Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical AnthologyKristina Bross, Hilary E. Wyss University of Massachusetts Press, 2008 - 276 pages Designed as a corrective to colonial literary histories that have excluded Native voices, this anthology brings together a variety of primary texts produced by the Algonquian peoples of New England during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and very early nineteenth centuries. Included among these written materials and objects are letters, signatures, journals, baskets, pictographs, confessions, wills, and petitions, each of which represents a form of authorship. Together they demonstrate the continuing use of traditional forms of memory and communication and the lively engagement of Native peoples with alphabetic literacy during the colonial period. Each primary text is accompanied by an essay that places it in context and explores its significance. Written by leading scholars in the field, these readings draw on recent trends in literary analysis, history, and anthropology to provide an excellent overview of the field of early Native studies. They are also intended to provoke discussion and open avenues for further exploration by students and other interested readers. Above all, the texts and commentaries gathered in this volume provide an opportunity to see Native American literature as a continuity of expression that reflects choices made long before contact and colonization, rather than as a nineteenth -- or even twentieth-century invention.Contributors include Heidi Bohaker, Heather Bouwman, Joanna Brooks, Kristina Bross, Stephanie Fitzgerald, Sandra Gustafson, Laura Arnold Leibman, Kevin McBride, David Murray, Laura Murray, Jean O'Brien, Ann Marie Plane, Philip Round, Jodi Schorb, David Silverman, and Hilary E. Wyss. |
From inside the book
Results 1-3 of 92
... Indian people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries , and Natick petitions are conspicuous in this important body of evidence . Most of the Natick petitions , especially petitions from the eighteenth century , concern Indian land ...
... Indian deathbed literature that still resonates with later Indian criminal narratives , a genre devoted to recording the dying words and gestures of converted and unconverted Indians . In John Eliot's Dy- ing Speeches of Several Indians ...
... Indians had no legitimate land claims apart from their planting fields , in practice colonists depended on Indian deeds to authenticate their titles and satisfy the Natives . Not just any Indian signature would do ; colonists relied on ...
Contents
The Mohegans | 15 |
Joseph Johnson Diary 1773 | 28 |
Laura J Murray Joseph Johnsons Diary Farmington | 42 |
Copyright | |
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Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical Anthology Kristina Bross,Hilary E. Wyss No preview available - 2008 |