Black Hawk in Translation: Indigenous Critique and Liberal Guilt in the 1847 Dutch Edition of Life of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak
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University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Faculty Scholarship Winter 2019 Black Hawk in Translation: Indigenous Critique and Liberal Guilt in the 1847 Dutch Edition of Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak Frank Kelderman University of Louisville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/faculty Part of the American Literature Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the Indigenous Studies Commons Original Publication Information Kelderman, Frank. “Black Hawk in Translation: Indigenous Critique and Liberal Guilt in the 1847 Dutch Translation of Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak.” 2019. Studies in American Indian Literatures 31(3-4): 58-83. ThinkIR Citation Kelderman, Frank, "Black Hawk in Translation: Indigenous Critique and Liberal Guilt in the 1847 Dutch Edition of Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak" (2019). Faculty Scholarship. 459. https://ir.library.louisville.edu/faculty/459 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 2 3 4 5 Black Hawk in Translation 6 Indigenous Critique and Liberal Guilt in the 1847 7t Dutch Edition of Life ofMa -ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak 8 9t FRANK KELDERMAN 10 11 12t In 1846 Rinse Posthumus, a Protestant country pastor in the north of the 13 Netherlands, received from a friend a copy of Life ofMa-ka -tai-me-she 14 kia-kiak, the as-told-to autobiography of the Sauk warrior Black Hawk. 15 First published in Cincinnati in 1833, the Life was a best seller in the 16 United States, but it was unfamiliar to Posthumus, who lived in a small 17 village near the North Sea in the province of Friesland (Frisia). Over 18 the course of the year, he studied Back Hawk's life story and began a 19 translation of the text for Dutch readers, which he published in the city 20 ofLeeuwarden in 1847 as Levensgeschiedenis van Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia 21 kiak, ofZwarte Havik. If Black Hawk can be regarded as the author ofhis 22 autobiography, this makes Posthumus's text the first foreign translation 23 of a book-length work of Native American literature.1 24 Posthumus's edition did not cause much of a stir. Years later, the 25 Dutch anticolonial writer Eduard Douwes Dekker mentioned the book 26 as an "important» work (Multatuli 50 ), but no subsequent editions ofthe 27 translation were published, nor has there been any commentary on the 28 text by literary historians. Nevertheless, Levensgeschiedenis van Zwarte 29 Havik sheds new light on the role ofIndigenous writing in a transatlantic 30 print culture in which the representation of American Indians generated 31 popular entertainment, theories of government, and philosophies 32 of universal history. In Britain, the circulation of American Indian 33 literature came on the heels of a wealth of writings about Indigenous 34 people in periodicals and newspapers, as well as «anthropological 35 studies, works of racial science, and missionary narratives,, (Flint 3). 36 There was a continental European dimension to this story as well, 37 and since the early nineteenth century the representation of Indianer 38 held a prominent place especially in the German cultural imagination Kelderman: Black Hawk in Translation 59 (Bolz; Zantop; Penny; King). But as a growing number of studies has 1 shown, the role of Indigenous people in what Jace Weaver terms "the 2 Red Atlantic,, was not merely to provide symbolic representations of 3 Native presence: their writings, performances, diplomacy, and protests 4 inflected the very currents of modern political and intellectual thought 5 (Weaver; Flint; Lyons). EA1:ending these transatlantic dialogues to 6 a Frisian-Dutch print culture, Rinse Posthumus's translation of the 7t Life not only catered to a widespread ethnological interest in Native 8 American culture in Europe but also brought Black Hawk's critique of 9t settler expansion into political debates about state power that had local 10 and transnational implications. 11 This essay is about what happened to Black Hawk's story in 12t translation. Annotated by a rural pastor in the province of Friesland, 13 Levensgeschiedenis connects Black Hawk's account of Indian removal 14 in the American Midwest to a region that has been marginal to the 15 history of cultural exchange in the Atlantic world. In what follows, I 16 consider Rinse Posthumus's role as translator and editor, tracing how 17 his theological commentary builds on Enlightenment assumptions 18 about race and linguistic difference even as it carries out a universalism 19 that validates Indigenous cultural traditions. But I also argue that his 20 editorial work amplifies a critical current in Black Hawk·s text about 21 the relation between settler colonialism and the role of government, 22 which intersected with nineteenth-century debates about political 23 liberalism and immigration to North America. Posthumus witnessed 24 the economic decline in the northern Netherlands in the 1840s, and his 25 edition of the Life resonates with concerns about agricultural crises in 26 Europe and the population movements of the mid-nineteenth century. 27 By annotating Black Hawk's account of Sauk traditions and Indigenous 28 dispossession, Posthumus gives voice to his political commitment to 29 liberalism during a time of economic depression and revolutionary 30 energy in the Netherlands. Since these pressures gave rise to a peak in 31 Dutch immigration to the American Midwest- including the very lands 32 that were opened up for settlement after the Black Hawk War (1832) 33 his commentary in Levensgeschiedenis negotiates a politics of liberal 34 guilt over the intertwined histories of European migration and Sauk 35 dispossession. Tracing these connections in the interplay between text, 36 translation, and paratext, this essay explores the transatlantic movement 37 of an Indigenous critique of settler colonialism. 38 6 0 SAIL· FALL- WINTER 2019 · VOL. 31, NOS. 3-4 ) ) 1 FROM BLACK HAWKS LIFE TO ZWARTE HAVIK S 2 LEVENSGESCHIEDENIS 3 With the Dutch translation of Black Hawk's Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she 4 kia-kiak, Rinse Posthumus added a continental European dimen 5 sion to the publishing history of one of the most important works of 6 nineteenth-century Native American literature. In his autobiography, 7t the Sauk warrior Black Hawk (1767- 1838) recounts how an 1804 treaty 8 with the Americans defrauded the Sauk Nation of significant lands in 9t present-day Illinois and Iowa and how he challenged the validity of 10 the treaty and the subsequent land cessions. As white homesteaders 11 flooded into the Rock River region, in present-day Illinois and Iowa, I2t Black Hawk's resistance to the treaty system and settler encroachment 13 was met with a violent response from the Americans, and in 1832 the 14 conflict came to a head in what is known as the Black Hawk War. Over 15 the course of fifteen weeks, the war took hundreds of American Indian 16 lives and ended with the Battle of Bad Axe, a massacre during which set 17 tler volunteers killed American Indian women and children. After the 18 war, the United States War Department held Black Hawk and four allied 19 leaders in captivity and took them on a tour of eastern cities that made 20 Black Hawk a "captive celebrity" through public spectacles and news 21 paper coverage (Helton 500; see also Scheckel 107-u). Returning to the 22 Sauk Nation in 1833, Black Hawk told his life story to Antoine Le Claire, 23 a French Potawatomi government translator at the Rock Island Indian 24 Agency. It was published in book form by the newspaper editor John 25 Barton Patterson; the first edition appeared in Cincinnati in 1833, and 26 it was reprinted in Boston (1834 and 1845) and London (1836) (see also 27 Round 160-65). 28 Extending this publication history, the 1846 Dutch edition is an 29 anomaly in Native American literature because it amply predates other 30 foreign translations of books by American Indian authors. Despite the 31 widespread European interest in Native cultures, the works of William 32 Apess (Pequot) and George Copway (Ojibwe) did not appear in trans 33 lation on the European continent in the nineteenth century, although 34 pirated adaptations of the Cherokee author John Rollin Ridges novel 35 The Life and Adventures ofJoaquin Murrieta (1854) were translated into 36 French and Spanish in the 1880s (Parins 107 ). But it was not until the 37 early twentieth century that the first significant body of foreign trans- 38 1 LEVENSGESCHIEDENIS 2 3 4 JI.1-KA.-T.AI-ME-SRE-KI.A-KI.AK, 5 OF 6 7t 8 OPP.ERBOOFD 9t VAN DEN 10 STAM DEil SAC-INDIANEN 11 IN 12t ;ft.o.o~.b ... !3,m.t~ik«,. 13 14 l\IET EEN BEIUGT VAN DE GODSDIENSTIGE 15 DENKWIJZE, ZEDEN EN GElJRUIKEN , 16 VAN DIEN STAM; 17 VOLGENS ZIJNE EIGENE OPGAVE AAN DEN 18 TOLK DER SAC- EN FOX-INDIANE~, EN 19 DOOR DEZEN IN BET .ENGELSCH -,,,_-- OVERGEBRAGT. /~~ 20 f~ ;':'i!l,£i':.,9.~.qf (:~ 21 IN HET NEDBRLA.DSCR VERTAALD l<N K<"f :;;; '.~;., ~~ 22 EENIGE .AA.NHERKlNGEN VOORZlEN \, '~~.~t_: ·~! J>OOR '~ -,:. ~ --;..-Jt,t £;'"',·/ 23 ·-~,,i-;..:i.".· R. POSTHUMUS. ,~., 24 25 BIBLIOTHECJE 26 FRJSL'E 27 J. E:. Ht..LllE!{'l':JU. 28 LEEUW .ARDEN• 29 D. lllEINDERSMA, Wz. 30 1847. 31 32 33 34 Fig. 1. Title page of Levensgeschiedenis van Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, ofZwarte 35 Havik (Leeuwarden: D.