Indian nation
Subtitle: Native American literature and nineteenth-century nationalisms
By: Cheryl Walker.
Series: New Americanists
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Durham [N.C.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 256
Subjects: American literature -- Indian authors -- History and criticism.; Literature and anthropology -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Indians of North America -- Civilization -- Historiography.; National characteristics, American, in literature.; Nationalism -- United States -- History -- 19th century.; Indians of North America -- Intellectual life.; Ethnic relations in literature.; Nationalism in literature.; Indians in literature.; United States -- Civilization -- Indian influences.
Description: Indian Nation documents the contributions of Native Americans to the notion of American nationhood and to concepts of American identity at a crucial, defining time in U.S. history. Departing from previous scholarship, Cheryl Walker turns the "usual" questions on their heads, asking not how whites experienced indigenous peoples, but how Native Americans envisioned the United States as a nation.

This project unfolds a narrative of participatory resistance in which Indians themselves sought to transform the discourse of nationhood.

Walker examines the rhetoric and writings of nineteenth-century Native Americans, including William Apess, Black Hawk, George Copway, John Rollin Ridge, and Sarah Winnemucca. Demonstrating with unique detail how these authors worked to transform venerable myths and icons of American identity, Indian Nation chronicles Native American participation in the forming of an American nationalism in both published texts and speeches that were delivered throughout the United States.

Pottawattomie Chief Simon Pokagon's "The Red Man's Rebuke," an important document of Indian oratory, is published here in its entirety for the first time since 1893.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [239]-247) and index.