Seeing Red: Anger, Sentimentality, and American Indians

74 Pages·2008·0.71 MB·English

by  Cari M. Carpenter

Seeing Red
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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
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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
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To my parents,
my biggest fans
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A curse from the depths of womanhood
Is very salt, and bitter, and good.
—elizabeth barrett browning
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I am mad
but I choose this madness.
—Gloria Anzaldúa
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Contents
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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 /
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illustrations
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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
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acknowledgments
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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
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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
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introduction
Anger, Sentimentality,
and American Indians
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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
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