Indian Nation: Native American Literature and Nineteenth-century NationalismsIndian Nation documents the contributions of Native Americans to the notion of American nationhood and to concepts of American identity at a crucial, defining time in U.S. history. Departing from previous scholarship, Cheryl Walker turns the "usual" questions on their heads, asking not how whites experienced indigenous peoples, but how Native Americans envisioned the United States as a nation. This project unfolds a narrative of participatory resistance in which Indians themselves sought to transform the discourse of nationhood. Walker examines the rhetoric and writings of nineteenth-century Native Americans, including William Apess, Black Hawk, George Copway, John Rollin Ridge, and Sarah Winnemucca. Demonstrating with unique detail how these authors worked to transform venerable myths and icons of American identity, Indian Nation chronicles Native American participation in the forming of an American nationalism in both published texts and speeches that were delivered throughout the United States. Pottawattomie Chief Simon Pokagon's "The Red Man's Rebuke," an important document of Indian oratory, is published here in its entirety for the first time since 1893. By looking at this writing through the lens of the best theoretical work on nationality, postcoloniality, and the subaltern, Walker creates a new and encompassing picture of the relationship between Native Americans and whites. She shows that, contrary to previous studies, America in the nineteenth century was intercultural in significant ways. |
Contents
The Outsider Inside | 1 |
Writing Indians | 25 |
The Irony and Mimicry of William Apess | 41 |
Black Hawk and the Moral Force of Transposition | 60 |
The Terms of George Copways Surrender | 84 |
Gender | 139 |
Apesss Eulogy on King Philip | 164 |
Native American Literature and NineteenthCentury | 185 |
The Red Mans Rebuke | 209 |
Works Cited | 239 |
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Ameri American Indian American national American Studies Andrew Jackson argues autobiography believe Bhabha Black Hawk Black Hawk War California called Canfield century Cherokee chief Christian civilized claims context Copway's covenant chain Edited Elizabeth Peabody English essay Euro-American example father George Copway Hawk's human Indian nation Indians and whites insists Jackson Joaquín Murieta John Rollin Ridge killed King Philip Krupat land language liberty live Manifest Destiny Mexicans Mount Shasta narrative national identity Native American literature Native American texts nature nineteenth nineteenth-century novel Ojibwa Paiutes passage Pearce Pequot personification Piutes poem political present Puritans quoted race reader Red Man's represented Ridge's Rogin role Sarah Winnemucca Sauk savage seems sense Slotkin Smith speak speech Stand Watie story subjugated discourse tells tion transpositional transpositional and subjugated transpositional discourse treaty tribal tribe United warriors white culture William Apess women words writing