Studies in American Indian Literatures Editor Malea Powell Michigan State University

volume 18 . number 2 . summer 2006 Studies in American Indian Literatures editor malea powell Michigan State University Published by The University of Nebraska Press subscriptions Studies in American Indian Literatures (SAIL ISSN 0730-3238) is the only scholarly journal in the United States that focuses exclusively on American Indian literatures. SAIL is published quarterly by the University of Nebraska Press for the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures (ASAIL). Subscription rates for individuals are $30 and $75 for institutions. Single issues are available for $20. For subscriptions outside the United States, please add $20. Canadian subscribers please add 7% GST. To subscribe, please contact the University of Nebraska Press. Payment must accompany order. Make checks payable to the University of Nebraska Press and mail to: Customer Service 1111 Lincoln Mall Lincoln, NE 68588-0630 Telephone 800-755-1105 (United States and Canada) 402-472-3584 (other countries) www.nebraskapress.unl.edu All inquiries on subscription, change of address, advertising, and other busi- ness communications should be addressed to the University of Nebraska Press. For information on membership in ASAIL or the membership subscription discount please contact: Robert M. Nelson Box 112, 28 Westhampton Way University of Richmond Richmond VA 23173 [email protected] Fax 804-289-8313 submissions The editorial board of SAIL invites the submission of scholarly, critical, peda- gogical, and theoretical manuscripts focused on all aspects of American Indian literatures as well as the submission of poetry and short fiction, bibliographi- cal essays, review essays, and interviews. We define “literatures” broadly to include all written, spoken, and visual texts created by Native peoples. Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the most recent edi- tion of the MLA Style Manual. Please send three clean copies of the manu- script along with a self-addressed envelope and sufficient postage to permit the return of the reviewed submission, or you may submit by e-mail as an attachment (preferably in Rich Text Format [RTF]). SAIL observes a “blind reading” policy, so please do not include an author name on the title, first page, or anywhere else in the article. Do include your contact information, such as address, phone number, and e-mail address on a separate sheet with your submission. All submissions are read by outside re- viewers. Submissions should be sent directly to: Malea Powell MSU Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures 235 Bessey Hall East Lansing, MI 48824-1033 [email protected] Rights to the articles are held by the individual contributors. All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America SAIL is available online through Project MUSE at http://muse.jhu.edu. Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Arts and Humanities Citation Index ® and Current Contents®/Arts & Humanities. Cover: Photo courtesy of Bonita Bent-Nelson © 2003, design by Kimberly Hermsen Interior: Kimberly Hermsen general editor Malea Powell book review editor P. Jane Hafen creative works editor Joseph W. Bruchac and Janet McAdams editorial board Chadwick Allen, James Cox, Dean Rader, and Lisa Tatonetti editorial assistant Angela Haas editors emeritus Helen Jaskoski Karl Kroeber Robert M. Nelson John Purdy Rodney Simard contents articles 1 Survivance and Fluidity: George Copway’s The Life, History, and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh cathy rex 34 Europe and the Quest for Home in James Welch’s The Heartsong of Charging Elk and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes suzanne ferguson 54 “A World Away from His People”: James Welch’s The Heartsong of Charging Elk and the Indian Historical Novel james j. donahue 83 Composite Indigenous Genres: Cheyenne Ledger Art as Literature denise low 105 What Writer Would Not Be an Indian for a While? Charles Alexander Eastman, Critical Memory, and Audience gale p. coskan-johnson book reviews 132 Woody Kipp. Viet Cong at Wounded Knee: The Trail of a Blackfeet Activist scott andrews vi sail . summer 2006 . vol. 18, no. 2 135 Elaine A. Jahner. Spaces of the Mind: Narrative and Community in the American West franci washburn 138 Alexander Posey. Chinnubbie and the Owl: Muscogee (Creek) Stories, Orations, and Oral Traditions tereza szeghi 141 Ward Churchill. Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools beverly slapin 145 Contributor Biographies 147 Major Tribal Nations and Bands Survivance and Fluidity George Copway’s The Life, History, and Travels of Kah-ge-ga- gah-bowh cathy rex Between 1847 and 1851, George Copway (b. 1818), a member of the Ojibwe Nation and a native Canadian, found himself riding huge waves of popularity in the United States and abroad.1 The Methodist missionary, writer, lecturer, and Indian rights activist first gained public attention through the 1847 publication of his autobiography, The Life, History, and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (George Cop- way), which was enormously well received and went through seven editions by 1848. Over the next four years, Copway additionally published two revised and appended versions of his autobiography, a tribal history of the Ojibwes, and a travel narrative; began his own weekly newspaper in New York; and proposed to the U.S. Congress a plan for the establishment of an independent Indian territory.2 With multiple books and a newspaper in print, plentiful speaking engage- ments on Native themes up and down the Atlantic seaboard, and sev- eral noteworthy publication firsts, George Copway had become a bona fide member of the inner circles of America’s literary, political, and social elite. He was intimately familiar with such famous figures as the ethnographer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, historian Francis Park- man, and writers James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whom Copway purportedly inspired to write The Song of Hiawatha, a romanticized poem about the Lake Superior Ojibwe. with such varied and distinguished accomplish- ments, Copway was certainly one of the most prolific and visible Na- tive authors of his time. 2 sail . summer 2006 . vol. 18, no. 2 However, Copway’s numerous literary and social contributions have largely remained overlooked by present-day scholars. Because of the general downward trajectory of Copway’s life, his constant (and often disreputable) self-reinventions and identity changes, as well as his (perceived) failure to project any identity beyond that of the “Noble Christian Savage”—the lowly and inferior Indian strug- gling through the aid of Christianity to become “white”—scholars have tended to criticize Copway and his body of texts from a purely psychological standpoint.3 For example, Bernd C. Peyer argues that Copway was caught between two irreconcilable worlds. Peyer notes that Copway “consistently acted out both systems of belief in his various public guises, one as Kahgegagahbowh, ‘Chief of the Ojibwa Nation,’ and the other as the Reverend George Copway, ‘Missionary to his People’” (Tutor’d 236) and that this “frustrating attempt to shape his identity according to his audience’s whims . forced him to undergo various personality transformations that finally broke his spirit” (Tutor’d 224). Donald B. Smith has even gone so far as to note that Copway, as his life progressed and he purportedly became in- creasingly more disconnected from both his Ojibwe and European identities, “began to lose all touch with reality” (“Life” 25) and that, consequently, his works should be cited “very cautiously” (“Life” 29) and read with “considerable sympathy” (“Life” 28).4 Such readings position Copway as a transculturated individual with a conflicted sense of self who is unable, in both his life and his texts, to incorporate his Ojibwe heritage into the white, antebellum American society that was thirsty for exotic Indian curiosities. These readings conflate the events of Copway’s life with the material in his texts, add a dash of speculation about his mental processes, and finally provide an unsupportable reading of Copway’s psychological state rather than his literary endeavors. This is in part because these critics provide analysis that spans Copway’s entire body of texts rather than offering sustained analysis of any one of his works. However, when taken independently, Copway’s texts, particularly his 1847 autobiography The Life, History and Travels of Kah-ge-ga- gah-bowh, can be viewed as venues through which he forges a new possibility for Indianness, a self-determined identity that defies and Rex: Survivance and Fluidity 3 resists the static national, racial, social, and intellectual categories imposed by nineteenth-century hegemony. Rather than viewing his texts (and life) as failures to successfully integrate Indian, Christian, and “civilized” literary identities into a hybridized whole, I argue that Copway is instead creating a space within his autobiography in which an Ojibwe person can also be both British and American, as well as a creative, intellectual figure and a devout Christian. Through the authorship and structure of his autobiography, Copway is chal- lenging national and ethnic absolutisms held by nineteenth-century Euramerican society about Indians. By claiming in his autobiography the positions of Briton, American, historian, ethnographer, Chris- tian, and Indian activist while still claiming his Ojibwe identity above all else, Copway is reconstituting the terms of the category “Indian” and moving them beyond the

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