the Kansas newspaper the Kirwin Chief. The author became anonymous as the song grew in popularity and was claimed by many traveling Americans who changed lyrics and the tune, such as the 1904 version by William and Mary Goodwin about surviving while traveling. The 1910 version by John A Lomax added the line about the Red Man being pressed to acknowledge the people and their forced removal of the land, which is romanticized by the song. The line is considered offensive due to the derogatory term Redman, but the intention was to acknowledge the harm done. Kansas made the original poem their state song in 1947 after a significant rise in the song's popularity, as Franklin D Roosevelt said it was his favorite song in the 1930s. The song is also known as the Cowboy national anthem. You can see the changes in the song's lyrics overtime on the website below.

https://songofamerica.net/song/home-on-the-range/

​

I believe this specific version of the song was chosen for the play because if you take the lyrics in the song at their intended value, it shows the erasure of Native Americans from America, a theme the play deals heavily with while also still being an example of trying to help while harming with a derogatory lyric. This pick is the perfect example of what happens when you don't have Native voices present.

My Country Tis of Thee, known as America, is a patriotic song written by Samuel Francis Smith in 1831. This song was the national anthem before The Star Spangled Banner became the official U.S. national anthem in 1931. The song's melody is adapted from the UK's God Save the Queen. His use of the melody and lyrics reworks the symbol of the British monarchy to make a statement about democracy. The song was first performed publicly on July 4th, 1831, at a children's Independence Day celebration at Park Street Church in Boston. Original Lyrics read:

"My country, 'tis of thee,
sweet land of liberty,
of thee I sing:
land where my fathers died,
land of the pilgrims' pride,
from every mountainside
let freedom ring!

My native country, thee,
land of the noble free,
thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
thy woods and templed hills;
my heart with rapture thrills
like that above.

No more shall ty­rants here
With haugh­ty steps ap­pear,
And sol­dier bands;
No more shall ty­rants tread
Above the pa­tri­ot dead—
No more our blood be shed
By ali­en hands.

Let music swell the breeze,
and ring from all the trees
sweet freedom's song:
let mortal tongues awake,
let all that breathe partake;
let rocks their silence break,
the sound prolong.

Our fa­thers’ God, to Thee,
Author of li­ber­ty,
To Thee we sing;
Long may our land be bright
With free­dom’s ho­ly light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our king."

​

Abolitionists who wanted to garner support for freeing enslaved people adapted the lyrics to be about race. Notable performances of My Country Tis of Thee:

- Marian Anderson performed the song at the Lincoln Memorial after being banned from performing at the DAR Constitution Hall due to the whites-only policy. Eleanor Roosevelt pushed for her to be able to sing and booked the Lincoln Memorial for her, drawing a crowd of 75,000 with millions of listeners on the radio. 

- MLK Jr. recites the song's first verse at the end of his "I Have A Dream" speech. 

- Crosby, Stills, and Nash performed the song on the first episode of The Tonight Show with Jap Leno, which aired after the attack of 9/11.

- Aretha Franklin sang the song on January 20, 2009, for the first inauguration of Barack Obama, and Kelly Clarkson sang it at his second. 

The Nizhoni Girls is an all-woman Navajo punk band. Nizhoni means beautiful girls in the Dine language. The band is made up by Rebecca Jones on guitar, Elizabeth McKenzie on bass and vocals, and Lisa Lorenzo on drums. The band formed in high shcool in 2015. The bands first perfroamcne was at the Moonlight Lounge during the Gathering of Nations weekend. They were inspired by lsitening to KTNN hits, K is the letter for radios west of the Mississippi river and TNN is the Navajo Nation, which can be found in a playlist on Youtube at this link:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1Nh9eAyO3dILeps566eqM5L5zT6Wk227. 

​

The band's music employs themes of love, inside jokes, and decolonization. They advocate for preserving their culture, raising awareness of indigenous struggles, and inspiring indigenous youth. The band also runs an all ages DIY space. They have also gotten into crafting costumes and artwork for other musicians and venues. 

​

Bandcamp with songs:

https://nizhonigirls.bandcamp.com/album/ep 

​

Facebook link to their page with poster art and pictures of them and album covers:

https://www.facebook.com/nizhonigirls/

​

There are three girls so this may be the band FastHorse had in mind when updating the script to include the Punk theme and the She's not your mascot line.