Quarto #32: Native Americans

qTHE uarto No. 32 THE CLEMENTS LIBRARY ASSOCIATES Fall-Winter 2009 NATIVE AMERICANS his issue of the Quarto newspapers, and maps include accounts those intriguing blends of European- concentrates on Native of the cultural interactions of European American fact and fiction that often American materials in the Americans and Native Americans from tell us more about the captives than the Library’s holdings. We’ll Columbus through the nineteenth centu- captors. Drawing on his considerable complement the magazine expertise about eighteenth- Twith an exhibit of Native century Detroit, Brian American items that will Dunnigan details the Indian open in the Main Room in nations of the region and February. My colleagues the unrealized French hopes tell me this is the first time that the Native Americans we’ve had a Native “would serve as a check American focus in either on the ambitions of the our publications or our Iroquois and English of exhibits. I’m surprised by New York.” Curator of that, and it’s possible it’s Graphic Images Clayton not accurate; perhaps we Lewis introduces looked at Native Americans The Aboriginal Port-Folio earlier in the Library’s his- of James Otto Lewis, one of tory than anyone on our cur- the great antebellum collec- rent staff can recall. tions of Native American However, mindful as I am portraits and an Americana that on a university campus rarity of tremendous value. “a time-honored tradition” JJ Jacobson’s essay on is as far back as the senior Native American food and class can remember and that food ways simultaneously “forever” is anything that illuminates the subject and happened before the oldest demonstrates the ways in faculty or staff members which a culinary focus arrived, I think it’s certainly opens new doors on early time for the Clements to American history. give Native American histo- My Clements Library ry a close look, whether for colleagues and I realize that the first time or again. most of our primary sourc- In fact, the Native Karl Bodmer’s Dakota Woman and Assiniboine Girl is one of a number es on Native Americans American materials here are of dramatic portraits executed by the artist during an expedition up the are European American both broad and deep. In Missouri River in 1832–34 with Prince Maximilian zu Wied Neuwied. in origin, perspective, and manuscripts, the major col- Bodmer’s paintings were engraved and published in Kupfer zu Prinz insights. We do have some lections from the American Maximilians von Wied reise durch Nord America (Paris, 1843?). very good collections and Revolution era—the Gage, items by Native Americans Clinton, Shelburne, Germain, and ry. Any student or scholar of Native themselves, however, and Barbara Lyttelton papers, to name a few—have American history can find a lifetime’s DeWolfe’s essay discusses one of them. wonderful sources on the Indian tribes worth of research in the Clements col- The 1899 Kiowa student drawings and of the eastern half of North America. lections, on almost any aspect of early letters in the Hilon A. Parker papers pro- Our graphics holdings have innumerable Native American heritage. vide a window on the Rainy Mountain images of Native Americans in the The articles in this issue are School on the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache De Bry, Catlin, Lewis, Bodmer, and strongly indicative of the breadth and reservation in western Oklahoma and Maximilian illustrations and in our range of our primary sources on Native the ways the students viewed the two growing photographic holdings. The Americans. Curator of Books Emiko cultures and worlds in which they printed sources in our books, pamphlets, Hastings writes about Indian captivities, moved. At Clements we recognize such important priorities as an addition to alleviate the space crunch that has filled the Kahn building to overflowing after eighty-six years of collections and staff growth. Credit for this good work goes to no individual, and future success on these and other fronts will be the result of collaboration with the Associates, the University, and all our other friends. My colleagues and I are excited about the opportunities available to the Library. We urge our supporters to get involved so we can bring all of them to fruition sooner rather than later. — J. Kevin Graffagnino Director Funeral Scaffold of a Sioux Chief Near Fort Pierre. In addition to portraits, Karl Bodmer painted scenes of the country and of Native American life during the Missouri River expedition of 1832–34. that acquiring more of these first-hand materials on Native American, African American, ethnic, and gender studies is a high priority for our collection devel- opment efforts, and we’re enthusiastic about meeting that challenge. Any help or guidance members of the Clements Library Associates can provide for that good work will be most welcome. 2009 has been a very good year for the Library. We’ve acquired wonderful new collections and single items alike; we’ve raised our profile on the University of Michigan campus and beyond; we’ve hired new staff members with terrific potential to help take the Library forward; we’ve secured new funding for exciting initiatives like research fellowships on the Civil War; we’ve attracted more researchers from among the UM student and faculty con- stituencies; and we’ve started work on Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row, Emperour of the Six Nations, in a mezzotint after a 1710 portrait by Jan Verelst. The subject was one of four Mohawk leaders taken to London that year by Peter Schuyler, an Albany fur trader. The “four kings” were presented to Queen Anne, had their portraits painted, and generally created a sensation in the British capital. Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row (1680–1755) posed in European attire, holding a belt of wampum, symbolically flanked by his clan animal, a wolf. Known to New Yorkers as King Hendrick, the warrior was killed while fighting as an ally of the British against the French. Page 2 The Quarto TALES OF INDIAN CAPTIVITY he “Indian captivity narrative” forms. They have appeared as books, Having Been Taken by the Savage is a distinctly American genre as stories contained within longer works, Indians of the Wilderness in the Year of writing that has flourished and as short pieces in magazines, news- 1777 (1800). It was first published in since the earliest encounters papers, or almanacs. Some narratives 1787 as a six-page letter and subse- Tbetween Europeans and Native appear in multiple forms, republished quently reprinted and pirated several Americans. Broadly speaking, captivity several times under different titles. For dozen times. Authorship of a narrative, narratives are stories of non-Indians cap- example, the first account of Captain although usually attributed to the cap- tured by Native Americans. They often John Smith’s famous captivity among tive, may in fact be shared among combine elements of autobiography, the Powhatan Confederacy and his multiple writers and editors, making religious witness, history, ethnography, rescue by Pocahontas appeared in his it difficult to distinguish historically and fiction. These stories provided Generall Historie of Virginia (1624). verifiable first-person accounts from a narrative framework for fictionalized ones. Given European settlers to under- these factors, it is sometimes stand the troubled, sometimes impossible to establish the violent encounters between authenticity of a particular cultures that occurred with account. Where possible, westward expansion across the Clements Library has North America. cataloged such narratives The Clements Library as “fictitious” or “probably possesses a rich collection fictitious.” These partly or of Indian captivity narratives, wholly fictional narratives, spanning a time period from although not historically the sixteenth century to the accurate, constitute an impor- twentieth and containing tant dimension of the literary many rare and early editions. tradition of the captivity The Newberry Library has narrative. issued two bibliographies While blurring the line of captivity narratives in between fact and fiction, the their several editions listing tradition of captivity narra- a total of 482 publications, tives is based on some histori- of which the Clements cal foundation. Tens of Library has over 200 plus thousands of captives were more than 120 other editions taken by different tribes, from and titles not listed. Among the earliest encounters with the highlights of the Clements Europeans until well into the Library’s collection are Pocahontas rescues the captive John Smith in this illustration from nineteenth century. Indians’ Mary Rowlandson’s True The Generall Historie of Virginia (London, 1624). Whether real or purposes for taking captives— fictional, the incident is one of the best-known stories of American History (London, 1682), revenge, ransom, adoption, history. John Williams’s Redeemed and slave labor—varied great- Captive (Boston, 1707), Robert He later elaborated and expanded upon ly across cultures and during different Eastburn’s Faithful Narrative his account in other writings. Whether periods of history. Some captives might (Philadelphia, 1758), James Smith’s this incident actually occurred is still be held for only a few days, while others Account of the Remarkable Occurrences the subject of historical debate. were adopted into a tribe and remained (Lexington, 1799), and James Seaver’s While many captivity narratives there for the rest of their lives. On the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison (Canandaigua, were written by survivors and based on frontiers of America, capture by Indians 1824). The vast majority of the works real events, they frequently contain ficti- was an omnipresent threat, a source of are written in English and depict the tious elements as well. Later tales of both fear and curiosity. Captivity narra- captivities of individuals of European the nineteenth century are often entirely tives thus served to educate readers origin.

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