Our War Paint is Writer’s Ink: Ojibwe Literary Transnationalism Adam Spry Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERISTY 2014 © 2014 Adam Spry All rights reserved ABSTRACT Our War Paint is Writer’s Ink: Ojibwe Literary Transnationalism Adam Spry Works of literature written by Native Americans have long been treated by readers and critics as expressions of cultural identity: transparent representations of communal world- views, traditional belief-systems, or sets of cultural practices. Often, such ethnographic readings come at the expense of understanding how these texts express the political concerns of their authors. My dissertation pushes back against such readings, showing how Ojibwe writers attempt to use literature as a means of shaping public opinion in the pursuit of pragmatic political goals. Reconsidering Ojibwe writing in this way, I examine how Ojibwe authors use their work to engage in dialog with non-Native readers and writers in the U.S.—an interaction they insist be understood as transnational. By comparing literary representations of the Ojibwe produced by both U.S. writers and the Ojibwe themselves, I show how poems, novels, and dramatic works have been the site at which the possibility of Ojibwe nationhood has been imagined and contested for nearly two centuries. In so doing, I suggest that Ojibwe literature is not a stable and homogenous category, but an expedient response to U.S. settler-colonialism defined by a shared set of political commitments. In so doing, I complicate prior theorizations of indigenous literary nationalism as a project primarily oriented toward cultural separatism, replacing them with a more nuanced model of continual, if agonistic, engagement on the imperfectly leveling field of literary representation. Contents List of Figures . ii Introduction . 1 1 – Revolutionary in Character . 24 2 – Englishman, Your Color is Decietful . 73 3 – What is this I Promise You? . 130 4 – The Government is Not So Much Our Problem . 174 Works Cited . 236 i List of Figures Fig. 1 – The Progess, December 17th 1887 . 43 Fig. 2 – Resort Advertisements from the Chicago Daily Tribune . 76 Fig. 3 – Defontaines, Mort de Montcalm . 96 Fig. 4 – Densmore’s Transcription of “Mide Initiation Song” . 136 Fig. 5 – “Song Picture No. 64” . 154 Fig. 6 – Vizenor’s reexpression of the Mide Initiation Song (1993) . 172 ii Acknowledgments Miigwech was the very first Ojibwe word I ever learned because it is the most important. There are many, many people to whom I must say miigwech—thank you. First, I need to thank my amazing advisors, Rachel Adams, Scott Richard Lyons, and John Gamber—I hope to someday offer the same support and encouragement to young scholars as they have to me. I would also like to thank Bruce Robbins, Elizabeth Hutchinson, and everybody at the Yale Group for the Study of Native America for providing great feedback on the project as thoughtful, incisive readers. This work was made possible in part by the generous support of the Council of Independent Colleges, Yale University and the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Special thanks to my colleagues and friends: Timothy Donahue, Gania Barlow, Dru Söderlund, Alastair Morrison, Deborah Ashkenes, Emily Hayman, Oliver Batham, Nijah Cunningham, John Hay, Jessica Teague, and the many, many others who did their time with me at Columbia—I’ll see you all at 1020. My partner Katie Hoyt has been with me every step of the process, supporting me, talking me down, and acting as my conscience more often than she probably knows—her patience is an inspiration— gunalchéesh ho ho, kiddo. Finally, I would like to thank my mother, Melinda Spry, for her encouragement to always call ‘em like I see ‘em, and my father, Michael Spry, who has been the best (and toughest) editor a writer could ever have. This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of Karl Kroeber, a true mentor whose kindness and encouragement changed my life forever. ‘Chi miigwech. iii Introduction The word [Ojibwe] is very loaded and bears a host of meanings and interpretations and theories. I’ve heard that Ojibwe refers to the puckering of the seams traditional moccasins, or makazinan. Or that the Ojibwe roasted their enemies “until they puckered up.” Gruesome. I’ve heard that Anishinaabe means “from whence is lowered the male of the species,” but I don’t like that one very much. And then there is the more mystical Spontaneous Beings. The meaning that I like best of course is Ojibwe from the verb Ozhibii’ige, which is “to write.” —Louise Erdrich …the Ojibwa have received a vicarious distinction, unique among aboriginal American tribal groups. They have achieved an enduring fame, not through wars or conquests…but through the projection of an artistic image of them that has become an integral part of American literary tradition. —Alfred Irving Hallowell …the Ojibwe language has given English the words “moccasin,” “toboggan,” “wigwam,” “moose,” “totem,” and “muskeg.” We’ve even met on the middle ground. We provided “musk” from “mashkiig,” or swamp, English provided “rat” and together we built a word for a swamp dwelling rodent that looks an awful lot like a rat—muskrat. If that’s not a fine example of cultural exchange I don’t know what is. —David Treuer Writing has been part of Ojibwe1 life for centuries. Long before contact with Euroamericans, Ojibwe wrote on birchbark scrolls, not with words, but pictures. With characteristic flowing lines the images on such scrolls served various purposes, detailing instructions for religious rituals, or depicting legends from the oral tradition. Sometimes the scrolls were used to record one of the foundational stories of the Ojibwe people: their 1 Although it is common practice for Ojibwe academics to exclusively use the endonym Anishinaabeg to refer to the Ojibwe people, I will not be doing so for the purposes of this dissertation. Because Anishinaabeg refers not just to the Ojibwe, but to the Odawa and Potawatomi as well (indeed, in the Ojibwe language it can actually refer to any indigenous person), for the purposes of clarity and accuracy I find it easier to use the more specific term Ojibwe. 1 great migration. The Ojibwe once lived on the east coast of North America, probably somewhere near present-day Maine. At some point in the last millennia, the Ojibwe were visited by a series of otherworldly prophets, who encouraged them to migrate west to a place where food grew on water. They spent the next several centuries making their way up the Saint Lawrence River and the waters that fed it. They were guided on their journey by a great miigis—a cowrie shell—that had risen from the ocean. After many years of traveling, the Ojibwe finally came upon the rich lakes and streams of the Great Lakes region. There the prophecy that had compelled the Ojibwe to move was fulfilled. The silty streambeds and lake shores of the region were rich in manoomin—the wild rice that continues to be an important source of physical, spiritual, and economic sustenance for the Ojibwe people. Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Ojibwe consolidated control over the Great Lakes region through diplomacy, trade, and warfare. Together with the Odawa and the Potowatomi, they formed a powerful alliance, known as the Three Fires Confederacy. This alliance allowed these related tribes to defend their territory from the Haudenosaunee and control trade among other Algonquin language speaking tribes of the eastern Great Lakes region. According to the nineteenth century Ojibwe historian William Warren (1825-53), the Ojibwe kept a detailed record of this period, incising important events on a plate of native copper. Warren estimated that the copper plate accounted for about three centuries of Ojibwe history going back to the sixteenth century, measured by the lifespan of nine previous custodians of the plate, each of whom had made a mark on the copper. Next to one of these marks, claimed Warren, was the record of an portentious event for the Ojibwe: “By the rude figure of a man with a hat on his 2 head, placed oppsite one of these indentations, was denoted the period when the white race made his first appearance among them.”2 These were Jesuit missionaries, whose eagerly waved crucifixes earned them the name ‘wemitigoozhi’—the stick shakers—the name which the French still bear in the Ojibwe language. These holy men were soon followed by those with decidedly more secular interests. The Ojibwe established close economic relationships (and oftentimes kin relationships) with the French voyageurs and coereur des bois with whom they traded food and pelts—mostly beaver—for cookware, fabric, steel tools, and other European- made goods. One of the most important acquisitions the Ojibwe made through this trade was the firearm. Using this newly-acquired technology, the Ojibwe engaged in a war of expansion against the Dakota, pushing them out of fur-rich areas of modern-day Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Manitoba. By the end of the 18th century, the Ojibwe had established themselves as a major regional power, controlling a huge portion of the North American continent. In the early nineteenth century the Ojibwe began their first formal interactions with the United States, which had acquired a large portion of the Ojibwes’ territory as a result of the 1783 Treaty of Paris. While initial relations were cool (a few Ojibwe bands joined Tecumseh and the British against the Americans in the War of 1812), the Ojibwe soon established a treaty-based alliance with the US, just as they had with the British and French before. This process was aided by a woman named Obabaamwewe-giizhigokwe, or Jane Johnston (1800-42), the daughter of an aristocratic Irish fur trader and an Ojibwe 2 Warren, William Whipple.