Credits
Penciller(s):
?
Inker(s):
?
Colorist(s):
?
Letterer(s):
?
Subject Matter
Genres:
anthropomorphic
Character(s):
Oswald (a child-like rabbit); Hi-yah Wahoo (a child-like Red Indian friend); Mrs. Possum (a motherly store proprietress); Toby Bear (a bear-child friend who likes to fish); Maggie Lou (a doll child friend); Mister Grizzly Bear
First Line:
Here's the best hatchet in my store, Oswald ... and cheap at the price!
Synopsis:
Hi-yah, taking offense, intends to boycott Oswald's proposed change of venue for his birthday party. Hi-yah praises his own hunting skill after he lifts Grizzly's seemingly abandoned bearskin coat of fur and recovers his own canoe filled with Toby and Oswald's catch of fish, but after he makes off with Mrs. Possum's birthday cakes he is found out with his swag and mends his ways, like a naughty child yielding to his peers' morally authorotative implied threat of force by aggrieved Grizzly.
Reprinting
Reprint Notes:
Miscellaneous
Pages:
8
Notes:
Du Bois script credit as per page 75, Gaylord Du Bois's Account Books, Sorted by Title, compiled by Randal W. Scott (1985).
Du Bois's didacticism is on display here, as the generic American Indian, Hi-ya Wahoo, calls his domicile a tipi, while protagonist Oswald, of mainstream culture, calls it a tepee. The variant spellings are an example of Du Bois's recurring didactic themes of both language and culture. It demonstrates respect for different cultures, and subtlely insinuates into the minds of his young readers an association of the spelling, tipi, with the Red Indian, and the dignity of his culture.
As in other Du Bois strips and stories from this period written for younger children, there is no real malice or villainy, only hurt feelings, petulance, selfishness, and the impish mischief of a misbehaving child. And, as in many of his stories in the genre, a party and theft of food are central to the narrative.
The spelling of Hi-yah is changed from previous indexer's Hi-Yah following suit from Du Bois's Little Beaver text stories in which the supporting Navajo character's name in typeset is Po-ko. And for the pun. Hi-ya, pal.