NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE, Apuntes de Literatura

¡Descarga NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE y más Apuntes en PDF de Literatura solo en Docsity! NATIVE AMERICAN LITERATURE Oral literature The first native American literary texts were offered orally, and they link the earth-surface people with the plants and animals, the rivers and rocks, and all things believed significant in the life of America’s first people. The texts tie Indian people to the earth and its life through a spiritual kinship with the living and dead relatives of Native Americans. Coyote, raven, fox, hawk, turtle, rabbit and other animal characters in the stories are considered by many Native Americans to be their relatives. In the same way, the Plant People are related to Indian people. Oak, maple, pine, cedar, fir, corn, squash, berries and roots are viewed as relatives. The Animal People and Plant People participated in a history before and after the arrival of humans, and this history was kept through the spoken word. There was a similar relationship with the geographical features of the earth. First writings The history of literature written in English by American Indians parallels the history of white migration across the continent. White exploration and settlement were followed by the arrival of missionaries who converted Indians to Christianity and educated them in religious schools. The first Native American writer to be published in English was the Reverend Samson Occom (a member of the Mohegan nation, 1723-92). Although raised as a typical Mohegan boy, at 16 he began to study English, was converted to Christianity, became a schoolmaster to Indians and then served as a missionary among New England Indians. His 1771 A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian went through 19 editions. Autobiographies The genre in which most Native American authors of the 19th and 20th centuries have written is autobiography. This choice represents a break with oral tradition because the personal narrative is not part of American Indian oral literatures. Many Native cultures consider talking about oneself inappropriate. William Apes (Pequot, b. 1797) published the first autobiography written by an Indian, A Son of the Forest: The Experiences of William Apes, A Native of the Forest. Written by Himself (New York, Author, 1829, expanded and revised 1831). His final work was the eloquent Eulogy on King Philip, which traces white abuse of New England Indians in the 17th and 18th centuries. After publication of this book, Apes disappeared from public view, leaving no record of his later life and death. Novels The first novel published by a Native American was The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta (1854) by John Rollin Ridge (Cherokee, 1827-67), “Yellow Bird”, son of the highly respected Cherokee leader John Ridge. Ridge chose to deal indirectly with the injustices suffered by Indians by focusing on the Mexican folk hero Murieta--a social outcast who defeats his enemies by using both his keen mind and blazing pistols. The first Native American novel devoted to the subject of Indian life is O-gi-maw-kwe Mit-I-gwa- ki (Queen of the Woods) (1899) by Simon Pokagon (Potawatomi, 1830-99). Pokagon was determined to educate a white audience about traditional Potawatomi life before the coming of whites and about the tragic changes in this life suffered by the people after whites dispossessed them and debauched them with alcohol. Twentieth century For many Native Americans the turn of the century marked their dispossession of ancestral lands, the nadir of the populations, and confinement to reservations. Fearful that their oral traditions would disappear forever as the tribal communities became more and more fragmented under the demoralizing conditions of reservation life, some native Americans began to write down the legends and folktales of their tribes, as well as their own personal narratives, in an effort to preserve their history and culture for posterity. Writing became a means to perpetuate tradition in the face of cultural disintegration. Two of the early 20th century Indian writers who attempted to make the transition from oral to written form and to bridge the gap between tradition and assimilation were: Zitkala Sa (Gertrude Bonnin) (Dakota Sioux of Yankton band, 1876-1938) Old Indian Legends (1901) American Indian Stories (1921) Hum-is hu-ma or Mourning Dove (Christal Quintasket) (Okanogan, 1888-1936) Co-ge-wea; the Half Blood (1927) Coyote Stories (1933) Much of the middle portion of the 20th century is characterized by Native narratives as told to Anglo writers. As actual Native presence visibly waned, public and academic interest in native testimony grew. Among the best of these are: Frank Bird Linderman (Anglo-American, 1869-1938) who spent much of his adult life in Montana among Native people. His collaborative studies include: Plenty-coups, Chief of the Crows (originally published as American: The Life Story of a Great Indian,....) (1930) and Pretty-shield, Medicine Woman of the Crows (originally published as Red Mother) (1931). John G. Neihardt (Anglo-American, 1881-1973) was a poet and writer who traveled to South Dakota in 1930 to meet Black Elk and other Lakotas in order to check the facts for an epic poem of the American West. Black Elk and Neihardt became close friends and their collaboration became Black Elk Speaks, a text which gradually won worldwide attention. In 1944 Neihardt again interviewed Black Elk about Lakota culture. These interviews became part of Neihardt’s 1951 book When the Tree Flowered. Their friendship continued until Black Elk’s death in 1950 at age 87. Native American Renaissance Some scholars suggest that native American literature did not exist before N. Scott Momaday ((Kiowa and Cherokee, 1934-) published his modernist novel, House Made of Dawn in 1968, a moment often referred to as the beginning of the “Native American Renaissance.” (a term coined by critic Kenneth Lincoln in his 1983 book Native American Renaissance). House Made of Dawn