Ten Indians

“Ten Indians” is part of the Nick Adams chronology, a set of short stories that traces Nick’s development from childhood through manhood. It was published third, after “Indian Camp” and “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” and while it shares traits with those first two stories (including anti-Indigenous bias from its white characters), “Ten Indians” differs in its portrayal of Indigenous people. In the first two, they are active­—in “Indian Camp,” Indigenous men row Nick and his family’s canoe, and Nick’s father performs a cesarean section on an Indigenous woman; in “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” Indigenous men chop logs, and Nick’s father gets into an argument with Dick Boulton, an Indigenous man who is bigger and stronger than he is. By contrast, the Indigenous people in “Ten Indians” are either immobilized or they exist in rumor or memory—the ones the Garners encounter are passed out, and people like Prudence Mitchell and Billy Tableshaw are only talked about.

As such, while the Nick Adams stories track Nick’s coming-of-age, they also track the subjugation of Indigenous people by white settlers. This is established immediately through Ernest Hemingway’s title choice. “Ten Indians” refers to the minstrel