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Early Indigenous LiteraturesMain MenuThe Child Who Would be Sovereign: Settler Colonial Frustrations and the Figure of the Child in Gertrude Simmons Bonnin's American Indian StoriesBy: Kai ChaseIllicit Relations: The Challenges and Possibilities of Black and Indigenous Relationssoumya rachel shailendraLegibility and Ambivalence in 19th Century Indigenous Women's WritingAn exhibit on E. Pauline Johnson and Sarah Winnemucca by Emma CohenLyric Histories: An Investigation of Early Black (and) Native America through Poetic Vignettesby Kira TuckerMarriage and Empire in 19th Century Native American Women's Literatureby Angad SinghNot-not blood quantum: the Dawes Act and ambivalent Indigeneityby Yasmin YoonReading Indigenous Authorial Presence in 18th- and 19th-century ParatextsTitle Page for Isabel Griffith-Gorgati's ExhibitResistance on and off the Page: A Collaborative Conversation between Black and Indigenous Literary ContributorsFeaturing James Printer, Katherine Garret, Phillis Wheatley, and John Marrant (17th-18th Century Early Print Culture Participants)- By Lauren JohnsonSpiritual Armies, Resurrected Bones, and “Boundless” Continents: How Indigenous Activists in Early New England Reconfigured Puritan Millennialist NarrativesFeaturing texts of Samson Occom, William Apess, and the Wampanoag Bible. By Surya MilnerSovereignty or Removal: The Conflicting Indigenous Policies of 1835 in the Continental United StatesJulia GilmanWhat Does Water Do For Indigenous Peoples of the Great Lakes Region?Featuring Heid E. Erdrich, Simon Pokagon, Black Hawk, and Simon Kofe by Sarah Nisenson(Re)introducing Black Hawk and The Life (1833)BHR 1-IntroYasmin Yoonf7f231e474bf43796f973cd0ee560919050f7427Lydia Abedeen321b94302eca10e499769fd0179e64cd33bc4cd5Kira Tuckeracf97d948460e98cd439646cc2db7ae17c5ebd9dsarah nisenson7cb5d2c1682fbd145e76716f3924f03bf25c616aKai Chased7cab5968a3a916efd1a14a48cc4832d5d5514aeSoumya Shailendra86c246fcc4aea83787381bffd2b839885bef5096Bennett Herson-Roeserc8289125445a56c819045a0091daf0402b3e0875Surya Milner077f837f3d662fd5ef9055f8258e5c47bb11f714Julia Gilmanb860a8277eea484f91a1a9e0423cab4b52bae522Lauren Johnson98dac03e7c9c1ad41e1c0a8583704e55802f98baAngad Singhd2b8d1d68ec374981c9e99b7cb400803bc678231Emma Cohen146e757b9fc3b3b416edecbf79592e8d743d4ba1Charlotte Goddu2d4c020870148128c7824ece179e04cffe180d95Isabel Griffith-Gorgati985a05928a67a856791fffac3dbba8acc85f6f37
1media/Bible cover.png2022-12-05T09:08:27-08:00James Printer and the 1663 Bible12plain2022-12-07T21:26:14-08:00Before we enter the collaborative space, let’s notice what we see on the page for each of the literary contributors. To reiterate, by on the page, I am referring to the paratextual materials. The importance of observing paratexts is spotlighted by Lara Langer Cohen and Jordan Alexander Stein in their introduction of Early African American Print Culture. They state, “Our contributors also aim to expand what we as readers take to be our texts- and what we read for- when we study print culture. Their objects of inquiry include not only the printed works of what we generally consider ‘the text’ but also typography, format, and bindings (Rezek, McGill); frontispieces and mastheads (Ashton, Clytus); engravings and photographs (Capers, Scruggs); and the very materials of paper and ink (Senchyne).”[1] I am very much in agreement with these scholars, and in this exhibit I hope to display how vital it is to observe the paratexts for both Black and Indigenous writers. The paratextual materials demonstrate principal insights regarding authorship, framing, and ordering choices for participants.
While describing the paratextual material, I will cite secondary scholarship regarding early Black and Indigenous print culture that offers rich insight and context to the exhibit. These scholars include Lisa Brooks, Robert Dale Parker, Phillip Round, Jodi Schorb, Simon Gikandi, Rhonda Robinson Thomas, Karen Weyler, and Joseph Rezek. Often, their work solely focuses on one minority group. However, placing their understandings together further highlights that there is value in scholars who study early Black print culture and scholars who study early Indigenous print culture to come together and have conversations about the parallels and distinctions between their work.
This first section focuses on what we see on the page and how words are ordered in the paratexual materials. In the second section, the literary contributors will consider why these words are on the page and why they are ordered this way. In other words, a majority of the analysis will take place in the collaborative space in the second half of the exhibit.
The exhibit will introduce the paratexts in chronological order, and the first item is the 1663 Bible. The 1663 Bible was translated by James Printer (Wowaus), our first literary contributor who will be invited to the collaborative space. Printer was an Indigenous scholar from the Nipmuc tribe, an expert in both English and Nimpuc languages, and was recruited by John Eliot to help translate the Bible into Nimpuc.[2] Along with Nipmuc, the other Wampanoag translators wrote in Wopanaak.[3] Both Nimpuc and Wopanaak are Algonquian languages.
Since the Bible is our object of conversation here, it is crucial to think about its significance as a religious text and its role in assisting colonization efforts. Robert Dale Parker notes “In short, to think about early Indian print culture it may help to think about how print culture worked both to colonize and to resist colonization.[4] The translation of a Bible was an obvious colonial strategy that hoped to spread Euro-American religious views into the minds of Indigenous communities. Phillip Round expands this idea, writing that the “figure of the book as an agent of conquest is ubiquitous.”[5] Euro-American missionaries hoped not only to conquer physical Indigenous lands, but also their minds in their desires of religious conversion and assimilation. The Bible, as a book, held a lot of power and had an active and fundamental role in the Euro-American conversion project.
[1] Lara Langer Cohen and Jordan Alexander Stein. Early African American Print Culture, (2012), 7-8.
[2] Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War, (2018), 72.
[4] Robert Dale Parker, “The Hum of Routine: Issues for the Study of Early American Indian Print Culture: a Response to Phillip H. Round,” (2007), 290.
[5] Phillip H. Round, Removable Type: Histories of the Book in Indian Country, 1663-1880, (2010), 21.
