Quote from The Life
Omitted from the whole context of The Life , however, this quotation serves a universalizing, almost fetishizing function: anyone might agree in the need for mortuary rituals like those illustrated in this quote, but it gains particular valence due to its "mystic" Indigenous speaker." The selection of this quotation (and indeed, the selective trimming of this quotation), disavows the violence that transformed this very location from an Indigenous to a settler "place," despite Black Hawk and his text's active resistance to this romanticism. For examples of this, see the other images in this gallery.