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Seeing Red: Anger, Sentimentality, and American Indians PDF

74 Pages·2008·0.71 MB·English
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Seeing Red Carpenter_final.indb 1 2/19/2008 11:55:54 AM Seeing Red Anger, Sentimentality, and American Indians b C a R i M . C a R pe n t e R The OhIO STATe UnIverSITy PreSS COlUmbUS Carpenter_final.indb 3 2/19/2008 11:55:54 AM Copyright © 2008 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carpenter, Cari M., 1973– Seeing red : anger, sentimentality, and American Indians / Cari M. Carpenter. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–8142–1079–6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. American literature—Indian authors—History and criticism. 2. American literature— Women authors—History and criticism. 3. Callahan, S. Alice, b. 1868—Criticism and interpretation. 4. Johnson, E. Pauline, 1861–1913—Criticism and interpretation. 5. Hop- kins, Sarah Winnemucca, 1844?–1891. Life among the Piutes. 6. Indians in literature. 7. Anger in literature. 8. Sentimentalism in literature. 9. Indian women authors—United States—Intellectual life—19th century. 10. Indian women authors—Canada—Intellectual life—19th century. I. Title. PS153.I52C37 2008 810.9’897—dc22 2007048957 This book is available in the following editions: Cloth (ISBN 978–0–8142–1079–6) CD-ROM (ISBN 978–0–8142–9158–0) Cover design by Melissa Ryan. Text design by Jennifer Shoffey Forsythe. Type set in Adobe Caslon Pro. Printed by Thomson Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanance of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.49-1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Carpenter_final.indb 4 2/19/2008 11:55:54 AM To my parents, my biggest fans Carpenter_final.indb 5 2/19/2008 11:55:54 AM A curse from the depths of womanhood Is very salt, and bitter, and good. —elizabeth barrett browning b I am mad but I choose this madness. —Gloria Anzaldúa Carpenter_final.indb 7 2/19/2008 11:55:54 AM Contents b List of Illustrations / xi Acknowledgments / xiii InTrOdUCTIOn 1 Anger, Sentimentality, and American Indians / ChAPTer 1 29 Playing Angry: S. Alice Callahan’s Wynema / ChAPTer 2 “A Woman to Let Alone”: E. Pauline Johnson 54 and the Performance of Anger / ChAPTer 3 Lost (and Gained) in Translation: Language, Anger, and Agency 87 in Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins’s Life Among the Piutes / COnClUSIOn 126 An Anger of Their Own / 141 Notes / 151 Bibliography / 165 Index / Carpenter_final.indb 9 2/19/2008 11:55:54 AM illustrations b FIGUre 1 Pauline Johnson, BHS Image #635 (“First English Dinner Dress”). 64 Courtesy of the Brant Museum & Archives. / FIGUre 2 Pauline Johnson (“London, 1895”). Reprinted in Walter McRaye, Pauline Johnson and Her Friends (Toronto: Ryerson, 1947), frontispiece. 65 Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago. / xi Carpenter_final.indb 11 2/19/2008 11:55:55 AM acknowledgments b A t West Virginia University I have been fortunate enough to find the collegial and financial support to complete revisions of this manuscript. I am grateful to Eberly College for the Riggle Fellowship, which allowed me invaluable research time in the summer of 2005. I also thank the English Department: Timothy Dow Adams, Gwen Bergner, John Ernest, Lara Farina, Catherine Gouge, Kirk Hazen, Donald Hall, and Timothy Sweet have been particularly helpful in the final transformations of this project. I also extend my thanks to Ellesa High, Bonnie M. Brown, and other mem- bers of the Native American Studies Program as well as those affiliated with the Center for Women’s Studies. Finally, I am grateful to Sandy Crooms and others at The Ohio State University Press whose diligence and attention have brought this book to its readers. An earlier version of this book was completed with the support of various divisions of the University of Michigan: Rackham Graduate School; the University Library; Michigan Society of Fellows; Sweetland Writing Center; the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching; the Department of English Language and Literature; and the Women’s Studies Program. I am particularly grateful to the staff of Women’s Studies (Judy Mackey, Donna Ainsworth, Bonnie Miller, and Roseanne Ernst) who contributed a thousand forms of kindness. My research was aided by an invaluable short-term fellowship at the Newberry Library. While xiii Carpenter_final.indb 13 2/19/2008 11:55:55 AM acknowledgments there, I had the opportunity to learn from Bernd C. Peyer and A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, two scholars who possess an astonishing knowledge of Native American literature. In my travels I have met a number of individuals who were particularly kind: Harriet Brady, Randy Melendez, and Diane Ferrand (Pyramid Lake High School); Ben Aleck (Pyramid Lake Museum); Georgia Hedrick; Louise Tannheimer; Catherine Fowler (University of Nevada, Reno); Laura Stevens (University of Tulsa); Heidi L. M. Jacobs (University of Windsor); and Sally Zanjani (University of Nevada, Reno). A Lannan seminar at the Newberry Library in the summer of 2003 had an enormous effect on my understanding of the field, thanks in large part to my fellow participants: Ron Carpenter, Brenda Child, Tony Clark, Renee Cramer, Tony Fresquez, P. Jane Hafen, Fred Hoxie, Amelia Katanski, Matt Kreitzer, Katherine Osburn, Malea Powell, Erik Redix, Jeff Shepherd, and Michael Tsosie. A Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship at Kalamazoo College afforded me not only the time and resources to revise this manuscript, but the company of generous scholars like Amelia Katanski, Bruce Mills, Amy Smith, Deborah Mix, and Gail Griffin. My ever-inspiring undergraduate advisor, Katherine Eggert, once told me I would find my graduate student peers the most valuable readers of my work. I thank Chris Matthews, Susanna Ryan, Maureen McDonnell, Sejal Sutaria, and Pavitra Sundar for proving her right. During graduate school I was blessed with faculty whose astuteness is matched only by their generosity: Janet Hart, Susan Scott Parrish, Anne Ruggles Gere, Julie Ellison, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Sandra Gunning, June Howard, and Betty Louise Bell. I appreciate Betty’s ability to find that rare balance between giving her students scholarly and professional guidance and granting them the space they need to develop independent projects. I thank my second parents, Steve and Barb Benjamin, for their unwav- ering support, and Bonnie Barrios, whose boundless enthusiasm reminds me to cherish my own. I am ever grateful to my parents, Len and Jan Carpenter, whose love and confidence has carried me through everything from my second-grade writing trophy to the last page of this book. They are the only people I know who would happily copy microfilmed, nine- teenth-century newspaper articles on my behalf. Finally, I thank Eric Bowen for countless bits of happiness. His constant patience, support, and kindness are beyond words. The author will donate a portion of the profits from this book to the Indian Land Tenure Foundation. xiv Carpenter_final.indb 14 2/19/2008 11:55:55 AM introduction Anger, Sentimentality, and American Indians b O n a February night in 1836, hundreds flocked to the National Theater in Washington, DC, to see George Curtis’s Pocahontas, or The Settlers of Virginia, A National Drama. An advertisement in the Globe earlier that day had promised that the performance would include an impressive display of Indian rituals: “[the Indians] have most liberally offered their services, and will this evening appear and perform their real INDIAN WAR DANCE, exhibiting Hate, Triumph, Revenge, etc., &c., and go through the CEREMONY OF SCALPING.”1 The newspaper noted that Cherokee leader John Ross would appear on stage with nine Indian chiefs. Both this advertisement and the review that followed stressed the authen- ticity of the war dance, the scalping, and the Indians’ “passions,” enticing local residents to the stage by presenting the drama as one that was not really staged at all.2 In the absence of actual Native Americans, the white actors performed the Indians’ supposed “Hate” and “Revenge” so success- fully that the spectators believed they were watching a Cherokee ritual. John Ross was in town at the time, but for a far more solemn pur- pose: to protest the government’s American Indian removal policies. On February 15, the Globe ran Ross’s response to the advertisement: [N]either I nor any of my associates of the Cherokee delegation have appeared on the stage. We have been occupied with matters of graver 1 Carpenter_final.indb 1 2/19/2008 11:55:55 AM

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Seeing red : anger, sentimentality, and American Indians / Cari M. Carpenter. p. cm Ruggles Gere, Julie Ellison, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Sandra Gunning,.
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