What Are “Indianettes”?

Pocatello lay in what I always thought of as the “toe jam” of the boot-shaped state of Idaho. We grew up on religion and potatoes, and both were taken extremely seriously. Folks went to church on Sundays and brought potato salad, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes, and potato fudge to every social function you can think of, and some especially creative ones, like “bring in the spring,” as if a season needed to find its way to us through the stomach.

I was one of three Natives in a graduating class of 300 at Pocatello High School. Leading up to my first day as an official high school student, I had always heard of the “Indianettes” at Poky from my two older, more world-wise sisters. The eyerolls each time they spoke of these “Indianettes” made me forever default to using air quotes around the word. It wasn’t until soph­omore year that I finally learned what an “Indianette” looked like.

If you type, “Indianette” in a new document, Word considers it an error and will try to correct it with “indianite,” a silicate mineral also known as anorthite, that can be found in India. Funny that even Word knows there’s no such thing as “Indianettes” but try telling that to the 15 or so perky, head-nodding white girls of Pocatello High School in the late 1990s.

Rhonda and I trailed slowly in the long line leading into the dark gym, feeling more like lazy cows than just-turned 16-year-olds. I strained on my tiptoes again to see if I could see my older sister in the crowd, but seniors were given priority seating, like VIPs in a club. No use trying to see her in the darkness that put everything in suspense in the gym. What were they hiding in there, anyway? All the fuss for what? No one even liked school, let alone the first week, full of awkward glances at freshly cut hair, new outfits, and scuffing shoes, all lasting seconds but full of weight.

“Ouch!” cried Rhonda, then turned to glare at me, all five-foot-two of her huffing up, like an indignant hedgehog.

“Sorry,” I said, for the third time, “but can you see anything?”

“It’s okay, but you know I can’t see anything except backs,” and we both laughed, the offense already left two steps behind.

Resigned to shuffling like lazy cows, we turned back to giggling at hairstyles and new makeup trends. Reaching the inside of the packed gym, Rhonda and I held hands so as not to get separated. For three years we had been locked together, the short, chubby white girl and the Indian girl with tilted eyes (slanted, they said, like a Chinese girl, which none of us in Poky had ever seen in real life).

Suddenly, another hand reached out, and I knew it was my sister’s, her grip solid and confident, never hesitant. Meeting her chocolate eyes—my own adjusted now to the shadows—she nodded toward the bleachers two rows back and tugged Rhonda and I until we were seated next to her.

“So, what’s with all the mystery?” I laughed.

“Just wait,” she sighed, and there was nothing left to do but that; she never used more words than necessary, and I knew better than to ask. Just then, flood lights came on, dotting the shiny gym floor in blue, red, and white, our school colors. Music followed, a harsh shout to drown out the droning of student chatter. Skipping into the colored floodlights came more than a dozen “Indianettes,” they couldn’t be anything else.

My mouth must have been open because my sister nudged me in the side and I immediately shut it.

“What in the…?” my sentence cut off because what more could I say? I knew better than to swear because we didn’t do that and there were no other words for what I was seeing. Long, feathered warbonnets adorned each girl’s bobbing head. My mind flashed to Tiger Lilly in Peter Pan, but there were no Indians here, only white girls I had gone to school with since seventh grade.

“What madness is this?” I thought. The “feathers” were obviously fake, dyed red, white, and blue, shedding already at the exercise of the peppy girls now jogging back and forth across the stage, their arms raised in geometric shapes, their mouths shouting war whoops. But girls don’t war whoop or wear warbonnets. I looked to my sister, her crossed arms and look of youthful disgust apparent, highlighted by the glare of the stage.

“I’m sorry,” came Rhonda’s low apology, and I glanced over, having completely forgotten her. Automatically, I shook my head, always placating, used to putting people at ease in these types of awkward situations. But my head swiveled back as the music came to a deafening crescendo, and the new basketball team came thundering into the light.

“What could be worse than this?” my mind raged, but that question was answered in the next second as the head coach came to the fore with a large, fake arrow clutched in his meaty hands, held dramatically over his head. Muffled words came out, drowned by fever-pitched squeals, and then his arms came down, breaking the arrow across his raised knee, although “bent” described the sorry arrow better.

The “Indianettes” cried out, their skinny arms pumping up and down, their bare legs kicking, and then the basketball players were named, all while my mind lay dazed, confused, embarrassed, and hurt. Finally, I understood the eyerolls of my sisters.

I’ll never forget that first, and last, pep rally. Rhonda and I found better uses of our time over the next two years, content to hang together, just the two of us, minus the erroneous “Indianettes.” In 2021, they changed the Pocatello High School Indian mascot and, just like in Word, the “Indianettes” were replaced by some­thing else.