Border Crossings in Early Nineteenth-Century American Literary History

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ VIOLENT INSCRIPTIONS: BORDER CROSSINGS IN EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN LITERARY HISTORY A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in LITERATURE with an emphasis in AMERICAN STUDIES by Lisa Schilz June 2016 The Dissertation of Lisa Schilz is approved: ___________________________ Professor Kirsten Silva Gruesz ___________________________ Professor Susan Gillman ___________________________ Professor Louisa Nygaard ______________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Lisa Schilz 2016 Table of Contents List of Figures………………………………………………………………….. iv Abstract………………………………………………………………………… v Dedication……………………………………………………………………… vii Introduction……………………………………………………………………... 1 Chapter One…………………………………………………………………...... 24 Chapter Two…………………………………………………………………….. 66 Chapter Three…………………………………………………………………… 118 Chapter Four……………………………………………………………………. 180 Coda…………………………………………………………………………...... 238 References……………………………………………………………………….! 243 ! iii! List of Figures Figure 1: Inscription…………………………………………………………….. 9 Figure 2: Violent Inscription……………………………………………..…….. 10 Figure 3: Map of Comanchería…………………………………………………. 68 Figure 4: Catherwood Sketch………………………………………..………….. 150 Figure 5: Zavala Manuscript..…………………………………...……………… 154 ! iv! Abstract Violent Inscriptions: Border Crossings in Early Nineteenth-Century American Literary History Lisa Schilz My dissertation, Violent Inscriptions: Trauma, Translation, and Trans-nation in the Borderlands, stages convergences among a multilingual, multicultural web of texts and textual traces—Comanche, Ojibwe, Mexican, U.S., German—that thematize and register violence in the early national period. While 1848 has rightly been proclaimed as a (or even the) significant periodizing marker for American Studies, I return to the seminal complicated prior history of relations in the borderland spaces, a time when U.S. and Anglophone hegemony was not yet assured. The multimodal texts and cultural productions I recover (poetry, written and oral stories, government records) remain underexamined in U.S. literary studies and historiography, as they do not lend themselves easily to dominant grids of intelligibility, such as the nation-state, traditional periodizations, or monocultural and monolingual traditions. My comparative work retains field-specific research methods (such as from Indigenous and Latin American Studies) and brings them together in order to question the dominant lingering grids that do not capture the potential of these texts to envision alternative possibilities. The convergence of these materials troubles dominant Anglo- American definitions of land and property, temporality, and belonging as well as reframes the spatial and temporal markers of the borderlands. ! v! I extend the reach of the Latino-American borderlands model to feature Native American intellectual traditions more prominently. My project calls attention to the long-standing and diverse tribal sovereignties, pre-existing and surpassing what are now the boundaries of the U.S. nation state. It also unearths an unexpected connection to German immigrants, who abounded in and wrote prolifically about borderland spaces. Considering German immigrants allows for negotiations of racial boundaries within whiteness itself. In its four chapters, my dissertation focuses on archival and oral sources regarding both the southern and northern borderlands as well as texts written by Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Charles Sealsfield, and Lorenzo de Zavala. ! ! vi! Dedication To my wonderful husband, Matthew Scott Schilz, for his continual encouragement and love throughout this long process. To my amazing advisor, Kirsten Silva Gruesz, for her remarkable advice and support. ! vii! ! Introduction _____________________________________________________________________ Ya me gritaron mil veces They have shouted at me a million times que me regrese a mi tierra, to return to my land Porque aquí no quepo yo. because I don’t belong here Quiero recordarle al gringo: I want to remind the gringo: Yo no cruce la frontera, I didn’t cross the border, La frontera me cruzó. The border crossed me. Los Tigres del Norte, “Somos Mas Americanos” (“We Are More American”)1 1. La Frontera Me Cruzó Released in 2001, Los Tigres del Norte’s corrido speaks to the contemporary concerns and convictions of many Latinos/Latinas living in the southwest and the greater United States. Countering nativist sentiments to “go back to where you belong,” “Somos Mas Americanos” reaches back to a seminal moment often effaced in U.S. history—1848 and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo—to historicize and undercut the logic of such nativist claims: prior to 1848, Mexicans in what is now considered the southwest of the United States were actually residing in the northwest of the United States of Mexico.2 This history that Los Tigres Del Norte reference has further implications for debates over immigration, as it reverses the normative !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Los Tigres del Norte are a San-Jose based norteño band who portray the struggles of life and love and the debates over immigration and narcotrafficking. Along with their music, they participate in political activism such as joining the 2010 international boycott of Arizona’s SB1070. 2 This space includes California, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming ! 1! ! associations of white/citizen and Latino/[“illegal”] immigrant: prior to the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo, the gringos were in fact the immigrants, often illegally crossing into Mexican territory.3 Los Tigres del Norte’s political protest highlights in popular media what borderlands scholars have rightfully proclaimed—that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the establishment of the current Mexico-United States border is a (or even the) significant periodizing marker for American Studies.4 1848 as marker challenges the continued centrality of the Civil War in American Studies, evinced in the reliance on periodizations of prebellum and antebellum and the spotlight on black/white binaries. However, a sole focus on 1848 emphasizes United States-Mexico relations to the neglect of prior histories of contest and colonialization. Indigenous nations far preceded the United States and Mexico, controlling and warring over these spaces. Not considering indigenous sovereignties simplifies this complicated prior history of relations in the borderland spaces, a history that would eventually lead to the United States takeover of Mexican lands. Yet during the early national period, United States and Anglophone hegemony was not yet assured in the southwest. National borders were highly in flux, generating a proliferation of moments that challenge the fixed, naturalized nature of current borders and contemporary notions of immigration. My focus, the area that would primarily become the space of Texas, faced massive upheavals and myriad conflicts with multiple sovereignties claiming authority over this space—New Spain, Comanchería, Apachería, Mexico, and the United States to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 See Weber for more about Anglo-immigration into Mexico. 4 See Streeby and Alemán for the significance of 1848. ! 2! ! name a few.5 First, New Spain warred against the Comanche, Apache, and other indigenous nations who nearly decimated Spanish settlements. Gaining independence from Spain, the newly established Mexican government faced similar battles with indigenous nations as well as a growing threat, that of Anglo-American incursion into the northern frontiers of Mexico. Anglo-Americans then usurped the land from Mexico, declaring the existence of a Texas Republic, separate from both Mexico and the United States, until the United States annexed the Texas Republic at the end of the Mexican-United States War. My recognition of plural sovereignties respatializes and retemporalizes the border, refuting the naturalness of the standing Mexican-United States border, the rightness of nativist rhetoric scapegoating immigrants for economic troubles, and the interminable reaches of the current security state striving to “protect” the United States through exclusionary policies, deportations, and walls. As Brian Delay claims, recognition of plural sovereignties is the crux of borderlands scholarship: while borderlands are places of contrasts and contestations through language and culture, legal and economic systems, and religion and social relations, the “defining quality” of the borderlands is “plural sovereignty—the presence of multiple polities claiming and exercising ultimate de facto authority over place and people” (9). Such recognition of multiple sovereignties points to the critical potential of borderlands scholarship; it, in Kirsten Silva Gruesz’s words, “calls forth” an “implicit dialogue with the national,” as “the very concept of the border is unintelligible without the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 5 Comanchería and Apachería are the names of the Comanche and Apache nations. ! 3! ! nation” (10). This critical potential of the borderlands is the purpose of this dissertation: to use the borderlands as a site to interrogate the United States and its literary history. As Delay has noted, in current United States parlance, the term borderlands has become synonymous with the space of the southwest, the Mexican-United States border. Yet the northern

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