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121 Butter Maiden and Maize Girl Survive Death Leap Even now, Native American Barbie gets only so many roles: Indian Princess, Pocahontas, or, in these parts, Winona— maiden who leapt for brave love from the rock where eagles mate. In my day, she might have played Minnehaha, laughing waters, or the lovely one in the corn oil ads: “We call it maize . . .” Or even Captain Hook’s strangely erotic Tiger Lily. Oh, what I would have done for a Chippewa Barbie. My mother refused to buy tourist souvenir princesses in brown felt dresses belted with beads, stamped Made in China. “They’re stunted,” Mom would say. Her lips in that line that meant she’d said the last word. She was right, those dolls were stubby as toddlers, though they wore women’s clothes. Most confusing was the feather that sprouted at the crown of each doll’s braided hair. “Do they grow there?” a playmate once asked, showing me her doll from Mount Rushmore. I recall she gazed at my own brown locks then stated, “Your mother was an Indian Princess.” My denial came in an instant. My mother had warned me: “Tell them that our tribe didn’t have any royalty.” But there was a problem of believability, you see, a crumb of fact in the fantasy. Turns out, Mom had floated in the town parade in feathers, raven wig and braids, when crowned the college “Maiden.” Her escort was the college “Brave” they chose each autumn. Oh, Mom . . . you made it hard on us, what you did at 18— and worse, the local rumor that it was you on the butter box! You on their toast each morning, you the object of the joke, the trick boys learned of folding the fawn-like Butter Maiden’s naked knees up to her chest to make a pair of breasts! 122 I cannot count the times I argued for Mom’s humble status. How many times I insisted she was no princess, though a beauty who just happened to have played along in woodland drag one day. I wonder, did my sisters have to answer for the princess? Did you? Couldn’t we all have used a real doll, a round, brown, or freckled, jeans and shawl-wearing pow-wow teen queen? A lifelike Native Barbie— better yet, two who take the plunge off lover’s leap in tandem and survive. ...

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