THE PRESENCE AND USE OF THE NATIVE AMERICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN ORAL TRICKSTER TRADITIONS IN ZITKALA-SA’S OLD INDIAN LEGENDS AND AMERICAN INDIAN STORIES AND CHARLES CHESNUTT’S THE CONJURE WOMAN ________________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board ________________________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ________________________________________________________________________ by Gayle Byrd May 2014 Dr. Carolyn Karcher, Advisory Chair, Department of English Literature Dr. Jayne Kribbs-Drake, Department of English Literature Dr. Roland Williams, Department of English Literature Dr. James Salazar, Department of English Literature Dr. David Waldstreicher, External Member, Department of History, Temple University ii Copyright 2014 By Gayle Byrd All rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT THE PRESENCE AND USE OF THE NATIVE AMERICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN ORAL TRICKSTER TRADITIONS IN ZITKALA-SA’S OLD INDIAN LEGENDS AND AMERICAN INDIAN STORIES AND CHARLES CHESNUTT’S THE CONJURE WOMAN My dissertation examines early Native American and African American oral trickster tales and shows how the pioneering authors Zitkala-Sa (Lakota) and Charles W. Chesnutt (African American) drew on them to provide the basis for a written literature that critiqued the political and social oppression their peoples were experiencing. The dissertation comprises 5 chapters. Chapter 1 defines the meaning and role of the oral trickster figure in Native American and African American folklore. It also explains how my participation in the Native American and African American communities as a long-time storyteller and as a trained academic combine to allow me to discern the hidden messages contained in Native American and African American oral and written trickster literature. Chapter 2 pinpoints what is distinctive about the Native American oral tradition, provides examples of trickster tales, explains their meaning, purpose, and cultural grounding, and discusses the challenges of translating the oral tradition into print. The chapter also includes an analysis of Jane Schoolcraft’s short story “Mishosha” (1827). Chapter 3 focuses on Zitkala-Sa’s Old Indian Legends (1901) and American Indian Stories (1921). In the legends and stories, Zitkala-Sa is able to preserve much of the mystical, magical, supernatural, and mythical quality of the original oral trickster tradition. She also uses the oral trickster tradition to describe and critique her particular nineteenth-century situation, the larger historical, cultural, and political context of the Sioux Nation, and Native American oppression under the United States government. iv Chapter 4 examines the African American oral tradition, provides examples of African and African American trickster tales, and explains their meaning, purpose, and cultural grounding. The chapter ends with close readings of the trickster tale elements embedded in William Wells Brown’s Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter (1853), Harriett Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), and Martin R. Delany’s Blake, or the Huts of America (serialized 1859 – 1862). Chapter 5 shows how Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman rests upon African-derived oral trickster myths, legends, and folklore preserved in enslavement culture. Throughout the Conjure tales, Chesnutt uses the supernatural as a metaphor for enslaved people’s resistance, survival skills and methods, and for leveling the ground upon which Blacks and Whites struggled within the confines of the enslavement and post-Reconstruction South. Native American and African American oral and written trickster tales give voice to their authors’ concerns about the social and political quality of life for themselves and for members of their communities. My dissertation allows these voices a forum from which to “speak.” v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to Dr. Carolyn Karcher, my dissertation advising chair, for her mentoring, extraordinary vision and unwavering support for my involvement in and writing about Native American and African American storytelling, folklore, and cultural traditions. I formulated many of my ideas during long conversations with Dr. Karcher, by phone and when she invited me to spend dissertation development sessions over lunch at her home. Special thanks to Dr. James Salazar for brilliantly and patiently commenting on multiple draft versions of every chapter. Drs. Jayne Drake and Roland Williams were more than dissertation committee members. They were inspiring creative muses and great friends with open door policies. Dr. David Waldstreicher generously served as my outside reader and gave me invaluable suggestions about where to take the research in the future. Thank you to past and present Temple professors Richard Beards, Gabrielle Bernhard-Jackson, Michelle Byng, Jerome Byrd, Carolyn Karcher, Jayne Drake, Eli Goldblatt, Kate Henry, Joyce A. Joyce, Michael Kauffman, Sally Mitchell, Miles Orvell, James Salazar, Kathy Uno, Roland Williams and Howard Winant. Your classes or conversations opened my mind to new ways of thinking about Native American or African American life and experiences. Special heart-felt thanks goes to (Dean) Carolyn Adams – it’s our third degree together. Thanks, Belinda and Sharon. Thank you, Temple University for awarding me the Future Faculty Fellowship Program’s graduate fellowship in English Literature. Thank you to the Board of Trustees, faculty members, and administrators at Rowan College at Gloucester County for hiring me, sponsoring my Charles Lindback Junior Minority Faculty research grant award, affirming my research and teaching interests, awarding me tenure and promotions, and granting me a dissertation-writing vi sabbatical. Thank you, Norma Arnold, Director (retired) of the Russell Conwell Center at Temple University and the Center’s Ronald McNair Faculty-in-Training Program. Thank you to Dr. Tiffenia Archie and Tchet Dereic Dorman of Temple’s Office of Multicultural Affairs for providing me with years of unwavering encouragement and gifting me with a Mock Defense. Thank you to Satya Mohanty, Chandra Mohanty, and Beverly Guy- Sheftall of the Future of Minority Studies Program for the Summer Institute dissertation seminars at Cornell and Stanford Universities. Piamayaye and thank you to Professors Ione Quigley, Duane Hollow Horn Bear, and Chief Albert White Hat of Sinte Gleska University’s Lakota Studies Department, Rosebud Lakota Indian Reservation. Thank you to my family members, friends, and colleagues for their kindness, encouragement, and unwavering support. vii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my loving, supportive, and patient husband, Jerome Byrd; my deeply cherished seven children, Awanju, Jayson, Nelson, Mingo, Sonya, Darase, and Mabari; my wonderful parents, Raymond and Wilhelmena Tennyson; and my fantastic sisters, Allison and Karla. Thank you all for believing in, encouraging, and supporting me. I could not have done this without you. You have cheered me on every step of the way. I love and appreciate all of you. I am standing on the shoulders of our beloved and accomplished ancestors. I am flying high because you are the wind beneath my wings. Thank you. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………..iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……………………………………………………..……v DEDICATION…………………………………………………………………..…vii CHAPTER 1. THE TRICK BEHIND NATIVE AMERICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN TRICKSTER STORYTELLING………………………….1 2. THE NATIVE AMERICAN ORAL TRICKSTER TRADITION………55 2. ZITKALA-SA’S LITERARY RENDITIONS OF NATIVE AMERICAN TRICKSTER TALES FOR POST-CONTACT READERS………….118 4. THE AFRICAN AMERICAN ORAL TRICKSTER TRADITION AND ITS USE IN THE WRITINGS OF WILLIAM WELLS BROWN, HARRIET JACOBS, AND MARTIN R. DELANY.………………….199 5. CHARLES CHESNUTT AND THE ORAL TRICKSTER TALE TRADITION IN THE CONJURE WOMAN: GOOPHERING NINETEENTH-CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICAN OPPRESSION..307 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………..….382 WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………………..402 APPENDICES APPENDIX A. NO MORE AUCTION BLOCK...……………………………….420 APPENDIX B. GO DOWN MOSES……………………………………………..421 APPENDIX C. JOSHUA FIT DE BATTLE OF JERICHO...…………………....422 APPENDIX D. THE GOSPEL TRAIN....………………...…………………...…424 APPENDIX E. MASTER KEEPS HIS WORD…………………………………..425 1 CHAPTER 1 THE TRICK BEHIND NATIVE AMERICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN ORAL TRICKSTER STORYTELLING My dissertation is a long story; and, here is the story… My dissertation is an analysis of Zitkala-Sa’s Old Indian Legends (1901) and American Indian Stories (1921) and Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman (1899) in relation to the Native American and African American oral trickster traditions that preceded them. First, I examine the meanings in Native American and African American oral trickster traditions. Then, I focus on Zitkala-Sa and Chesnutt, the first Native American and African American authors to publish collections of short stories and autobiographical narratives which have oral trickster lore embedded in the texts. This pairing of authors and works makes sense, for the original literature of the United States is the Native American Oral Tradition and related to it is the transplanted African American Oral Tradition beginning when Africans brought their trickster stories with them upon their arrival to American shores. Both Native American and African American literary traditions begin with oral histories, legends, tales, stories, myths, songs, chants,