Black Hawk's Counter Narrative

            In “Documenting Tradition: Territoriality and Textuality in Black Hawk’s Narrative,” Mark Rifkin argues that Life of Black Hawk “functions as a self-consciously traditionalist critique of the mappings and subjectivities of U.S. Indian policy” (681). He claims that although translated and edited, Life offers a contesting narrative that depicts Black Hawk’s “effort to redress white misunderstanding of him and his people” (Rifkin 681). In addition, Rifkin claims that even though many often focus on not being able to identify a “real” Black Hawk voice that should not become the center of assessment for the text, since the narrative has much more to offer than what may be perceived as an authentic Native American voice, especially given its socio-historical context speaking to white supremacy. I find Rifkin’s argument helpful and on point in relation to how I interpreted Black Hawk’s narrative.

            Twenty pages into Life I began to think of it as a counter narrative because of its depiction of a matured Black Hawk, self-reflexing on his experiences, and trying to fill-in gaps to the historical parts he saw as untold, thus, formulating an alternative narrative that places the colonial narrative in question. Such moments of questioning or opposing views in the narrative seem to generate the richest parts of Black Hawk’s narrative. One of these moments can be seen when Black Hawk confronts the white American “war chief” and tells him that,

‘We had never sold our country. We never received annuities from our American father! And we are determined to hold on to our village!’                                                                                                           The war chief, apparently angry, rose and said:—‘Who is Black Hawk? Who is Black Hawk?’                                                                                                                                                                    I responded: ‘I am a Sac! My forefather was a Sac! And all the nations call me a SAC!!’                                                                                                                                                     The war chief said: ‘I came here neither to beg nor hire you to leave your village. My business is to remove you, peaceably, if I can, but forcibly if I must! I will now give you two days to remove in—and if you do not cross the Mississippi within that time, I will adopt measures to force you away!’ (Hawk 65)

Here, it becomes obvious that Black Hawk and his people cannot conceive of the idea of selling their land. As Rifkin also points out in his analysis of a similar passage, the “demand for land would have been alien to the Sauks, not having been part of prior negotiations with the French, Spanish, or British” (683). Moreover, this excerpt points to Black Hawk’s strong “we” identification in which Native peoples perceive themselves as part of their nation, and not as individuals—also a part of Rifkin’s critique (693). Lastly, this moment emphasizes the use of force, and a frustrated “war chief” who cannot accept the idea of Native nations wishing to maintain their lands, but also a “brave” Black Hawk who is not afraid to provide a counter-argument. 

Catlin and Huey: “When the lights go out for good, my people will still be here. We have our ancient ways. We will remain” (Olowan Thunder Hawk Martinez)

Like Michelle, I want to use this blog as a way to think about some of the images provided by both Catlin and Huey and in light of our secondary readings.

In “Cultural Nationalism, Westward Expansion and the Production of Imperial Landscape,” Gareth John studies George Catlin’s paintings in relationship to 19^th century American ideas of the “vanishing” Native American (Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy). John argues that as much as Catlin sought to provide an accurate depiction of what he saw, his “quest for realism…inadvertently naturalized conventional, romantic, cultural nationalistic ways of seeing the Native American West as rapidly vanishing in the wake of ‘progress’” (186). Here, John discusses the “ambivalence of Catlin’s imperial vision of the West” (186), and his paintings reiteration of a disappearing Native American race. John frames his argument about Catlin’s “naturalization” through his analysis of two of Catlin’s oil canvas paintings, Big bend on the Upper Missouri (1832) and River Buffs (1832), and explains how both of the landscapes not only captured the vast extension of Western land, but also the vision of “unattained ‘progress’” and vast amounts of water. He also looks at how Catlin’s light effects offer inviting and natural scenes, in which only one Native American man appears to be present (John 186-190). Thus, hinting at the Native American disappearance and a westward gaze, which possibly focused on “unclaimed” lands—not recognizing Native claims to the land.

A Comanche family outside their teepee, 1841       

While Catlin’s 1841 Comanche Family (image to the left) primarily focuses on portraying the Native American family, the painting depicts many of the imperial complexities that John exposes about Catlin’s paintings. Catlin paints a family of five, in which there appears to be no older male figure. And while the family is the center of the image, the landscape which surrounds them becomes unavoidable to the eye. The clear skies and far mountains appear inviting as they reinforce notions of an aesthetic and unharmed nature.  In addition, the family’s clothes or children’s nudity seem to reassert colonial notions of the “uncivilized.” The portrayal of the family without a male figure, a Tepee in its direct background, the ragged native clothing, and the inert body language of the older female—perhaps the mother—create a sense of a passive and fading beauty. Moreover, the image without a father figure points to vanishing generations.

 In contrast with Catlin’s paintings are Aaron Huey’s photographs of the Buffalo in the reservation, and Theo White Plume and his horse (shown below). 

Theo White Plume and his horse, 2011

These two images not only reassert the endurance and perseverance of indigenous peoples, but also mark their close relationship with nature, as both the Buffalo and the horses remain present. It also shows how the Lakota nation and their animals have adapted to the imposed land and confinement in the reservation. They show how despite multiple forms of violence, genocides, exclusions, and confinements, indigenous peoples cultural knowledge and ways with nature remain vital to human existence. 

Buffalo in the Reservation, 2011

At the same time, the Buffalo in the reservation picture also shows the deeply rooted “colonial wounds” or “scars” of imperialism and “modernity” (Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera; Mignolo, The Idea of Latin America), in which, the reservation appears as an abandoned field, where even the grass fails to grow. This image speaks of the complexities about Native American reservations and their peoples in our present time. Its grayish light and cloudy skies demonstrate how “progress” continues to affect the ancestors of “our” American land, but that does not mean that they are asking to be saved—as Olowan Thunder Hawk Martinez eloquently points out in “The Shadow of Wounded Knee,” it just means that despite all they will continue to persevere, because they always have. Lastly, and as a comment more than an analysis, I really like Huey’s act of "rhetorical listening" (Krista Ratcliffe) and going back to the Lakota people to present other images about Native lives, but I also think that his earlier images are sometimes necessary in the eyes of those who have never even considered the effects of the “American history” he discusses in his Ted Talk. His earlier images provide a depiction of marginalized poverty on reservations, or the “modernization” of misery, as the nation’s outsiders and perhaps few elites in the reservations promote economic progress—despite social segregation and economic disparity.

Lydia Maria Child's Hobomok

I must admit that while I was reading Lydia Maria Child’s Hobomok I struggled to find interest in the narrative. A hundred and twenty pages into the novel, and having read Carolyn Karcher’s introduction, I realized that Mary’s interracial marriage to Hobomok would only take place out of Mary’s desperation (Child 123,125, 133,135). However, after reading Brian W. Dippie’s first three chapters of The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy, I found more potential in Hobomok. Dippie argues that during the 1800s the idea of the “vanishing” Native American race became a widely spread notion, which allowed “progressive” Anglo-Americans to reassert and to construct and American identity. Dippie writes,

the ‘inoxerable destiny’ of the Indians, like that of the wilderness with which they shared an almost symbiotic relationship, was to recede before civilization’s advance. Their fate had important implications for white Americans self-consciously searching for a national identity. (15)

Here, Dippie explains that disseminating inaccurate notions about the genocide of Native Americans, not only reinforced thoughts of more “civilized” times, but also ideas of a growing white American identity. Also that progress would become exclusively tied to the changing landscape, in which Native Americans would have to disappear because of their perceived interdependent relationship with the wilderness. The conception of a vanishing Native American race as part of an inevitable “destiny” becomes salient in Hobomok’s departure. After Charles Brown comes back from England and encounters Hobomok in the forest, Hobomok leaves. In fact, he seems to vanish into the wilderness. The narrator tells, “He paused on a neighboring hill, looked toward his wigwam… with a bursting heart again murmured his farewell and blessing forever passed away from New England” (Child 141). Thus, Hobomok appears to move deeper into the forest and disappear. After reading Dippie’s text, this passage seemed much more meaningful. It not only depicts Dippie’s point about the destined desertion of Native Americans, but also Karcher’s claim about Child’s growth as an advocate for equality.

In Hobomok, Child presents her early understanding of racial co-existence and intermingling, which based on the ending of the novel is destined to fail. Child’s Hobomok demonstrates how constructions of identity and nation permeate a text, and work to reassert such notions. For example, although the innovative part of this text is the idea of a white puritan daughter running away into the wilderness to marry a Native American, the narrative’s conclusion deems the idea of interracial marriage as desperate and fatal. Also the erasure of a Native American identity in Hobomok’s son (Child 150) works to reiterate the idea that power remains in the hands of the imagined growing white population—which connects to Ezra F. Tawil’s “Domestic Frontier Romance, or, How the Sentimental Heroine Became White.” Therefore Hobomok becomes interesting because of how it depicts the complexities of marking a change in understanding racial relations in America, and also how writing allows an author to develop new and more complex ideas about race. In Child’s case, writer’s growth can be seen in  her An Appeal For the Indians, which although far from perfect—and still saturated by the kind of nostalgia unveiled in Lora Romero’s “Vanishing Americans: Gender, Empire and New Historicism”—the text, certainly demonstrates a much more politicized and conscious writer…but we can talk about this in class. I am curious to hear what others thought. 

Humanity in Algiers: or the Story of Azem

         While I have a very difficult time accepting Henry Petter’s 1971 argument that the narrative of Humanity in Algiers: or the Story of Azem functions “to illustrate the hardships endured by slaves, whether Americans in Algiers or Negroes in the United States” (Faherty and White 2). I find great value in both Majid’s and Marr’s arguments—respectively—that this text demonstrates the “‘hypocrisy and double standards’ of the U.S. in regards to slavery, [and] a view of Islam as a potentially benevolent system of morality” (Faherty and White 2-3). Arguments like Petter’s always puzzle me because they tend to further this notion that people need some type of narrative reminder to know that enslaving human beings is morally wrong. However, Majid’s argument seems on point in relation to the United States ideology of global exceptionalism we have discussed in class. Yet it is Marr’s argument that really intrigues me, because as I was reading Humanity I was able to see how Islam indeed functions as a “benevolent system of morality,” which appears to offer an alternative framework to U.S. exceptionalism and Christianity in terms of literacy and enslavement.  When I refer to an alternative framework I have Frederick Douglass’s life history in mind. In the U.S. context of slavery, literacy was seen as a threat to the system. Douglass’s autobiography not only shows how he taught himself to read and write, but also how his male owner and others negatively reacted to Douglass’s literacy. Hence, the U.S. notion of Christian morality seems comparable to the one offered in Humanity.

In the beginning of Humanity the narrator—a White American man—introduces his “benefactor,” Azem. He explains that Azem was a former slave who was “gifted” to his first owners at a young age. He also adds that Azem was treated like any of the other children in the house. Sequida, “his mistress taught him the knowledge of letters, so that he could read any part of the Alcoran: and careful she was to teach him the faith of Mehometinsm, and to instruct him in all the ceremonies of her religion” (Faherty and White 7). Here—and in addition to the footnotes—it becomes clear that Azem became literate for religious study, and to morally follow the Muslim faith.

The idea of a Muslim morality also becomes salient when Omri tries to make a case for Azem’s freedom. Omri asks Sequida “‘have you not taught [Azem] to read the Alcoran, and instructed him in the moral law?’ [to which Sequida eventually replies] ‘My friend, my warmest thanks are due to you, for the pains you have taken in explaining my duty. May my God forgive my late unwillingness to obey his commands’” (Faherty and White 11). Sequida’s response concurs with Marr’s argument about Islam as a benevolent system of morality, in which she is responsible for teaching Azem how to read the Koran and also answering to a greater and “divine law” which asks that she grants him his freedom. Thus, Azem’s religious identity should be understood as that of a Muslim. However, the only times Azem performs his Muslim faith is when he implores God to allow him freedom (Faherty and White 8), a notion that seems more likely to align with the Judeo-Christian identity.  In fact, when Azem marries Shelimah there is no image of a particular faith. The narrator simply tells, “their hands were at length joined in marriage; and festivity and mirth” (Faherty and White 28).

In the preface to Humanity editors Duncan Faherty and Ed White explain that Humanity’s author is unknown, but that the text may be attributed to Robert Moffitt. Moffitt published a great number of Baptist writings in a community that “was somewhat local,” and associated with the Shaftsbury Baptist culture. Faherty and White also explain that “abolition groups had a denominational orientation, meaning that abolitionist arguments were couched in spiritual and theological terms and often linked with institutional practices and pressures” (1). If U.S. Christian abolitionists groups often used religious rhetoric to point out the immorality of slavery, then how can we understand Azem’s neutralized Muslim identity? Should we interpret it as the result of a deeply entrenched U.S. exceptionalism, which does not permit both a “benevolent form of Muslim morality” and a salient Muslim identity?