Ten Indians

Short story by Ernest Hemingway

"Ten Indians" is a short story by American writer Ernest Hemingway, featuring protagonist Nick Adams, Hemingway's autobiographical alter ego.^[1] It was published in 1927 in the collection Men Without Women.^[2] The title is derived from a comment made by Mr. Garner - "That makes nine of them" - after moving an Indian (Native American) who had passed out on the road. The title also alludes to the 1864 children's song, Ten Little Indians.^[3]

Plot summary

Set in North Michigan on the Fourth of July it features Nick Adams as he is travelling home with Joe Garner and their family in a large wagon. They pass several drunk Indians and then Joe Garner has to stop and pull a drunk Indian out of the road, which he says is the ninth. The Garners joke about the state of the Indians, and the two sons also disparage Nick's Indian girlfriend Pru and that she smells like a skunk. Nick feels uncomfortable and denies that she is his girlfriend.

When Nick returns home from the Garners his father says that today he saw Pru in the woods with a someone called Frank Washburn. His father said that they seemed happy and that they 'threshed about' in the woods. Nick starts to cry. That next morning Nick takes a while to remember the heartbreak.

Analysis

By depicting a large group of drunken Indians the story reinforces common racial prejudices against Native Americans.^[4] Nick feels unable to challenge the Garners views.^[5] Nick's father is also unhappy about Nick's relationship with Pru, it is also implied that he lied to his son about Pru 'threshing about' with Frank.^{[citation needed]}

References

^ Bloom's Major Literary Characters: Nick Adams MLC Series, Infobase Publishing, 2009] Retrieved 28/9/2022.
^ A Note on Ernest Hemingway's 'Ten Indians' and William Faulkner's 'The Sound and the Fury' Retrieved 28/9/2022.
^ Ten Indians Summary Retrieved 28/9/2022.
^ Ten Indians Analysis Retrieved 28/9/2022.
^ Ten Indians' and the pleasures of close reading.. The Free Library. 1996 Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Retrieved 28/9/2022.

External links

Full text of "Ten Indians" at HathiTrust Digital Library
The full text of Ten Indians at Wikisource

Ernest Hemingway

Bibliography

Novels

The Torrents of Spring (1926)
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
To Have and Have Not (1937)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Across the River and into the Trees (1950)
The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Nonfiction

Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Green Hills of Africa (1935)

Posthumous

A Moveable Feast (1964)
Islands in the Stream (1970)
The Dangerous Summer (1985)
The Garden of Eden (1986)
True at First Light (1999)
Under Kilimanjaro (2005)

Short stories

"Up In Michigan" (1921)
"Indian Camp" (1924)
"The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife" (1925)
"The End of Something" (1925)
"The Three-Day Blow" (1925)
"The Battler" (1925)
"A Very Short Story" (1925)
"Soldier's Home" (1925)
"The Revolutionist" (1925)
"Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" (1925)
"Cat in the Rain" (1925)
"Out of Season" (1925)
"Cross Country Snow" (1925)
"My Old Man" (1925)
"Big Two-Hearted River" (1925)
"Banal Story" (1926)
"Today is Friday" (1926)
"A Canary for One" (1927)
"Fifty Grand" (1927)
"Hills Like White Elephants" (1927)
"The Killers" (1927)
"The Undefeated" (1927)
"Che Ti Dice La Patria?" (1927)
"In Another Country" (1927)
"Now I Lay Me" (1927)
"A Simple Enquiry" (1927)
"Ten Indians" (1927)
"An Alpine Idyll" (1927)
"A Pursuit Race" (1927)
"On the Quai at Smyrna" (1930)
"Fathers and Sons" (1932)
"A Natural History of the Dead" (1932)
"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1933)
"A Day's Wait" (1933)
"The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio" (1933)
"A Way You'll Never Be" (1933)
"The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1936)
"The Capital of the World" (1936)
"The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (1936)
"Old Man at the Bridge" (1938)

Short story
collections

Three Stories and Ten Poems (1923)
In Our Time (1925)
Men Without Women (1927)
Winner Take Nothing (1933)
The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories (1938)
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1961)
The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War (1969)
The Nick Adams Stories (1972)
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987)
Ernest Hemingway: The Collected Stories (1995)

Story fragments

"On Writing"

Poetry

88 Poems (1979)
Complete Poems

Plays

Today is Friday (1926)
The Fifth Column (1938)

Screenplays

The Spanish Earth (1937 film)

Letters and
journalism

By-Line: Ernest Hemingway (1967)
Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters, 1917–1961 (1981)
Dateline: Toronto (1985)
The Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway (2011)

Adaptations

The Sun Also Rises	1957 film 1984 film Opera The Select (The Sun Also Rises) Ballet
"The Killers"	1946 film 1956 film 1964 film Bukowski short story
A Farewell to Arms	1932 film 1957 film 1966 TV series
To Have and Have Not	1944 film The Breaking Point (1950) The Gun Runners (1958) Captain Khorshid (1987)
For Whom the Bell Tolls	1943 film 1959 TV play 1965 TV series 1984 song
The Old Man and the Sea	1958 film 1990 film 1999 animated film
Other film adaptations	The Macomber Affair (1947) Under My Skin (1950) The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962) Islands in the Stream (1977) Soldier's Home (1977) My Old Man (1979) After the Storm (2001) The Garden of Eden (2008) Across the River and into the Trees (2022)