INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfifm master UMl films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in fypewriterface, while others may be from any type of computer printer The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMl a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorzed copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher qualify 6” x 9* black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMl directly to order. Bell & Howell Information and Learning 300 North Zèeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 UMÏ ' REFORMING’ THE NATIVE: FRONTIER ACTIVISM AND WOMEN’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN THE PROGRESSIVE ERA DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Maureen A. Burgess, B A, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2000 Dissertation Committee: Professor Leigh Gilmore, Adviser Approved by Professor Debra Moddeimog Professor H. Lewis Ulman . , Professor Chadwick Allen D^tbqger English Graduate Program UMl Number 9971518 UMT UMl Microform9971518 Copyright 2000 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and teaming Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT This project addresses America’s quest for “order” during the Progressive era through an examination of how women’s political culture engaged popular attitudes about race and gender, savagery and civilization, and culture and citizenship as part of a nationalist agenda. Taking the nostalgic imagery of a “lost frontier” as a starting point, I consider how women, particularly white and Native American women engaged in progressive reform, staked out a different symbolic territory for the nation and its frontiers as part of a national discussion about who and what constituted America. Along with indigenous narratives about the colonial invasion, 1 read autobiographies written by women who traveled West and became involved with U.S. Indian policy during this era of national incorporation. Their texts, I argue, seek to reinvent the meaning of America through portraits of the West that move beyond the masculinist and, at times, Anglocentric symbolism of much frontier nostalgia. Such texts often maintained racist and ethnocentric assumptions about culture and civilization; at the same time, they reflect white America’s continued longing for the ‘Indian” at the turn of the century, part of a national project of remembering that depended upon the assimilation of Indians and, implicitly, the “forgetting” of America’s actual treatment of native peoples. The primary authors studied are Elaine ii Goodale Eastman, Zhkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin), Mary ElHcott Arnold, Mabel Reed, and Mary Austin. m To Jamie nr ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank my adviser, Leigh Gilmore, for her insightful commentary and enthusiastic support throughout this project, and for her patience in reading and editing many drafts. I thank Debra Moddeimog for introducing me to the study of multicultural theory and for her support through my many years of graduate study, including this project. I am grateful to H. Lewis Ulman for thoughtful, intellectual discussions that cast new insight on my work. Chadwick Allen likewise provided invaluable commentary on the work-in-progress. I also wish to thank the English Department at Ohio State University for a dissertation fellowship, and the Elizabeth D. Gee Fund for Research on Women for a Dissertation Completion Award. Finally, I thank my parents, Martin and Winifred Burgess, and my sister, Joanna Burgess, for their love, understanding, and support during the most difficult stages of the degree's completion. And to Jamie Lampidis, I am gratefW always. Without his loving support and vision, this project would not have been possible. VITA June 7, 1968 .................................... Bom—Poughkeepsie^ New York 1990.................................................B.A.—Fairfield University 1993................................................ M.A. English—The Ohio State University 1991-1997........................................ Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University 1997-1999 Lecturer, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS Research Publication I. H. Ulman and M. Burgess, “Mapping the Emergent Structures of Hypertext,” Contexts, Intertexts, and Hypertexts. Eds. Scott DeWitt and Kip Strasma. New York: Hampton Press, 1999. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Biglish VI TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract .................................................................................................................... ü Dedication ................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgments ............................................................................................... v Vita.......................................................................................................................... vi Chapters: I. Introduction .................................................................................................... I 2. Single Women Heading West: The Autobiography of Elaine Goodale Eastman, Sister to the Sioux ................................................................................ 24 3. Young Girls Heading East: Zitkala-Sa ........................................................... 73 4. “The Unmapped Way^: Lost and Found Frontiers on the Klamath River 121 5. Conclusion: Imagining America in Mary Austin’s Earth Horizon ................. 170 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 198 vu CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Frederick Jackson Turner delivered his influential paper, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” at a meeting of the American Historical Association held at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in July 1893. His central argument was that American westward expansion was the defining experience in the formation of a national character. He subsumes the complicated history of American expansion and colonialism within the fi’ontier story, arguing that the frontier is central to the reproduction of the ideal American citizen; "American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this ecpansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character."^ Turner’s paper was, in part, inspired by the Superintendent of the Census’s declaration that the frontier was “closed,” but his effort was part of a larger project to offer a “distinctly New World explanation for the evolution of democracy.”^ This project gave voice to a growing mythologf depicting the American West as the heart of American individualism and freedom, wherein the frontier becomes a metonym for the nation as well as an expression of its limits. The rise of mass culture during this period was critical to the popularization of this mythology, and it is no coincidence that the academic memorialization of the frontier occurred at a World’s Fair, with Buffalo Bill Cody just down the street playing his cowboy and Indian games. World’s Fairs were enormously successful, with over 100 million visitors in the «(position heyday between 1876-1915, and Chicago’s contained exhibits drawn from the era’s academic views on race, ethnography, history, and science. Despite their celebration of progress and collective national identity, a semiotics of borders still prevailed at these expositions, defining America through its exclusions and anxieties as well as by its authorized representatives. Part of the staging of America as an international power, the 1893 Columbian Exposition relied on progressive conceptions of civilization, culture, and social Darwinism to represent the nation’s ongoing experience of interpenetrating national borders, identities, and cultures that define its (internal/external) frontiers. To maintain a homogenized front for the “face” of America, the fair excluded Afiican-Americans from positions of power and controlled the representations of Indians, blacks, and other peoples, while restraining more radical voices for political cfiange.^ While white women were given their own exhibition building, many progressive feminists resisted it as a perpetuation of the nineteenth-century philosophy of “separate spheres.” Controversial from the start, the Women’s Building speaks to the place o f (white) women