19th century


Immensity and diversity: Cultural and regional variety multiplies the genre diversity. Conservative estimates place cultural counts at more than three hundred cultural groups and more than two hundred languages in North American when Columbus arrived. The prevalence of hero twins in the Southwest, the flood episodes and recurring emergence of earth diver motifs in creation narratives, and numerous other parallels demonstrate the vibrant borrowing and reinventions that went on for hundred, even thousands, of years.

Literature tells truths about the past that history cannot articulate. Native American literature across time has voced a different experience of American history than anthropological studies or general histories focusing exclusively upon Native concerns. It has voiced a different relationship to historical 'facts' and a different consciousness of the past itself.

w Acute ongoing threats to the sovereignty of their remaining land base and to the ecological balance of Native environments from, among other things, nuclear testing, nuclear waste disposal, coal strip mining and oil, logging, and uranium extraction.
w Face also threats to the integarity of their tribal, national, and ethnic representation and they suffer the internal conflicts created when a diverse set of peoples survive massive depletion in numbers, progressive engulfment by foreign cultures, repeated displacement, and fundamental attack upon their spiritual life.

Sacred and nonsacred storied expressions of language articulate, among many other things, Native understandings of the fundamental truths of creation and the origins of human being and their relationship to the universe. Four porous genre groupings:
w Ritual dramas (chants, ceremonies, rituals themselves, etc.)
w Songs
w Narratives
w Oratory


Autobiography: 'the story of one's life written by oneself'.
w Understood as a literary genre it only came into being in US in the 60s (Georg Misch, Georges Gusdorf, Roy Pascal), up until that time, autobiography, like biography, was simply considered history - another od eof recording experiences of the past. While scholars were laying the foundation for the field of autobiography studies (outlinings its parameters and characteristics), other scholar countered with alternative definitions of the form and its subjects.
w Autobiography is widely understood to be a Western form arising during the Enlightenment. Associated with the term was a pronounced belief in the idea of the autonomous, unified, universal self; but since the 70s the essentialist formulation has been reformulated as relational, multiple, and localized - historically, socially, and culturally constructed.
w While recognising autobiography as a Western form, researching indigenous modes of self-narration and examining the interaction of the two in historical and cultural contexts.
The early period: from pre-Columbian times to the 19th century.
w Six fairly distinct kinds of preliterate autobiographical narratives: coup tales (told by Plains Indian men, narrating the accomplishments to his community; a way for the communityt o be informed about its warriors and for the narrator to articulate his personal experience and rank, perhaps even his right to be heard ), informal autobiographical tales, self-examinations, self-vindications, educational narratives, and stories of quests for visions and power. The self-narrations in this period emphasize a communal or relational self; they often narrate a series of anecdotal moments rather than a unified, chronological life story; and they may be spoken, performed, painted, or crated, rather than written.
Traditional period: 19th century.
w The earliest written (using alphabetic literacy) 'autobiography' is still thought to be the 1768 execution sermon of Samson Occum, though it was not published until 1982. Followed by: William Apess's Son of the Forest (1829), Georg Copway's Life, History, and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (1847). Both used narrative structures adapted from Christian conversion narratives and focused on spiritual confessions and testimonials; interweaving of myth, history, and contemporary incidents as well as an interwining of personal experience with tribal history and culture.
w Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins's Life Among the Piutes: their Wrongs and Claims (1883) - one of the more detailed personal histories, outspokenly critical of the American misdealing with her people, and one of perhaps only 2-3 autobiographies written by a Native woman during the 19th century.
w Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, Zitkala-Ša - 'Why I am a Pagan' (1900), 'Impressions of an Indian Childhood' - essays about growing up on the Yankton Reservation: idyllic scenes of play, work, family gatherings, and storytelling occur amidst the loss of land, the arrival of missionaries, the removal of children from their families, and the ongong suffering of her people at the hands of whites.
Nonfiction prose:
w protest literature, autobiographies, and ethnohistories in response to the curtailment of Native American's rights and attempts to remove Natives from their traditional homelands. Protest writins - Elias Boudinot's An Address to the Whites (1826); William Apes Euology on King Philip (1836); George Copway.

John Rollin Ridge (1827-67), Cherokee.
▪ First Native author to publish a novel: The Life and Adventures of Joawuin Murieta (1854). Ridge combines the exploits of several famous bandits and echoes the experiences of the Cherokees in his description of how greedy settlers drive the hard-working, ambitious Murieta off his land. Murieta is a good man driven to violent deeds by injustice, a gallant gentleman to women, a courageous leader to his men, and an unrelenting enemy to his foes. Narrated at a break-neck pace, the novel is filled with dangerous exploits and frequent gunfire. In its emphasis on regionalism in Clifornia, the romance also reflects the local-color tradition.

Simon Pokagon (1830-99) - published O-gi-mäw-kwe Mit-I-gwä-ki. The novel combines nostalgic reminiscence for the lost golden age of the Potawatomi with fiery attacks on alcohol, which had destroyed Native families.

The novel published by a Native woman in the 19 cent is Wynema: A Child of the Forest (1891).



First half of 20th cent


By the early 1930s prints was emerging as a strong new vehicle for Native American oral traditions. In 1934 John Joseph Mathews published Sundown and D'Arcy McNickle completed his novel, The Surrounded (1936). Both novels have male protagonists who struggle to reconcile ideas about economic 'progress' and Native American life, The Surrounded dealing more explicitly with the economic collapse that the allotment process forced upon Native American country. Another of McNickle's novels, Wind Fron An Enemy Sky (1978), would deal in greater pilitical focus with the crises caused on reservations by the imposition of the market econommy and the failures of the next change in policy, the Indian New Deal.


Women writers:
w Mourning Dove or Humishuma or Christine Quintasket (c. 1888-1936), Okanogan. She was in the forefront of attempts to preserve Native American culture and language through her nvoel and collections of traditional stories. She is one of the forerunners of the twentieth-century Native American novelists. She was one of the first to work considerable matieral from the oral traditions into a work of fiction. The Native American perspective on the sacredness of the earth is also prevalent in her work.
▪ Cogewea, the Half Blood, A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range (1927) - her focus had been to show the difficulties of being a mixed-blood persn in the context of a racist society. McWorther, her collaborator, made his additions (asshole): added many ethnographic notes and railed against white corruption and hypocricy.
▪ Coyote Stories (1933), Tales of the Okanogans (1978), Mourning Dove: a Salishan Autobiography (1990).

w Ella Cara Deloria, or Anpetu Waste or Beautiful Day (1889-1971), Yankon-Dakota. One of the first Native American linguists, a forerunner in the preservation of oral traditions. Waterlily (1944) - draws upon her knowledge of Siouan culture. The novel gives readers an insight into the roles and status of women before European contact. By writing it in the form of fiction, she could add in her personal interpretations of the past. Deloria's work was an important contribution to the understanding of Plains Indian women.


Autobiography:
w A key focus in the 20th century Native American autobiography, as in fiction, has been Native identity. Is a Native American defined by blood quantum, cultural involvement, community recognition, self-identification, or residence? What does it mean to have survived a treacherous history thta suppressed, destroyed, reformulated inigenous cultural and languages? Throughout this period such quesitons are addressed in Native life stories thta continue to be spoken, written, and performed. Collaborative life histories continue, although re-envisioned in the late 20th century by the 'crisis of representation' that particularly chalenged cultural anthropology and its ethnographic fieldwork practices that had previously assumed the possibility of pure linguistic and cultural translation by an 'objective' practitioner, but now were accused of intellectually colonizing Native speakers.
w Charles Alexander Eastman - Boyhood (1902), From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1916) - critiques 'civilization' and Christianity as manifested in US society, yet seeks membership in both. Mourning Dove's Mourning Dove: a Salishan Autobiography autoethnography is both a tribal and personal history.

Features:
▪ Complex mixtures of post-apocalyptic worldviews, an awareness of the miracle of survival, and a hope that goes beyond survival and endurance to senses of tribal and pan-tribal sovereignty and identity.
▪ Unflinching awareness of the impact of tragic losses and a presistent articulation, even celebration, of the good stories of survival, including a strong will to defend tribal and cultural sovereignty and identity.
▪ Complex and multidimensional concepts of communal identity and of language and place/time.
1) Communal senses of identity - common for people to identify themselves as embodiments of families, clans, bands, single tribes, and multiple tribes,
2) authorial senses of responsibility to the community,
3) communal senses of authorship and literature reflected in the uses of oral traditions.
▪ Crucial link between landscape and community identity, the spatial emphasis in many Native religions, the organic ties between storytelling and place, the central belief that the 'environment' is not a place way out there but instead a place in the middle, a community home.
▪ Epistemological perspectives on history are often inclusive of story, myth, and symbolism and therefore inevitably clash with conventional history rooted in the search for verifiable facts and committed to ratoinal plausibility.

Genres:
▪ Mixtures of autobiography and history - George Copway's The Life, History and Travels of Kah-gepga-gah (1850) and N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain (1969).



Some writers


Charles Eastman or Ohiyesa (1858-1939), Santee Sioux. The most widely read Native author in the early 20th century.
▪ In his lifetime, Eastman moved from the nomadic tribal life of the Santee Dakote to the drawing rooms and lecture halls of US and England.
▪ Two collections of short stories: Red Hunters and the Animal People (1904) reflect Dakote respect for animals. Old Indian Days (1907) - emphasis on plot and ethnography, although they include some stories that focus on character. The book focuses on individuals whose actions illustrate Sioux history, customs, and values.
▪ Reinterpretations of traditional stories for children in Wigwam Evenings: Sioux Folktales Retold (1909), reissued in 1910 under Smoky Day's Wigwam Evenings: Indian Stories Retold.

Sylvester Clark Long (1890-1932), Lumbee. Child of ex-slaves, 'mixed-blood'; his mother white and Lumbee, his father African American, white and Native ancestry.
▪ Long Lance (1928) - describes himself as a Blackfeet chief named Buffalo Child Long Lance. Set in the 1890s and after, the book describes growing up oin the far western Canadian Plains. Based on Long's interviews with Canadian Blackfeet and Blood Natives.

John Milton Oskison (1874-1947), one-eighth Cherokee. Wild Harvest (1925), Black Jack Davy (1926) - southwesterns set in Indian Territory just before statehood and deal with the surge of settles into Cherokee land near a fiction town. Brothers Tree (1935) - chronicles the efforts of three sons to hold on to the fart established by their father and mother. Although the major characters are part Native, the novel focuses not on Native life but rather on the importance of honesty, loyalty, hard work, and thrift and on the economic and social history of Oklahoma. Regionalism.

Joseph Mathews (1894-1979), Osage. Emphasised the importance of tribalism, community, and the devastating impact on tribes of the federal government's assimilationist policies. He vividly portrays how Osage culture was affected by life on the reservatoin, by allotment, and by the Oklahoma oil boom of the 20s. After allotment, the Osage retained their mineral rights ,which provided income when oil was discovered. In both of his books, Mathews deals with Osage sovereignty issues.
▪ Wah'Kon-Tah (1932) - based on the journal of Major Laban J. Miles, the first government agent for the Osage, this fictional account portrays the tribe's determination to retain its traditional ways as Laban attempts to lead them down the 'white' world's road.
▪ Sundown (1934) - the hero Challenge Windzer - a young, jazz-age Osage, ashamed of his backward parents but dependent on them for money. Mother is traditionalist, father assimilationist and strong advocate of allotment. Winzer a passive hero who rejects his ancestral past without feeling at home in the white world.

D'Arcy McNickle (1904-77), Cree/Salish. Emphasised the importance of tribalism, community, and the devastating impact on tribes of the federal government's assimilationist policies.
▪ The Surrounded (1936) - chronicle of a mixed-blood's search for his place and emphasis on the importance of oral traditions to the cultural survival of the tribe. It also stresses Native sovereignty over culture and land as well as the destructive rele of the Catholic Church in its attempts to acculturate the Salish. The work movingly describes the disintegration of a tribe as a result of the destruction of its religion and values and the loss of Native lands to settles.
▪ Runner in the Sun (1954) - written for middle-school readers. Set in the pre-contact Southwest, the novel evokes the life, customs, and belief sof the ancient cliff dwelleres of Chaco Canyon, in what now is northwestern New Mexico, as they battle the forces of nature and society that threaten to destroy them. The adventures of Salt, a teenager being trained to lead his people; he survives the efforts of his archenemy, Dark Dealer, to control the village and destroy the young boy.
▪ Wind from an Enemy Sky (1978) - a conflict between groups. The polot contrasts the values of non-Native culture, symbolized by a dam that cuts off the Natives' water and violates a holy place, with the values of Natice culture, symbolized by the tribe's sacred Feather-Boy medicine bundle. Also a contrast between the responses by two brothers, one a traditional and the other an assimilationist, to government efforts to alter Native lifestyle.