What do you think?
Rate this book
Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical Anthology
Designed as a corrective to colonial literary histories that have excluded Native voices, this anthology brings together a variety of primary texts produced by the Algonquian peoples of New England during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and very early nineteenth centuries. Included among these written materials and objects are letters, signatures, journals, baskets, pictographs, confessions, wills, and petitions, each of which represents a form of authorship. Together they demonstrate the continuing use of traditional forms of memory and communication and the lively engagement of Native peoples with alphabetic literacy during the colonial period. Each primary text is accompanied by an essay that places it in context and explores its significance. Written by leading scholars in the field, these readings draw on recent trends in literary analysis, history, and anthropology to provide an excellent overview of the field of early Native studies. They are also intended to provoke discussion and open avenues for further exploration by students and other interested readers. Above all, the texts and commentaries gathered in this volume provide an opportunity to see Native American literature as a continuity of expression that reflects choices made long before contact and colonization, rather than as a nineteenth―or even twentieth-century invention.Contributors include Heidi Bohaker, Heather Bouwman, Joanna Brooks, Kristina Bross, Stephanie Fitzgerald, Sandra Gustafson, Laura Arnold Leibman, Kevin McBride, David Murray, Laura Murray, Jean O'Brien, Ann Marie Plane, Philip Round, Jodi Schorb, David Silverman, and Hilary E. Wyss.
288 pages, Paperback
First published May 28, 2008
24 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 14, 2016
The idea that baskets and other non-alphabetic objects are texts continues to be interesting to me, but neither this book nor _Queequeg's Coffin_ succeeded in convincing me that they are texts in ways meaningfully similar to the ways that alphabetic texts are, much as I may want them to be.
Some of the most interesting bits:
"Through tatooing, weaving, carving, dyeing, and countless other techniques, Native peoples marked out their relationship to kin, community, and spirit world, communicating across time and space about all that mattered to them . . . . material objects played -- and continue to play -- a significant role in Algonquian communication practices. Burial goods, basket patterns, pictographs, mats that line the interiors of wigwams, and even utensils reinforce oral exchanges with physical inscriptions whose functions, although quite varied, always communicate something to members of the communities in which they are produced. [Footnote: "Tribal historians Melissa Jayne Fawcett and Gladys Tantaquidgeon have pointed out the ways that Mohegan basket weavers, even well in to the eighteenth century, communicated among themselves about community identity and the political divisions within their tribe through painted basketry motifs that represented tribal unity and dispersal (Symbolic Motifs," 98-101, 115-116). In her brief essay about Wampanoag home-building practices, Linda Coombs, of the Wampanoag Indigenous Program at Plimoth Plantation, explains how significant meaning in Native productions is tied up in the technologies of production: 'To Native thinking, the ceremonial cannot be separated from the practical. Homes are much, much more than a list of materials or the utilization of certain techniques" (Ancient Technology)] . . . . Indians used various inscription technologies from their own traditions and readily integrated these practices into pen-and-ink inscriptions.
"Are carvings or painted images part of literary systems? Are pictures? clothing? Tattoos? Weaving? Is there a difference between what one study calls 'complex iconography' and a 'writing system' (Writing without Words)? . . . . Birchbark messages became letters and petitions, wampum council records became treaties, journey pictographs became written 'journals' that contained similar geographic and relational markers, and finally, histories recorded on birchbark and wampum became written communal narratives' (L Brooks, "The Common Pot") (5)
"on conversion as a response to death and disease, see A Remnant Remains in _A Praying People_ and Robert James Naeher, "Dialogue in the Wilderness" (6)
A number of articles reinforce the ways in which Indians participated in and revised their literacy practices -- including the critical role that "praying indians" played in translating the Indian Bible into Massachusett and then adding their own marginalia to the text (78).
One section details a medicine bundle that included a textual page from a Bible. "the medicine bundle should be viewed as a Native text whose various elements must be read or interpreted both individually and collectively in order to discern its meaning. The Bible fragment, in the context of the medicine bundle, must be interpreted from a Native perspective, given that it reflects a process of transformation and appropriation of European objects into a Native worldview. Although the Pequots may have understood the literal meaning of the Bible page, the context in which it was found suggests that its original meaning (from an English perspective) was essentially transformed in order to accommodate a Native perspective on manitou and power. the text of the medicine bundle and its contents can be read as representing evolving Native strategies intended to assist the living and the dead as they traverse spiritual and physical worlds forever changed by the arrival of the Europeans (140-141).
One section includes a "Pequot Execution Narrative," which the authors note is an example of "a body of writings by our about Native captives [that] makes for a compelling variation on Indian captivity literature" (149).
"[Footnote 64:] Indian captivity narrative scholarship (which focuses largely on white colonists captured by Native Americans) emphasizes the importance of the captive's liminal state -- the period of confusion and strategic adaptation while he or she struggles to negotiate new rituals, social codes, and systems of meaning. Garret's assertion offers an intriguing parallel to Rowlandson's disconcerting admission, "I can remember the time, when I used to sleep quietly without workings in my thoughts, whole nights together; but now it is otherwise with me' (True History of the captivity'). Hilary Wyss foregrounds the parallels between captivity narratives and Christian Indian tracts, arguing that both are premised on a 'disruption of racial or cultural identity' through a 'somewhat parallel' process of separation from community and appropriation of an 'altered (Christian) identity" (Writing Indians, 13). For a fuller reading of the overlap between Indian captivity narratives by whites and Christian missionary narratives by Indians, see ibid. 12-15.
Footnote 72: Mandell notes: "the religion introduced by English invaders now acted as a cement for native enclaves, and the transformation of Indian groups was in part facilitated by the faith that offered social and psychological stability in the sea of change' (Behind the Frontier 59). Homer Noley (Choctaw) has demanded recognition for those Native Americans who worked to spread Christianity to Native peoples 'because of the strength of their belief' ("The Interpreters" 59). For further arguments about how Christian Indians redefine the terms of Christianity to endure the pressures and violence of colonization, see Gussman, 'Politics of Piety'; Weaver, Native American Religious Identity; and Wyss, Writing Indians" (160).
Search Early Canadiana online for "picture writing"
Cites _African Writing and Text_ in which author argues that Native American images should be read as text because "they are clearly a means of preserving memories and ideas and transmitting these ideas and memories through time and space" (203). "They tattooed their bodies, painted their canoes, carved images on war clubs, left messages for travelers, and kept important records on beaded wampum belts and incised bark scrolls . . . . many records have been severed from their reading communities -- wampum belts, incised objects, and bark scrolls lie silent in museum valuts, and the more ephemeral tattooing practices and traveling messages have been preserved only in the descriptions recorded by visiting Europeans [footnote 5: "In 1609 the French explorer Samuel de Champlain observed the practical use of this communication system along the Richelieu River, south of the St. Lawrence River, on his way to Lake Champlain: 'Besides when they go t owar they . . . reconnoitre along the rivers and see wehther there is any mark or sign to show where their enemies or theri friends have gone. This they know by certain marks by which the chiefs of one nation designate those of another, notifying one another from time to time of any variations o fthese' (Works, 85).]" (203).
One essay points out that pictographs interpreted as signatures could instead be symbols or icons (206). It also points out that such pictographs might not have been interpreted by Indians as separate from the text, and that while Indians often changed names through the course of their lives, their pictographs often remained the same (a beaver, a turtle) regardless of name change or conversion to Christianity (which also conveyed a new name) (211). Turtle, partridge, otter, and bear might also be understood as clan/family names.
Some of the most interesting bits:
"Through tatooing, weaving, carving, dyeing, and countless other techniques, Native peoples marked out their relationship to kin, community, and spirit world, communicating across time and space about all that mattered to them . . . . material objects played -- and continue to play -- a significant role in Algonquian communication practices. Burial goods, basket patterns, pictographs, mats that line the interiors of wigwams, and even utensils reinforce oral exchanges with physical inscriptions whose functions, although quite varied, always communicate something to members of the communities in which they are produced. [Footnote: "Tribal historians Melissa Jayne Fawcett and Gladys Tantaquidgeon have pointed out the ways that Mohegan basket weavers, even well in to the eighteenth century, communicated among themselves about community identity and the political divisions within their tribe through painted basketry motifs that represented tribal unity and dispersal (Symbolic Motifs," 98-101, 115-116). In her brief essay about Wampanoag home-building practices, Linda Coombs, of the Wampanoag Indigenous Program at Plimoth Plantation, explains how significant meaning in Native productions is tied up in the technologies of production: 'To Native thinking, the ceremonial cannot be separated from the practical. Homes are much, much more than a list of materials or the utilization of certain techniques" (Ancient Technology)] . . . . Indians used various inscription technologies from their own traditions and readily integrated these practices into pen-and-ink inscriptions.
"Are carvings or painted images part of literary systems? Are pictures? clothing? Tattoos? Weaving? Is there a difference between what one study calls 'complex iconography' and a 'writing system' (Writing without Words)? . . . . Birchbark messages became letters and petitions, wampum council records became treaties, journey pictographs became written 'journals' that contained similar geographic and relational markers, and finally, histories recorded on birchbark and wampum became written communal narratives' (L Brooks, "The Common Pot") (5)
"on conversion as a response to death and disease, see A Remnant Remains in _A Praying People_ and Robert James Naeher, "Dialogue in the Wilderness" (6)
A number of articles reinforce the ways in which Indians participated in and revised their literacy practices -- including the critical role that "praying indians" played in translating the Indian Bible into Massachusett and then adding their own marginalia to the text (78).
One section details a medicine bundle that included a textual page from a Bible. "the medicine bundle should be viewed as a Native text whose various elements must be read or interpreted both individually and collectively in order to discern its meaning. The Bible fragment, in the context of the medicine bundle, must be interpreted from a Native perspective, given that it reflects a process of transformation and appropriation of European objects into a Native worldview. Although the Pequots may have understood the literal meaning of the Bible page, the context in which it was found suggests that its original meaning (from an English perspective) was essentially transformed in order to accommodate a Native perspective on manitou and power. the text of the medicine bundle and its contents can be read as representing evolving Native strategies intended to assist the living and the dead as they traverse spiritual and physical worlds forever changed by the arrival of the Europeans (140-141).
One section includes a "Pequot Execution Narrative," which the authors note is an example of "a body of writings by our about Native captives [that] makes for a compelling variation on Indian captivity literature" (149).
"[Footnote 64:] Indian captivity narrative scholarship (which focuses largely on white colonists captured by Native Americans) emphasizes the importance of the captive's liminal state -- the period of confusion and strategic adaptation while he or she struggles to negotiate new rituals, social codes, and systems of meaning. Garret's assertion offers an intriguing parallel to Rowlandson's disconcerting admission, "I can remember the time, when I used to sleep quietly without workings in my thoughts, whole nights together; but now it is otherwise with me' (True History of the captivity'). Hilary Wyss foregrounds the parallels between captivity narratives and Christian Indian tracts, arguing that both are premised on a 'disruption of racial or cultural identity' through a 'somewhat parallel' process of separation from community and appropriation of an 'altered (Christian) identity" (Writing Indians, 13). For a fuller reading of the overlap between Indian captivity narratives by whites and Christian missionary narratives by Indians, see ibid. 12-15.
Footnote 72: Mandell notes: "the religion introduced by English invaders now acted as a cement for native enclaves, and the transformation of Indian groups was in part facilitated by the faith that offered social and psychological stability in the sea of change' (Behind the Frontier 59). Homer Noley (Choctaw) has demanded recognition for those Native Americans who worked to spread Christianity to Native peoples 'because of the strength of their belief' ("The Interpreters" 59). For further arguments about how Christian Indians redefine the terms of Christianity to endure the pressures and violence of colonization, see Gussman, 'Politics of Piety'; Weaver, Native American Religious Identity; and Wyss, Writing Indians" (160).
Search Early Canadiana online for "picture writing"
Cites _African Writing and Text_ in which author argues that Native American images should be read as text because "they are clearly a means of preserving memories and ideas and transmitting these ideas and memories through time and space" (203). "They tattooed their bodies, painted their canoes, carved images on war clubs, left messages for travelers, and kept important records on beaded wampum belts and incised bark scrolls . . . . many records have been severed from their reading communities -- wampum belts, incised objects, and bark scrolls lie silent in museum valuts, and the more ephemeral tattooing practices and traveling messages have been preserved only in the descriptions recorded by visiting Europeans [footnote 5: "In 1609 the French explorer Samuel de Champlain observed the practical use of this communication system along the Richelieu River, south of the St. Lawrence River, on his way to Lake Champlain: 'Besides when they go t owar they . . . reconnoitre along the rivers and see wehther there is any mark or sign to show where their enemies or theri friends have gone. This they know by certain marks by which the chiefs of one nation designate those of another, notifying one another from time to time of any variations o fthese' (Works, 85).]" (203).
One essay points out that pictographs interpreted as signatures could instead be symbols or icons (206). It also points out that such pictographs might not have been interpreted by Indians as separate from the text, and that while Indians often changed names through the course of their lives, their pictographs often remained the same (a beaver, a turtle) regardless of name change or conversion to Christianity (which also conveyed a new name) (211). Turtle, partridge, otter, and bear might also be understood as clan/family names.
Displaying 1 of 1 review