The modern lyrics for the children's rhyme are: \relative c' \addlyrics
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
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. 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, and remains one of her most famous works. The Spanish, French, German and Russian titles of Christie's novel today are still "Diez negritos", "Dix Petits Nègres", "Zehn Kleine Negerlein" and «Десять негритят», respectively. 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'. For example, it had been published in the Netherlands by 1913; in Denmark by 1922 ; in Iceland in 1922 ; and in Finland in the 1940s. The Bengali poem Haradhon er Dosti Chhele 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. 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". 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 by Sigrún Eldjárn and Þórarinn Eldjárn; 10 litlir sveitastrákar by Katrín J. Óskarsdóttir and Guðrún Jónína Magnúsdóttir; and Tíu litlir bankastrákar by Óttar M. Njorðfjörð.
1945 version
The following version of the song was included in the first film version of And Then There Were None, which largely took Green's lyrics and replaced the already sensitive word "nigger" with "Indian" :
Popular culture references
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 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. In the Looney Tunes cartoon Scalp Trouble, a soldier shoots over the wall at the enemy, keeping score to the tune of the nursery rhyme. At the end of the scene, a brave pops up and says, "Ten little Indian boys" before hitting the soldier on the head with a Tomahawk. 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. "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. The opening song on Harry Nilsson's album Pandemonium Shadow Show is 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", which is included on their 1996 album Opium fürs Volk. The music video features ten deer being killed or waylaid in a variety of ways while human characters consume copious quantities of alcohol. The television series The Walking Dead focuses on the arrival of Tyreese, Sasha, and three other survivors at the prison, and one part of the scene showing Sasha describing the outside world as "Ten Little Indians". In the musical version of Spring Awakening, the character Moritz sings a song called “And Then There Were None”, foreshadowing his later suicide.
