Indians, Environment, and Identity on the Borders of American Literature
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INDIANS, ENVIRONMENT, AND IDENTITY ON THE BORDERS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE Lindsey Claire Smith A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English. Chapel Hill 2006 Approved by Advisor: Gretchen Bataille Advisor: Trudier Harris Reader: Linda Wagner-Martin Reader: Maria DeGuzman Reader: Valerie Lambert © 2006 Lindsey Claire Smith ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Lindsey Claire Smith: INDIANS, ENVIRONMENT, AND IDENTITY ON THE BORDERS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE (Under the direction of Gretchen Bataille and Trudier Harris) This dissertation foregrounds boundary crossing among American Indians, African Americans, and Euramericans as a central feature of American literature. The authors discussed, including James Fenimore Cooper, William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Leslie Marmon Silko, place this cross-cultural contact in nature, not only collapsing cultural and racial boundaries, but also complicating divisions between “wilderness” and “civilization.” Responding to contemporary theoretical approaches to race, culture, and nationhood, this dissertation points toward the multiple perspectives and cultures that distinguish American literature as well as highlights the role of geography in these critical discourses, forging a connection between ecological theory and ethnic studies. Whereas Euramerican writers demonstrate multi-racial coexistence on the frontier as idyllic yet fleeting due to national expansion, African American and Native writers reverse this model, identifying Black-Indian alliance as the source of resistance to colonization and environmental degradation. This study thereby probes the prominent roles that American Indians occupy in major American novels, not only as emblems of ecological acumen, but more important, as participants in cultural exchange that informs American identity. iii For Jerre Brokaw (Delaware) 1929-1999 dear friend and inspiration iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am very grateful to my parents, Dwight and Charlene Smith, and my brother, Benjamin Corbett Smith, for their love and support as I’ve made my way through graduate school and the dissertation stage. I would also like to thank my advisors and committee members, Gretchen Bataille, Trudier Harris, Linda Wagner-Martin, Valerie Lambert, and Maria DeGuzman, for their advice and mentorship. Additionally, I am especially indebted to Sandra Hoeflich, Associate Dean of the Graduate School at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Penny Aldrich, supporter of the Sequoyah Fellowship for American Indian Students/Studies, who have made sure that I have been supported financially during my years as a graduate student. Thanks also to my smart and beautiful girlfriends: Jennifer, Sarah, Grace, Rose, Pam, Karen, Megan, Malinda, and Katherine. Let’s continue to cheer each other on! Finally, thanks to my great- grandmother, Eva Clayton, who taught at the Wynnewood School in Indian Territory. Can’t wait to meet you someday. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………..1 II CROSS-CULTURAL HYBRIDITY IN JAMES FENIMORE COOPER’S THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS……………………………9 III LEGACY OF “DOOM” ON THE CROSSROADS OF WILLIAM FAULKNER’S YOKNAPATAWPHA………………………50 IV INDIGENOUS “REMEMORY”: CULTURAL HYBRIDITY AND THE NATURE OF RESISTANCE IN THE NOVELS OF TONI MORRISON………………………………………………….....97 V ALICE WALKER’S ECO-“WARRIORS”……………………………...140 VI THE EARTH REMAINS: PLACE AND PROPHECY IN LESLIE MARMON SILKO’S ALMANAC OF THE DEAD...................188 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………………..232 vi CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION Studies of race relations in American literature have long concentrated on slavery and the Jim Crow era, highlighting the polarization of blacks and whites as a defining force that drives our understanding of society. Such studies—though certainly relevant and applicable—do not provide a comprehensive picture of the history of interracial and cross- cultural interaction in literature or in America. Since its earliest years, America has been distinguished by a diversity of American Indian peoples who have alternately struggled with and survived through their encounters with those of other backgrounds, especially those of African American and Euro-American descent, as well as those representing varied populations of the Americas. In order to achieve a more dynamic comprehension of race in American literature, it is necessary to recover and reexamine texts that complicate a polarization of black and white, and in so doing, unearth perceptions about American Indians that inform our notions of heritage, community, spirituality, and American identity. Contemporary American writers such as Michael Dorris, Toni Morrison, Clarence Major, Alice Walker, and Leslie Marmon Silko have emphasized just such multi-dimensional portraits in their novels, often reflecting their senses of their own varied ethnic identities. While these contemporary authors clearly reflect a progression in the way race is represented in literature, from a limiting black-white binary to a more accurate, dynamic reality, it is important to note that the intersection of black, white, and red in American fiction precedes these writers. By examining earlier depictions of American Indians, African Americans, and whites in contact, readers may approach contemporary literature more critically and discover that some longstanding beliefs about race, especially inaccurate ideas about American Indians, persist. The backdrop for these multi-racial encounters in American literature is the wilderness landscape and its associations with pre-lapserian innocence and quintessential American possibility. With James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans (1826) as a starting point, one can identify a constant link in American fiction between human beings’ relationships to nature and land and their relationships with those of other racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. Significantly, from Last of the Mohicans to Alice Walker’s Meridian (1976), nature’s restorative potential is associated with American Indian legacies that hold healing power for communities. While white and African American authors illustrate this recuperative potential in a generally consistent manner over time, American Indian authors such as Leslie Marmon Silko present Natives’ relationship to nature and to those of other racial backgrounds in radically different terms. For Silko, the healing power of the natural world coincides with a prophetic and literal reclamation of the land by its indigenous inhabitants. This dissertation uncovers more fully this connection between cross-racial contact and environment and responds to contemporary theoretical approaches to race, culture, nationhood, and ecology. These approaches include Willliam L. Katz’s and Jack D. Forbes’s studies of black Indians, Gloria Anzaldua’s and Homi K. Bhabha’s writings about cultural hybridity, Philip Deloria’s and Shari Huhndorf’s analyses of “playing Indian” traditions, and Lawrence Buell’s and Donelle Dreese’s ecocritial work. This study also affirms the prominent roles that American Indians occupy in major American novels, not only as 2 emblems of ecological acumen, but more important, as participants in cultural exchange that informs American identity. Further, the project recognizes the significance of Native responses to American literary paradigms, responses that have often been overlooked in literary criticism. One of the most significant challenges of a discourse that questions typical racial classifications and accounts for the impact of cultural hybridity is the difficulty of pinpointing better definitions for contested concepts such as “race” or “ethnicity.” While “white” and “black” are commonly used to designate an individual’s race according to color, these words, having long been the standard for racist social strictures, deny the realities of varied ethnicities among these populations. Terms such as “African American” or “Euroamerican” do a better job of emphasizing culture over color, perhaps accompanying a societal shift in the direction of cultural plurality, yet still they do little to signify the diversity represented by individuals of similar skin colors. Indeed, the political boundaries of Europe and Africa are ever-shifting, and many of the diverse populations who originated in those areas have long since migrated to other continents, making connections between geography and ethnicity, and ethnicity and color, tenuous. Further, these linguistic markers, which are employed broadly to mark individuals’ identities, are problematized when those individuals use other methods or words to identify themselves. This discrepancy is particularly important for discourse concerning indigenous Americans. As is widely known, a major linguistic mistake occurred when “in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Thinking he had reached the West Indies, Columbus incorrectly called the individuals he encountered in the Americas “Indians.” While the word “Indian” was thereafter used for centuries to refer to indigenous Americans, the term created an obvious 3 linguistic challenge for distinguishing the differences between these Americans and residents of India. In recent decades, as compound words such as “African American,” “Asian American,” and “Mexican American” have entered the language, the term “Native American” has come into fashion, especially in academic circles, to refer to tribal populations. However, the term