Early Indigenous Literatures

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The original publication of Life of Black Hawk positions the text quite differently from subsequent versions. On this original titular page, “dictated by himself” appears in the smallest font of all the words on the cover, and rather than following the title or Black Hawk’s name, it is one of the last lines on the page, followed only by the town and date of publication. The subtitles that immediately insists upon their primacy by virtue of their size are the following: “Life”; “Black Hawk”; “Late War”; “His surrender and confinement at Jefferson Barracks”. From the relative size of these phrases, Black Hawk’s English name, not his Sauk name, is on equal footing with “Late War” which positions this text immediately as a historic account of the war, which the title page subtitles with “His surrender and confinement at Jefferson Barracks.” Rather than staging Black Hawk’s life as something which pre-existed the war, the war is the defining feature of Black Hawk’s life for this narrative and for this publisher. Similarly, it is not just his involvement in the war that is of significance, but that he surrendered and was confined specifically at Jefferson Barracks. The specificity of the barracks where Black Hawk was confined suggests the authenticity of these events by grounded them in a known place and simultaneously places Black Hawk within the United States as a nation-building project intent on confining Indigenous peoples. 

The introductory materials to Life of Black Hawk immediately details the production and publication history of this text: “translated by Antoine LeClaire, an interpreter of French Canadian and Potawatomi descent, and transcribed by a shrewd but sympathetic newspaper editor named John B. Patterson” (vii). Immediately, authorship and production become a layered process, including a person framed as both a translator and interpreter, and another person as an editor. However, as the introduction explains, LeClaire was not an unknown interpreter tasked with Black Hawk’s work, but rather someone Black Hawk had known for quite some time due to LeClaire’s position as a government interpreter since 1818 (xvi). Despite this acquaintance, it remains impossible to know if Black Hawk approached LeClaire about this project, or vice versa. Either way, “LeClaire and Patterson produced a written narrative that, despite their best efforts, inevitably altered Black Hawk’s story” (xvii). Whether through ignorance of language, the incommensurability of translated phrases, or as a result of more insidious motives that potentially “suppressed other, more inflammatory remarks” Life of Black Hawk became a best-seller (xxiii, xxv). 

Importantly, the fame from Life of Black Hawk extended beyond the text itself and Black Hawk became a celebrity in American culture. Prior to dictating this text, Black Hawk was already a quasi-celebrity from the forced circuit he was led on during his time as a prisoner of war during which he was “subjected to public exhibition during a tour of the eastern cities” (xiv). As was typical during the time, so typical in fact that the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair had multiple ‘human zoos’ for white audiences to see Indigenous peoples from across the world, Black Hawk was similarly subjected to this kind of performance and exhibition (Shahriari). After the production and sale of his text though, his fame transformed into something contained by print culture. He was a frequent subject of portraits, prints, and engravings though it remains unknown if he ever received any material compensation for his published works or his proliferated visual cultural markers (xxv).

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