Ten Little Indians

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**Ten Little Indians** is an American children's counting out rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Indexnumber of 13512. The word Indian usually refers to Native Americans.

In 1868 songwriter Septimus Winner adapted it as a song, then called "Ten Little Injuns", for a minstrel show.**Lyrics**
**Cover of Negrastrákarnir, an Icelandic version of the song published in 1922**

The modern lyrics for the children's rhyme are:

The song sometimes begins with a repeated verse, "John Brown met a little Indian" before entering the well-known verses.**Minstrel song**
**Songwriter Septimus Winner created an elaborated version of the children's song, called "Ten Little Injuns", in 1868 for a minstrel show.**Derivative songs and books

**Book cover by Frank Green, 1869**

It is generally thought that this song was adapted, possibly by Frank J. Green in 1869, as "Ten Little Niggers", though it is possible that the influence was the other way around, with "Ten Little Niggers" being a close reflection of the text that became "Ten Little Indians". Either way, "Ten Little Niggers" became a standard of the blackface minstrel shows.[2] It was sung by Christy's Minstrels and became widely known in Europe, where it was used by Agatha Christie in her novel of the same name, about ten killings on a remote island. The novel was later retitled And Then There Were None (1939), and remains one of her most famous works. The French and German titles of Christie's novel today are still "Dix Petits Nègres" and "Zehn Kleine Negerlein", respectively. [3]

Variants of this song have been published widely as children's books; what the variants have in common is 'that they are about dark-skinned boys who are always children, never learning from experience'.[4] For example, it had been published in Holland by 1913; in Denmark by 1922 (in Börnenes billedbog); in Iceland in 1922 (as Negrastrákarnir); and in Finland in the 1940s (in Kotoa ja kaukaa: valikoima runosatuja lapsille and Hupaisa laskukirja).[5] The Bengali poem Haradhon er Dosti Chhele (Haradhon's Ten Sons) is also inspired by Ten Little Indians.**Criticism of racist language**
**Because of the use of the racist words, modern versions for children often use "soldier boys" or "teddy bears" as the objects of the rhyme.[6] The unaltered republication of the 1922 Icelandic version in 2007 of Ten Little Negroes by the Icelandic publisher Skrudda caused considerable debate in Iceland, with a strong division between people who saw the book as racist and people who saw it as "a part of funny and silly stories created in the past".[7] In Kristín Loftsdóttir's assessment of the debate,**

The republishing of the book in Iceland triggered a number of parodies or rewritings: and Tíu litlír kenjakrakkar ("Ten little prankster-children") by Sigrún Eldjárn and Þórarinn Eldjárn; 10 litlir sveitastrákar ("Ten little country-boys") by Katrín J. Óskarsdóttir and Guðrún Jónína Magnúsdóttir; and Tíu litlir bankastrákar ("Ten little banker-boys") by Óttar M. Njorðfjörð.[9]**1945 version**
**The following version of the song was included in the first film version of And Then There Were None (1945), which largely took Green's lyrics and replaced the already sensitive word "nigger" with "Indian" (in some versions "soldiers"):**Popular culture

**The Ten Little Indians are guests of Old King Cole in the 1933 Disney cartoon of the same name. They perform a catchy dance which inspires the other nursery rhyme characters to join in.**

In the 1933 Sherlock Holmes film A Study in Scarlet, successive lines of the poem (which replaces "Indians" with "black boys") are found left by the murderer with each new murder victim.

The rock musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson includes a much darker song called "Ten Little Indians" that is modeled after this nursery rhyme.

The opening sequence of Blackstone on APTN features a version of the song.

The novel by Agatha Christie And Then There Were None was originally titled Ten Little Niggers. The revised title comes from the last line of the derivative minstrel song.

Bill Haley & His Comets did a version in 1954.[11]

"Ten Little Indians" is a 1962 single by the Beach Boys, also present on their début album Surfin' Safari.

In England's Mickey Mouse Annual No. 6, the song was adapted into the comic "10 Little Mickey Kids". It depicted ten little mouse babies who meet unfortunate ends until there are only two left, who then attempt and fail suicide.[12]

The opening song on Harry Nilsson's album Pandemonium Shadow Showis an adaptation of "Ten Little Indians", though this version is about the Ten Commandments.

One of German punk band Die Toten Hosen's greatest hits is an adaptation called "Zehn kleine Jägermeister" ("Ten Little Hunters"), which is included on their 1996 album Opium fürs Volk. The music video features ten deer (part of the logo of the Jägermeister alcohol beverage) being killed or waylaid in a variety of ways while human characters consume copious quantities of alcohol.

The AMC television series The Walking Dead focuses on the arrival of Tyreese, Sasha, and three other survivors (one being injured) at the prison, and one part of the scene showing Sasha describing the outside world as "Ten Little Indians".

The spoof "And Then It Went Wrong (Not Clickbait)" is based on "And Then There Were None". It uses the poem very loosely, yet keeps the bumblebee verse from the original poem. "A bumblebee stung one, and then there were five." It also follows the red herring verse-"A red herring swallowed one, and then there were three."**Bibliography**

* —, "Reviews and Literary Notices", pp. 770–779, The Atlantic Monthly Vol. III (June, 1859) No. XX, Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company.
* Wilson, B.M. "John Brown's Ten Little Injuns" pp. 32–36, Wilson's Book of Drills and Marches for Young People and Small Children of Both Sexes. New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, Publishers (1895).
* Winner, Septimus. "Ten Little Injuns" (Sheet music). Boston: Oliver Ditson Company (1868).

**See also**

* Ten Green Bottles

**Notes**

1. I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 333–4.
2. P. V. Bohlman and O. Holzapfel, The folk songs of Ashkenaz (A-R Editions, 2001), p. 34; Kristín Loftsdóttir. 2011. ‘Racist Caricatures in Iceland in the 19th and the 20th Century’, in Iceland and Images of the North, edited by S.R. Ísleifsson. Québec: Prologue Inc, 187–204 (pp. 192—93).
3. A. Light, Forever England: femininity, literature, and conservatism between the wars (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 243.
4. Kristín Loftsdóttir. 2011. ‘Racist Caricatures in Iceland in the 19th and the 20th Century’, in Iceland and Images of the North, edited by S.R. Ísleifsson. Québec: Prologue Inc, 187–204 (p. 193).
5. Kristín Loftsdóttir. 2011. ‘Racist Caricatures in Iceland in the 19th and the 20th Century’, in Iceland and Images of the North, edited by S.R. Ísleifsson. Québec: Prologue Inc, 187–204 (pp. 193, 196).
6. R. Riley, P. McAllister, J. Symonsm B. Cassiday., The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Agatha Christie (Continuum, 2001), pp. 144–45.
7. Kristín Loftsdóttir. 2011. "Racist Caricatures in Iceland in the 19th and the 20th Century". In Iceland and Images of the North, edited by S.R. Ísleifsson. Québec: Prologue Inc, 187–204 (pp. 198—200, quoting p. 199).
8. Kristín Loftsdóttir. 2011. ‘Racist Caricatures in Iceland in the 19th and the 20th Century’, in Iceland and Images of the North, edited by S.R. Ísleifsson. Québec: Prologue Inc, 187–204 (p. 200).
9. Sigrún Eldjárn and Þórarinn Eldjárn, Tíu litlir kenjakrakkar (Reykjavík: Mál og menning, 2007); Katrín J. Óskarsdóttir and Guðrún Jónína Magnúsdóttir, 10 litlir sveitastrákar ([Hella]: Vildarkjör, [2007]); Óttar M. Norðfjörð, Tíu litlir bankastrákar ([Reykjavík]: Sögur, 2008).
10. A. Christie, Ten Little Indians (New York: Pocket Books, 1964).
11. https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/archive/the-history-of-ten-little-indians-q1WdVbswNEu5Hat3KCQoAA/
12. Anderson, Drew, "6 Insane Disney Comics You Won't Believe Are Real: The Mickey Mouse Death 'n' Dismemberment Special", cracked.com, February 02, 2013.

**External links**