Writing Indian Nations: Native Intellectuals and the Politics of Historiography, 1827-1863 / Edition 1

by Maureen Konkle

Overview

In the early years of the republic, the United States government negotiated with Indian nations because it could not afford protracted wars politically, militarily, or economically. Maureen Konkle argues that by depending on treaties, which rest on the equal standing of all signatories, Europeans in North America institutionalized a paradox: the very documents through which they sought to dispossess Native peoples in fact conceded Native autonomy.

As the United States used coerced treaties to remove Native peoples from their lands, a group of Cherokee, Pequot, Ojibwe, Tuscarora, and Seneca writers spoke out. With history, polemic, and personal narrative these writers countered widespread misrepresentations about Native peoples' supposedly primitive nature, their inherent inability to form governments, and their impending disappearance. Furthermore, they contended that arguments about racial difference merely justified oppression and dispossession; deriding these arguments as willful attempts to evade the true meanings and implications of the treaties, the writers insisted on recognition of Native peoples' political autonomy and human equality. Konkle demonstrates that these struggles over the meaning of U.S.-Native treaties in the early nineteenth century led to the emergence of the first substantial body of Native writing in English and, as she shows, the effects of the struggle over the political status of Native peoples remain embedded in contemporary scholarship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807854921
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	02/23/2004
Edition description:	1
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Maureen Konkle is associate professor of English at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	1
	Americans	1
	The Theory of Indian Difference and the Practice of Treaty-Making	8
	Evading Indian Autonomy	17
	Criticism and the Political Struggles of Native Peoples	26
	Recognition, History, Playing Indian	36
1	The Cherokee Resistance	42
	Everybody's Indians	42
	Civilization and Misrepresentation	49
	Debating Removal	61
	Time Immemorial	71
	Sequoyah, the Cherokee Antiquarians, and Progress	78
2	William Apess, Racial Difference, and Native History	97
	A Real Wild Indian	97
	Experiences	106
	Nullifying Acts	119
	Denominated Indian	131
	Apess's Effects	146
3	Traditionary History in Ojibwe Writing	160
	Getting Inside Indians' Heads	160
	Ethnology and Effacement	166
	Chaos, Conversion, and Progress	181
	William Warren's Tribal Knowledge	197
	Sentiment and Performance	205
4	Reclaiming Red Jacket and the Confederacy in Iroquois Writing	224
	Learned Pagans	224
	Contrary Eloquence in Red Jacket and David Cusick	232
	Seneca Historians in the Wake of Racial Differentiation	250
	Repoliticizing Red Jacket	265
	Empire of the Real	274
	Conclusion	288
	Notes	295
	Bibliography	329
	Acknowledgments	357
	Index	359

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

An important contribution to the scholarship on nineteenth-century Native literature.—Early American Literature



An extraordinary book.—Western American Literature



A much-needed volume on Native American history. . . . This book should . . . come as a clarion call to those of us who research Native American history. The concept of 'nation' is not wholly cultural—it is political, and an emphasis on the former at the expense of the latter elides vital bases for Native American political sovereignty. Writing Indian Nations serves as a much needed reminder that this remains as true today as it was in the nineteenth century.—Western Historical Quarterly



Makes a significant and welcome contribution to the growing body of scholarly work dedicated to the retrieval of the more obscure early writings [of American Indian intellectuals and activists].—American Historical Review



This compelling book . . . sets forth a cohesive multitribal history of Native writing. . . . [An] invaluable contribution. . . . Konkle's scholarship is first-rate, grounded in comprehensive archival research yet not in the least insulated from real-world politics and pedagogies.—American Literature



Konkle challenges readers to reexamine both the writing of Native intellectuals and the critical frameworks—including her own—that have guided their interpretation.—NC Historical Review



Konkle has produced a sterling account that seamlessly blends treaty law, literary criticism, and history into a comprehensive and detailed story about what Native writers and political leaders in the early part of the nineteenth century had to say about the pitfalls and possibilities generated when these talented individual Indians and the First Nations they were part of encountered U.S. colonialism.—David E. Wilkins, University of Minnesota

Editorial Reviews

"An important contribution to the scholarship on nineteenth-century Native literature."
-- "Early American Literature"

"An extraordinary book."-
-- "Western American Literature"

"An extraordinary book."-
- "Western American Literature"

From the Publisher