Century United States Narrative Monday, April 5, 2010

19^th Century United States Narrative

Monday, April 5, 2010
The Life of Black Hawk (1833)
Racial and Cultural Labels
Indian -- American Indian Native -- Native American

Aborigine Chief

Tribe Clan
How is tribal hierarchy presented?

What is Black Hawk’s position in the tribe?

What is Black Hawk’s relationship and view of Keokuck’s position within the tribe?
Literary Forms
Autobiography Biography

Bicultural composite composition

• 
  What are the differences between the two forms, including purpose and transmission?
  

• 
  How does the “contact” embedded within the autobiography alter its reception by the audience?
  
  • 
    Considering the plethora of editions for Life and the locations for the printings, how is reception significant to the geography? Consider the East versus West view of the Indian.
    

• 
  How is the genre distinctly European as opposed to the Native worldview? (i.e. coup tale)
  

• 
  What are the differences between eastern and western Anglo autobiographies as argued by Krupat?
  

• 
  “Whereas victory is the enabling condition of western autobiography, defeat is the enabling condition of Indian autobiography.” (Krupat, 38) – Explain.
  
  • 
    How is it possible for Krupat to argue that Indian autobiography is a comedy?
    
  • 
    How can Black Hawk be considered a hero by Krupat and Patterson?
    
  • 
    How is Black Hawk presented as a tragic hero? Why is this archetype necessary?
    

• 
  The narrative structure of the as-told-to Indian autobiography is predictable (and comparable to hagiography): “a limited epic-like tragedy followed by glorious insight and expiation….emerging from such a hapless condition, rhetorically at least, redeemed and at the edge of self-knowledge” (Valandra, 111) Does Life of Black Hawk use this structure? If so, how?
  

Interpreter Cultural mediator

Voice
Antoine LeClaire

The son of a French-Canadian father and a Potawatomi mother. Under the sponsorship of William Clark, he learned English. He was fluent in several tribal languages as well as French and English. He was employed as a U.S. Interpreter beginning in 1818 at Fort Armstrong. His name appears on eleven treaties as the interpreter of record. In the 1832 treaty closing the Black Hawk war, “the Indian insisted that LeClaire be given two sections of land as a reward for faithful service” (Jackson 33-34)

Transplanted Virginian who was acting editor of the Galenian (frontier newspaper) at the time he was contacted by LeClaire. He provided no account of the extent of his editing (although the 1882 edition is much longer and more embellished) and it is not clear as to whether or not he ever met Black Hawk. He would later publish an Illinois newspaper, Oquawka Spectator, for forty years. (Jackson 34)

Black Hawk didn’t dictate it

The facts are garbled

No Indian would talk that way

No Indian would ever think of dictating his life story

LeClaire was an unreliable half breed.

• 
  What is the purpose of voice and why is it important to the text and/or the audience?
  

• 
  What happens when the voice is classified as being unmediated? Is any published voice ever fully “unmediated”?
  

• 
  What is the role of the interpreter/translator? How do they function as “cultural mediators”?
  
  • 
    What are the two different types of translation? How does this process alter the text?
    

• 
  Considering the text as a collaborative construction between three people, what is the significance behind the interpreter’s certification of credibility, Black Hawk’s original and translated dedication, and the editor’s note advertisement?
  
  • 
    Why are minority authors prior to the mid-nineteenth century required to have an authenticating white voice in the preface and/or introduction of their work? How does the authentication affect the narrative itself?
    

• 
  How is western history different/similar from a Native view of history?
  

• 
  What differentiates oral tradition from written? Which is better and why?
  

• 
  How is the legitimacy of one’s knowledge connected to the oral and written tradition?
  

• 
  How does memory interact with the oral record and written record differently?
  

Assimilation Removal

Manifest Destiny Doctrine of discovery

Treaty

• 
  What is the political status of Natives? Are they independent/dependent political entities?
  
  • 
    How does the treaty determine the political status of a people?
    
    • 
      Edward Everett presented “the treaty as a signifier of Anglo-American moral superiority” – how is this possible?
      
  • 
    How is land and trade intimately connected to the debate regarding political status and imperialism?
    

• 
  How is the New England Native experience different from the western experience?
  

• 
  “Indians cannot exist in contact with the highest form of human society without becoming corrupt, and the humane thing to do was to remove them to some place where missionaries could work on them in isolation.” (Konkle, 314)
  

• 
  How does Keokuck and Black Hawk represent the ongoing political debates regarding US-Indian policy at the time?
  

Noble savage Barbarian/Heathen/savage

Authenticity Cultural evolution

Literacy Exhibition

• 
  How did the Natives in Life show agency?
  
  • 
    Does a “middle ground” exist?
    

• 
  How was the East’s view different from the West toward the Native American during the majority of the nineteenth century?
  

• 
  Why is it significant that the narrative be the product of an “unassimilated” Indian?
  
  • 
    What is “authentic”? How does one classify an “authentic” Native?
    
  • 
    How does the literary form of autobiography legitimate authenticity?
    

• 
  Considering Krupat argument that Indian autobiographies are only composed by Indians who have not been “civilized” or Christianized, how does this restrict the genre?
  

• 
  How is the literacy of the author used to limit voice and by extension identity?
  
  • 
    How is it possible for “an Indian to speak for himself “ when his voice is being mediated by a translator and an editor (Wallace 483)?
    

• 
  What was the original purpose of Black Hawk’s eastern tour? How did the audience change the purpose?
  

1. 
   How is Black Hawk’s narrative different/similar to the canonical Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1794)?
   

How is the “self-made man” theme visible in Black Hawk?

2. 
   Wallace (488) connects Life of Black Hawk with Dante’s Inferno. What other Christian texts could have influenced the narrative?
   

3. 
   Wallace (489) also mentions the similarity in themes and elements between Life of Black Hawk and nineteenth century slave narratives.
   

1. 
   What were these similarities?
   
2. 
   Why was it necessary to include descriptions of daily life and culture in minority texts?
   

4. 
   How is Life of Black Hawk similar/different to a conversion narrative?
   

5. 
   What is the difference between Apess and Black Hawk?
   

6. 
   Apess argued for that each mode of warfare (the Anglo and the Native) were equally just within its own cultural framework. Does The Life of Black Hawk maintain this view or alter it slightly?
   

7. 
   Who is more dangerous: the Native writer (Apess) or the Native warrior (Black Hawk)?
   

8. 
   How is Life of Black Hawk similar to Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans? Consider the elegiac tone of the novel and its attempt to represent the supposed death of an entire culture allegorized by a single Indian character (Sweet, 497).
   

9. 
   How does Life incorporate/manipulate irony? (consider the medals)
   

10. 
    Ashwill notes that Black Hawk “resembles numerous white moralists” (Mielke, 257).
    

1. 
   How does Life reflect the social reform literature of the day?
   
2. 
   How is its “author” a cultural critic?
   

Treaty of 1804 in St. Louis

Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804-1806), aka Corps of Discovery
War of 1812 (1812-1814)
Monroe Doctrine (1823)
Johnson and Graham’s Lessee v. William McIntosh (1823)

Doctrine of discovery: The European nation claiming discovery of land held exclusive right to buy that land from the Indians.

“The case declared indigenous people savage hunters, not landowners, making them the equivalent of tenants merely occupying their own land at the whim of the United States.“ (Konkle, 310)
Indian Removal Act (1830)
Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia (1831)

The Cherokee did constitute a state, “a distinct political society, separated from others, capable of managing its own affairs and governing itself,” the Cherokee Nation did not “constitute a foreign state in the sense of the constitution.”

Native tribes are “domestic dependent nations”; Indians occupy land but remain “in a state of pupilage. Their relation to the United States resembles that of a ward to his guardian.” (Konkle, 462-3).
Southwestern Indian Removal (1831-1839), Trail of Tears (1836-9)
Worcester vs. Georgia (1832)

Indians’ inherent difference and inferiority may be taken for granted; the acculturated Cherokee are a “savage people.”

London (1836)

Cooperstown (1842)

Boston (1845)

Leeuwarden, Netherlands (1847)

Significant Anglo Figures Associated with Life of Black Hawk
William Clark (1770-1838), Superintendent of Indian Affairs (1829)
Andrew Jackson (1767-1841), 7^th president (1829-1837)
William Henry Harrison (1773-1841), 9^th president (1841)

Battle of Tippecanoe during Tecumseh’s War

Jefferson gave him the power to create treaties (1803-1809)

Zachary Taylor (1784-1850), 12^th president (1849-50)

He accepted the surrender of Black Hawk.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16^th president of the Union (1861-1865)

The only military experience (IL. militia) he obtained prior to becoming president

Spent all of Black Hawk’s war at home in Mississippi; but was assigned by his colonel, Zachary Taylor, to escort Black Hawk to prison. Black Hawk comments that he held him in high regard for the treatment that he provided. (Davis would later marry Zachary Taylor’s daughter, but the marriage was short-lived due to her contracting malaria and dying three months after the wedding).

George Catlin (1796-1872), Anglo

Painter specialized in portraits of Natives in the West

He created the “Indian Gallery” and showcased in the US and Europe from 1838-4

Joseph Brant (c. 1743-1807), Mohawk

Tecumseh (1768-1813), Shawnee

Seattle (c. 1780-1866), Suquamish/Duwamish

Black Hawk (1767-1838), Sauk
Lakota Sioux:

Red Cloud (1822-1909), Sitting Bull (c. 1831-1890), Crazy Horse (c. 1840-1877)

Geronimo (1829-1909), Apache

Black Elk (1863-1950), Lakota

Ishi (c. 1860-1916), Yana

Autobiography was penned in 1768, but remained unpublished until 1982.

“Hunters were not human because their way of life violated God’s dictate that man should tell the ground. Indians being merely savage hunters in a state of nature, they could therefore have but small pretense to a soil which they have never cultivated.” (Konkle, 309)

A key account of the North American indigenous people through the nineteenth century. Created the four stages of human society.

Created the alphabet that laid the foundation for the Cherokee Phoenix (1828)

Includes the anthologized: An Indian’s Looking-Glass for the White Man

Edward Everett, Anglo

Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin), (1876-1938), Yankton Sioux

Paternalism Postcolonialism

Transnationalism Literary nationalism

Sentimentalism Literary tourism/cultural tourism

• 
  What is the difference between colonialism and imperialism?
  

• 
  How is paternalism intimately linked with colonialism and/or imperialism?
  

• 
  Is the United States a postcolonial society?
  

• 
  How is transnationalism portrayed in Black Hawk’s autobiography?
  

• 
  With Federalism being a political imperative from 1789-1841 and 1865-1877, how was literature used to further that political goal and articulate a distinctly American identity?
  

• 
  Can the reader see the global in the local? (Boelhower, 360)
  
  • 
    How does Life present resistance/opposition in the form of microhistory?
    
  • 
    Is this presentation effective?
    
  • 
    By saving the oral traditions and history of his village he won the war?
    

• 
  How does sentamentalism alter the message of Life of Black Hawk?
  

• 
  Why is Life of Black Hawk included within nineteenth century literary nationalism?