What to learn about American Indians: 1. You never stop learning

Indians not monolithic group

300 different cultures / groups

mostly grouped by languages > dialects

What to call? What name?

Compare to African Americans, blacks, negroes, colored people, etc.

Naming as essential and evolving indicator of status

"American Indians" and "Native Americans" both have problems

"Indians" based on Columbus's mistaken assumption he had reached India.

"Native Americans" can also be used in reference to any American who is born in the United States.

I use the terms interchangeably, and Indians grant some acceptance of these names as terms of convenience.

Occasional pan-Indian names: "American Aborigines" > "First Peoples"

simple but difficult answer: call by Tribe names:

but so many!

Cheyenne, Cherokee, Powhatan, Lumbee, Wampanoag, Nipmuc, Hopi, Navajo, Zuni, Apache, Comanche, Pequot, Delaware / Lenape, Chinook . . . .

Are these even the right names? Often names from enemies or mistranslations.

Massachusett 

Iroquois

5 Civilized Tribes

need to overcome two contending and equally dehumanizing images from past:

early North America: Indians = terrorists

Romantic era (late 1700s, early 1800s) = noble savage (Last of the Mohicans, Dances with Wolves)

2nd is kinder, but maybe as dehumanizing as first

Both images have negative implications for dominant culture

American Indian identity elusive b/c essentially so different

"American Indian" doesn't mean one ethnic culture but many; however, some "pan-Indian" qualities . . .

spoken culture X written culture of dominant culture (compared to African American minority literature, American Indian literature is slower to emerge in print; native languages persist longer than African languages)

traditional, past-modeled culture X modern or revolutionary, future-modeled culture

identification with place, land X time, history, immigration

world or nature in perpetual creation X Biblical Creation as finished, completed, final (though evolution differs)

implications of last: Anglos idolize or fantasize Indians who might have been long ago, but ignore Indians of today. (Houston has 4th largest urban population of census-identified American Indians, but who knew?)

Indians respect the past but don't expect to stay there.

stories only loosely comparable to western scripture

stories change with performance, retelling (cf. "telephone" game)

Compare-contrast Indian Origin Stories to Genesis

Compare:

divisions or borders b/w world: night / day, sky / chaos or earth, higher / lower

chaos or void (Gen. 1); "chaos" in Indian stories

twins? good and bad spirits?

oral-spoken origins of stories: 7 days of Genesis reflects mnemonic of holy number 7

+ two different human-creation stories in Genesis: 1.26 & 2.4

Genesis 3 Serpent = bad twin?

sky-woman's fall = Adam's fall?

Contrast:

Genesis 1.28 have dominion

but 2.15 dress it and keep it > stewardship

Genesis 3.24 humanity exiled

4.12 a fugitive and a vagabond . . .

What significance to these similarities and differences?

Iroquois Origin Stories (all earth-diver)

1.1 Skyworld, Celestial Tree (+ earthly correspondent)

1.2 Skywoman, baby, dream, tree uprooted

1.3 fall, seeds

1.4 birds and animals help

1.5 [earth-diver], tiny muskrat = she

1.6 life on earth had begun

1.7 birth to a daughter > twin sons: Bad Mind (Flint) and Good Mind; cf. Genesis 3.12, where Adam blames Eve?

1.8 daughter's head > Grandmother Moon; body > three sisters (corn, beans, squash)

1.9 Good Mind makes beauty, Bad Mind envious

1.10 Bad Mind banished to caves beneath earth

2.1 Skyworld, beings +- human beings, power to make things happen by thinking

2.2 Tree of Life

2.3 not to disturb tree; woman pregnant asks for drink from roots; Mature Flower; tree falls, woman falls

2.4 water birds catch her

2.5 Turtle Island

2.6 needed dirt [earth-diver]; seeds, land and plant-life

2.7 daughter walks west, male-being West Wind, 2 crossed arrows > twin boys

2.9 right-handed and left-handed twin; body of mother > corn, beans, squash

2.11 Sky Woman's head > Grandmother Moon, regulates monthly cycles of all female life

2.12 human beings = caretakers but keep forgetting; web of life

3.1 recorded by John Norton 1816; Scottish & Cherokee parents, adopted by Mohawk

3.2 country above the sky, Superior Beings; Great Spirit, daughter, pregnant; Great Spirit orders earth-diver

3.3 spirits in human form, two arrows

3.4 twins argue, one kills mother

3.5 Holder of Heaven & Flinty Rock

3.6 Father as Protector; gives corn; IDs as Great Turtle

3.8 wicked brother imprisons animals in cave

3.9 liberates animals

Good twin as clever, cunning, learns stronger twin's secrets or weaknesses

13.16 kills brother > many languages

Jicarilla Genesis

[1] In the beginning the earth was covered with water, and all living things were below in the underworld. Then people could talk, the animals could talk, the trees could talk, and the rocks could talk.

2 dark in the underworld; game for light or darkness

3 the people won. The morning star came out and the Black-bear ran and hid in the darkness.

5 horns make ladder > curved horns

10 earth now all dry [cf. Noah]

10 each tribe stopped where it would.

11 Taos = middle of Earth

12 left a girl behind, two sons

14 rock that runs

15 boys + twelve men > under water in house of turquoise

The Beginning of Newness Zuni (New Mexico)

1 nothing else except black darkness

2 all-Father > sun >

3 Four-fold-containing Earth-mother and the All-covering Sky-father, power of changing forms

4 as man and woman spoke these two together

4 terraced bowl, home of my tiny children

5-6 water cycle?

8 father shining yellow corn-grains cf. sparks of fire

10 first children still in cave, unfinished; many sought to escape, becoming wiser

11 two sons, elder and younger, right and left, twin brothers of light; magic knives open caves of light, lived with them, guide them out

12 grasses and vines > ladder

14 second cave, again went upward, 6 kinds of men

15 third great cave like valley in starlight

15 men began to perceive and to learn variously, according to their natures

16  the Two led them forth again into the great upper world, which is the World of Knowing Seeing.

HOW THE WHITE RACE CAME TO AMERICA

related by So-Son-Dowa

1 where swarmed many people

1 preacher of queen's religion

2 volumes hidden in chest

2 no right to read the book

2 a great man who had been a prophet and the son of the Great Ruler. He had been born on the earth and the white men to whom he preached killed him. Now moreover the prophet had promised to return and become the King. In three days he was to come and then in forty to start his kingdom. This did not happen as his followers had expected

3 chief preacher: seek him out

4 [dream?] morning, river, island, castle of gold

5 handsome smiling young man; across ocean another country, virtuous people

5 Those people are virtuous, they have no unnatural evil habits and they are honest. A great reward is yours if you will help me. Here are five things that men and women enjoy; take them to these people and make them as white men are. Then shall you be rich and powerful and you may become the chief of all great preachers here."

6 bundle containing the five things and made the bargain

6 castle and island vanish

7 a flask of rum, a pack of playing cards, a handful of coins, a violin and a decayed leg bone.

8 a man named Columbus and to him he confided the story. Then did Columbus secure some big canoes and raise up wings [sails]

9 the evil one

10 he said, "I think I have made an enormous mistake for I did not dream that these people would suffer so." Then did even the devil himself lament that his evil had been so great.

Great Binding Law

1 plant the Tree of Great Peace

2 predominance of natural figures, absence of abstraction

3 all the affairs of the Five Nations shall be transacted at this place

4 roots

5 "Lords" = problems of translation?

5 take shelter

6 Eagle

7 Onondaga as keepers of Council Fire

10 smoke signals?

12 shell (wampum) strings to female families; proprietary right

13 shell strings (or wampum belts) of any size or length as pledges or records of matters of national or international importance.

14 messenger must hear and repeat

15 binding upon exchange of shell strings

17 white = women, black = men

18 Hiawatha belt

20 white = purity?

Only teachers think of grades in a group

Most students take grades personally, and personal reactions are projected on the teacher

especially with literature, where emotions and subjective feelings are in play more than in other types of courses

even more especially when writing is involved--writing feels like putting your soul on the line, and when that doesn't feel appreciated, highly sensitive--

Student's fantasy of teacher's response: "I sensed your greatness but am overwhelmed by how supremely you do everything. I have nothing to teach you and can only admire . . . ."

Teacher's responsibility: 

be as positive and encouraging as possible but also try to instruct

if not working together to learn and improve, what's the purpose of school?

In grading, no silver bullet, no perfect way, so . . .

keep human flexibility and dialogue in the situation

flexibility: 

midterm will be app. 30-40% of final grade (grades in this course aren't computed by numbers)

if improvement in other or later assignments, that improvement is considered

Sometimes the midterm is someone's high point in the course, so sometimes the midterm can count more

dialogue:

welcome to email me back with your take on the midterm or asking for clarification (whitec@uhcl.edu). About half a dozen students have been in touch.

No reply is expected or required, but chance for constructive dialogue + gets you used to talking about improving your writing instead of just thinking writing is magic or hit-or-miss.

phone: 281 283 3380

welcome to confer during office hours or appointment: 

Office hours: Thursday 3-6, plus I'm around most afternoons, so communicate and something will work out

Two other options:

1. UHCL Writing Center

2. resource special to this course: midterm samples

If not as good as you liked, how do better

Hard to imagine doing better than you're doing

"Don't know what he wants"

My experience as a student: I benefited from seeing what was considered better

Models of better work make doing better work imaginable, doable 

midterm samples

Question or confusion in a few email exchanges: Given the 3-hour limit on writing, how much work can you do on midterm or final?

3-hour limit applies only to the actual final writing of what you send to me to read.

You may use as many hours as you like to visit Writing Center, outline, draft . . .

As far as drafting goes, don't just spend your 3 hours copying over a draft, but OK to consult drafts, outlines, etc.

slavery review

article from Houston Chronicle's front page on Saturday

read over for a minute and see what looks familiar from our class . . . especially regarding attitudes toward past and future.

Familiar territory:

Conservative forces: "Let bygones be bygones"

+ Gov. Perry: "x-reparations for past > preparations for future"

Dominant culture as future-oriented, etc.

from Objective 3:

Tabular summary of contrasts between the dominant culture's "American Dream" narrative and minority narratives (still Objective 3)

Interesting developments:

"acknowledgement" instead of "apology." An actual apology may be interpreted as an expression of guilt and therefore a commitment to reparations.

For instance, President Clinton in Africa in 1998: “going back to the time before we were a nation, European Americans received the fruits of the slave trade. And we were wrong in that.”

Also, for post-Civil Rights America, working "behind the scenes" is an interesting variation on the Civil Rights era's style of "taking it to the streets."

If an issue like this goes public too soon, the sides get polarized, as with the debate on Confederate statues or Ebonics.

American Indian origin stories

backgrounds available in lecture, but wanted to hear what you thought or learned from reading the handouts--what questions or insights are raised?

"Creation stories" & "Origin Stories" used somewhat interchangeably

Every culture has one--or at least one . . . .

Declaration of Independence as a kind of creation story for USA

Slave narratives, esp. Equiano's, as creation stories for African America (loosely applied)

"Virgin of Guadalupe" story as creation story for Mexico (plus or minus Mexican Americans)

significance of Creation Stories

compare debate over Evolution / Creation

Not just about science and religion, but something larger must be at stake

Question: What kinds of values and / or principles of society or existence do the American Indian origin stories create?

American Indian stories express appreciation for land

sense of balance, relationship of humans to system

innate connection between different kinds of life--one enriches the other

earth always appears to be in existence long before humans (and implicitly long after)

Question: Compare and contrast Genesis and Western Culture

impression that world is for humanity

stewards of the earth

also for exploitation--"dominion"--contrast balance of Amerind stories; in western culture, more of a hierarchy than a balance

Indians feel existence because of earth--in taking care of earth, taking care of themselves, if not for earth they wouldn't exist

written / spoken status

modern western culture: written culture

Genesis

American Indian culture: spoken culture

very little activity that resembles writing

"wampum"

Question: Compare / contrast Earth-Diver and Emergence stories

both stories involve pregnant women

Creation Myths (Amerindian)

Wiget, "Native American Oral Narrative"

Oral > written

Separation from nature, "dominion" + creator/God as separate from Nature

"Writing" as potentially unnatural, separation from nature, b/c writing may endure and not change like species, cultures, etc.

> association of God with Scripture: unchanging reality?

Iroquois Creation Story

introduction: no Iroquois-authored version before 1800s

"Earth-diver" story (Wiget)

Maternal family

Animals (monsters) have thought

twins -- good / evil twins may be "universal" dualism, or may show influence of western thought and Christianity's comparatively stark division of good and evil by the time this version was recorded.

Momaday, "Prologue," from The Names

Oral / written status: part of great Indian author's written memoir

but italicized part relates spoken version

followed by more meditative, abstract written version by author

example of Emergence Story, coming out (Wiget)

as with Iroquois story, a central woman figure

Or "people"

 "Loss was in the order of things"

but unfinished story (i. e., survival)

 therefore loss and survival

Question: What do you make of prominence of women figures in Indian creation stories, or their absence (except for poor Eve) in Genesis?

some history of Cornplanter and Handsome Lake

Handsome Lake, "How America was Discovered"

Handsome Lake was a prophet of the Seneca people; Cornplanter a chief

Seneca part of Iroquois confederation of tribes: Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, Cayuga ("The Five Nations") + Tuscarora ("The Six Nations")

Seneca were keepers of wampum belts

"the Creator"

strawberry festival

revitalization

again, oral transmission until 1923

obj. 1c—using dominant culture's words against them

creation story uses Genesis elements + Columbus

means of survival, adaptation

question for American Indian Stories: where turn Genesis story around?

Apess, "An Indian's Looking-Glass for the White Man"

+ rob another nation

satisfied with the manner of my creation

Jesus and Apostles not white

What to call American Indians?

remember that the name "Indians" or "Indios" was the first mistake in the relations between Europeans and Native Americans: Columbus thought he had reached India . . .

Still a problem with immigrants from India, who are called Indian Americans rather than American Indians

Depends on who's talking, but when an Anglo-American like me is talking about Native Americans or American Indians, chances are good he's talking about 

North American Indians--those Indians who occupied the land now governed by USA and Canada

and not talking about Meso-American Indians--i. e., native peoples from Central and South America

e. g., people of Chiapas or other rural areas of Mexico dominated by Indian populations

Probably a false distinction between North American and South American Indians, especially since Mexican American literature has a strong Indian component

But the distinction doesn't come out of nowhere--reflects different Indian cultures and different relationships between the Indian cultures and the European cultures that settled North American and South America

Point: at this stage of the semester we're mostly talking about North American Indian peoples, but it's not like the Indians made these distinctions, so it's just a matter of contemporary convenience . . . .

Loss & survival theme

American Dream as lots of land, opportunity, open spaces to develop into $, security

American Dream

For immigrants = opportunity

For Amerinds = loss (sometimes apocalyptic)

For American Indians, American Dream = nightmare

Key: involuntary participation in relation to American Dream

What minority narrative results?

Contact > "virgin-soil epidemics," warfare against technologically superior forces, expropriation and fencing of land, devastation of wildlife, devastation of Indian populations

Even now, American Indians are the only ethnic group in America whose population growth is less than replacement rate

These trends lead to the popular dominant culture narrative of the “vanishing Indian”—Romantic image of Indians, old ways disappearing

nostalgic, bittersweet look back at previous America--not so many people, cars, refineries . . . more trees . . . 

Stories & Images of "the Vanishing Indian"

Significance of dominant culture's "Vanishing Indian" narrative:

Dominant culture’s conflicted attitude toward Amerinds: 

Most dominant-culture Americans tend to vaguely admire American Indians, to feel some sentimental guilt about what happened to them, and to "romanticize" American Indians: "noble savages," "Indians didn't lie," etc. 

Not standard to hear white people say, I wish I were black, or I wish I were Mexican

But not unusual to hear people admire American Indians, children or young people wishing they could live a life like they imagine Indians leading.

"Bubbas like Indians." Trucks with Indian decals.

Movies like Dances with Wolves and lots of worse movies glorify Indians as self-reliant, communalistic; whites shown as greedy, violent liars

Irony: at the same time that they feel this general sentimental admiration for American Indians, dominant-culture Americans live in such a way as to guarantee that traditional American Indian culture is progressively annihilated:

*constant growth of population (perhaps 20 million American Indians in western hemisphere before Columbus; about a billion (i. e., 1000 million) people now live in the western hemisphere, and we haven't seen anything yet! (There will be at least a million more people in Houston alone in the next 10 years.)

*constant development or transformation of nature into capital for growing marketplace. (The multiplex theater where you watched Dances with Wolves was probably built over a serious patch of natural habitat . . . .)

Cars, roads, malls, apartment complexes, housing subdivisions, constantly expanding human population drives out other possibilities

Bigger subjects than we can resolve in a class like this, but note how minority literature can act as a "conscience" to American culture

Back to American Indian literature . . . .

American Indians are still around, but dominant culture doesn’t tend to make movies or read books about Indians now or since the good old days:

Lone Ranger & Tonto Fistfight . . .

West coast reservation in our lifetime

Drinking

Basketball

Denny’s

Not the Indian that used to be in the land that used to be

American Indian Literature not about vanishing Indian but about Indian who survives

Therefore “loss and survival”

Objective 3

To compare and contrast the dominant “American Dream” narrative—which involves voluntary participation, forgetting the past, and individuals or nuclear families—with alternative narratives of American minorities, which involve involuntary participation, connecting to the past, and traditional, extended, or alternative families.

3b. Native American Indian alternative narrative: "Loss and Survival"

(Whereas immigrants define themselves by leaving the past behind in order to become American, the Indians were once “the Americans” but lost most of their land along with many of their people. Yet Native Americans defy the myth of "the vanishing Indian," choosing to "survive," sometimes in faith that the dominant culture will eventually destroy itself, and the forests and buffalo will return.)

Provisional conclusions about American Indians

If you're looking for "pure, authentic, original" American Indian life, untouched or uncontaminated by white life, you might as well give that dream up.

Maybe that earlier life exists somewhere, but if it does, we can't see it.

+ Indian life isn't static or fixed. Indian life changes, evolves, adapts . . . absorbs materials from European life, such as horses and coffee and the idea of apocalypse.

Spoken-word culture is generally conservative or traditional but . . .

1. highly variable (think of "telephone game" or how rumors or urban legends mutate)

2. adapts or absorbs new materials into traditions.

(Written-word culture is generally more revolutionary but does conserve "the word" as originally written, in contrast to variability of spoken word)

Therefore an Indian may apparently be doing some non-Indian activities, but under the right circumstances they can be expressions of Indian reality.

Notes from earlier classes

lecture / discussion, first part of next class:

3. Did American Indians have "literature?"

4. Where do "Creation Stories" or "Origin Stories" fit into literature and culture?

1. Discuss the significance of origin-creation stories

background examples: Genesis & Darwinian evolution

creation of America:

"Columbus discovers America"

"Columbus ruins Native America"

2. Compare, contrast Biblical Creation in Genesis (in handout) with Amerind origin-creation stories

2nd part of class, American Indian Stories by Zitkala-Sa

Question: At what point(s) does she rewrite the Genesis Creation story to fit the Amerind story of loss and survival?

Monday, 31 October: Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories

****************

images of Zitkala-Sa

online biography of Zitkala-Sa

Zitkala-Sa online texts

American Indian Stories online text

criticism & bibliography for Zitkala-Sa

pointers for reading

Zitkala-Sa or Gertrude Bonnin born 1876 in South Dakota [Lakota Sioux]

"Custer's Last Stand" was in 1876

Zitkala-Sa growing up just after climactic Indian wars of the west

What would be the future of the American Indian?

American Indian answer: survival

One dominant culture answer: assimilation

Vehicle for assimilation: government and missionary schools

Zitkala-Sa goes to such a school as a young girl

Such schools may have been well-intentioned, but their effects on American Indian culture could be revolutionary (for good or bad)

Separating children from parents strikes at the heart of a traditional culture. (Traditional culture: past as model for present. Notice how much the young Z-S imitates her mother, but then, after going to school, feels separate from her mother.)

Different tribes were thrown together--compare Africans on slave ships. (English as common language, but also tensions between traditional enemies.)

Plus schools provided literacy as potential tool

5c. To regard literacy as the primary code of modern existence

and a key or path to empowerment.