WILKINSON, ELIZABETH LEIGH. Ph.D. Story as a Weapon in Colonized America: Native American Women’s Transrhetorical Fight for Land Rights. (2008) Directed by Dr. Karen L. Kilcup. 265 pp. The violent collision between Native American and Euro-American politics, spirituality, economy, and community appears most prominently in each culture’s attitude toward land, which connects intimately with the position women held in each society. The social construction of land and a woman’s “place”—and the interconnectedness between the two as viewed through a Euro-American lens—conflicted so wholly with that of many Native American cultures that what resulted were wars, many fought physically on battlefields, but many others with rhetoric in speeches, books, petitions, and reports. The idea that the two cultures might fight bloody battles over land rights does not need much explanation; however, that they might come to blows as a result of how women acted in each society requires more attention. Synthesizing the heterogeneous methodologies and insights of American Indian literature, nineteenth-century women’s writing, and the history and theory of rhetoric, this dissertation articulates the transrhetorical power of Native American women: their ability to cross cultural and gendered boundaries of rhetoric. I argue that while white middle- class women such as Lydia Maria Child, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and Margaret Fuller sought to empower themselves by speaking through Native women’s voices, indigenous writers Nancy Ward, Narcissa Owen, Sarah Winnemucca, and Gertrude Bonnin, fluidly negotiating white definitions of gender and culture, used their roles as transrhetors in order to protest land theft and to fight to reclaim territories unjustly taken by the United States government, using rhetoric as a weapon in the war over land. STORY AS A WEAPON IN COLONIZED AMERICA: NATIVE AMERICAN WOMEN’S TRANSRHETORICAL FIGHT FOR LAND RIGHTS by Elizabeth Leigh Wilkinson A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2008 Approved by ______________________________ Committee Chair © 2008 Elizabeth Leigh Wilkinson To my parents, Bob and Barbara Wilkinson, who continue to provide unlimited love and support. ii APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Committee Chair_____________________________ Committee Members _____________________________ _____________________________ _____________________________ ____________________________ Date of Acceptance by Committee ____________________________ Date of Final Oral Examination iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deepest thanks go to my committee chair, Dr. Karen Kilcup, who pushed me to be a better scholar and writer. I also appreciate the vitamins and protein bars that magically appeared in my TA mailbox. Special thanks go to Dr. Hephzibah Roskelly who helped me discover the perfect rhetorical lens for this project. I thank Drs. Karen Weyler and Jeanne Quinn who provided me with excellent feedback through many chapter readings. Alyson Frazier gets big thanks for keeping me on top of deadlines and paperwork. I would also like to thank the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, specifically Sally and Alan Cone, whose Special Projects Grant funded invaluable research at the Qualla Boundary in Cherokee, North Carolina. A very special thank you goes to Harry Dyer, my teacher, mentor, and friend at Virginia Tech for telling me ten years ago, before I could have conceived of this project, that it is always all about the land. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends. To my Blacksburg friends Mona, Sandra, Des, Gin, and my reader Pegi thank you for your constant patience and understanding and the many cards and emails that kept me going. To my friends here at Greensboro, especially Heidi, David, Alan, Aaron, Dorothy, Liz, Sara, Deidre, and Sarah, and my bandmates Daniel, Randy, and Marty, thanks for being the village that raised this child. To my lifelong friends Elise and Betsy thank you for understanding that writing a dissertation is sometimes like raising a child. And to my family, my parents Bob and Barbara, my brothers Bill and Jon, my sisters-in-law Sue and Holly, and my nephews, Kyle, Brady, Dylan, Erik, and Jack, thanks for always being proud of me because I am always so proud of you. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER INTRODUCTION: WOMEN, LAND, AND RHETORIC...............................................1 I. WHITE WOMEN, SEPARATE RHETORICAL SPHERES, AND THE AGENCY OF INDIANISM.........................................................33 II. NANCY WARD AND NARCISSA OWEN: CHEROKEE WOMEN’S TRANSRHETORICAL PROTEST AGAINST LAND THEFT............81 III. SARAH WINNEMUCCA: “POSTINDIAN WARRIOR” WRITING FOR THE LAND ...............................................................................145 IV. DECLAIMING AND DEMARCATING: GERTRUDE BONNIN’S CAMPAIGN FOR NATIVE LAND...................................................190 CONCLUSION: QUESTIONING AND CONTINUING TRANSRHETORICAL POWER...............................................................................238 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................252 APPENDIX: SOURCES OF NARCISSA OWEN .......................................................264 v 1 INTRODUCTION: WOMEN, LAND, AND RHETORIC Since the white man as well as the red was born of woman…did not the white man admit women to their councils? ~Reported to have been said by Cherokee Leader Attakullakulla, noting the absence of white women at the South Carolina Treaty Conferences, 17571 The violent collision between Native American2 and Euro-American politics, spirituality, economy, and community appears most prominently in each culture’s attitude toward land, which connects intimately with the position women held in each respective society. The social construction of each—land and a woman’s “place”—and the interconnectedness between the two as viewed through a Euro-American lens, conflicted so wholly with that of many Native American cultures that what resulted were wars, many of them fought physically on battlefields, but many fought with rhetoric in speeches, books, petitions, and reports. The idea that the two cultures (and I realize that I am being reductive to lump all Native American nations into one culture, but I will do so for the sake of making this point) might fight bloody battles over land rights does not need much explanation; history details numerous wars over boundaries and territories. However, that they might come to blows as a result of how women acted in each society requires more attention. Scholars suggest that European and Euro-American men may have felt threatened by the social power of Native American women. If insecurity results in name calling, 2 then history provides some proof: reacting to the fact that the Cherokee Council of Women had substantial power, including the power to declare war, the British called the Cherokee nation a “petticoat government” (“Cherokee”). Historian Theda Perdue provides this additional enlightenment: “In part because many Cherokee women and men did not conform to the gender norms of the United States, their critics branded them as ‘uncivilized’ and sought their removal west of the Mississippi” (Cherokee Women 10). Cherokee men and women, as well as those from the Piute, the Yankton Dakota, and many other Native nations, did not fit within Euro-American expectations of gender norms. The patriarchal settlers viewed the equality enjoyed by many Indian women as a sign of savagery and savagery as a justification for removal from ancestral lands. In her fundamental text on feminism and American Indians, Paula Gunn Allen (Laguna Pueblo/Sioux) writes explicitly about the anxiety non-Natives felt because of Native gynocracy, her term for a feminine-centered social system: The physical and cultural genocide of American Indian tribes is and was mostly about patriarchal fear of gynocracy. The Puritans particularly, but also the Catholic, Quaker, and other Christian missionaries, like their secular counterparts, could not tolerate peoples who allowed their women to occupy prominent positions and decision-making capacity at every level of society. Wives telling husbands and brothers whether to buy or sell an item, daughters telling fathers whom they could and could not murder, empresses attending parleys with the colonizers and being treated with deference by male leaders did not sit well with the invaders. (3) However negatively “the invaders” viewed Native Americans’ gender balance, the cultural legacy of that equality armed Native women in what has become an ongoing 3 rhetorical battle for land over the last several centuries. Because of the political and social parity between genders practiced in many Native nations, Native American women were particularly adept at waging the war for ancestral territories using the written and spoken word. This project discusses what I am labeling the transrhetorical power of Native American women; that is, their ability to cross both cultural and gendered boundaries of rhetoric. While I concur with Perdue and Allen that, generally, Euro-American society recoiled from the power experienced by Native women, I argue that indigenous women