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1、The History of Native American Literature,Native American literature written in the 18th and 19th century is considered a literature of transition between the oral tradition which flourished before Europeans arrived on the continent and the beginning of the 1960s when the Native American Renaissance
2、 began. Nineteenth-century literature authored by Native Americans was text-based and written in English, which resulted primarily because of the English taught in missionary schools. Most 18th and 19th century writers used the common literary genres like autobiography and the novel, yet combining n
3、arratives with the traditional trickster oral story or myth creating a hybrid literary form.,Early Native American writing exhibited the struggle they experienced by the authors to find their own voice within the culture of America, but it was later in the 1960s that their writing began to express t
4、he humiliation felt by Native American peoples over their “less than human” treatment by the dominant society. These early writers were driven by their awareness of the power of writing as a tool in changing attitudes, but it would be a long time before this could overcome the deep prejudices shaped
5、 during the conflicts between Euro-Americans and Natives in the bloody Indian Wars of the 18th and 19th centuries.,“Shadow of the Owl” painted by John Guthrie. The image of Native Americans,The Major Features of Native American Literature The dominating oral form experience literature by listening,
6、etc. Closely connected with their life and living nature, tribal affairs A kind of “mass literature” assuming diverse tribal-social functions To adjust the relationships between man and nature, man and man, body and spirit, etc., to entertain, to educate, to cure diseases, to encourage the warriors
7、From the holiness of voice to the sacredness of literature,Native American Writers The first Native American writer to be published in English was Samson Occom (Mohegan, 1723-92). Although raised as a typical Mohegan boy, at 16 he began to study English, was converted to Christianity, became a schoo
8、lmaster to Indians and then served as a missionary among New England Indians. His 1771 A Sermon Preached at the Execution of Moses Paul, an Indian went through 19 editions.,The genre in which most Native American authors of the 19th and 20th centuries have written is autobiography. This choice repre
9、sents a break with oral tradition because the personal narrative is not part of American Indian oral literatures. Many Native cultures consider talking about oneself inappropriate. William Apes (Pequot, b. 1797) published the first autobiography written by an Indian, A Son of the Forest, The Experie
10、nces of William Apes, A Native of the Forest. Written by Himself (New York, Author, 1829, expanded and revised 1831). His final work was the eloquent Eulogy on King Philip, which traces white abuse of New England Indians in the 17th and 18th centuries.,George Copway (Ojibwe, 1818-69) Life, History a
11、nd Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (1847) Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (Paiute, 1844-91) Life Among the Piutes: Their wrongs and claims (1883),Native American Novel John Rollin Ridges The Life and Adventures of Joaqun Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit (1854) is considered to be the first novel wri
12、tten in California, as well as the first written by an American Indian. The Life and Adventures of Joaqun Murieta was extremely popular and was widely pirated. Ridge, whose Cherokee name was Yellow Bird, wrote poetry which deals with nature and the poets reaction to the natural environment. Ridges e
13、xperiences with nature seem transcendental, which is frequently seen in writing by early Native Americans.,The first Native American novel devoted to the subject of Indian life is O-gi-maw-kwe Mit-I-gwa-ki (Queen of the Woods) (1899) by Simon Pokagon (Potawatomi, 1830-99). Pokagon was determined to
14、educate a white audience about traditional Potawatomi life before the coming of whites and about the tragic changes in this life suffered by the people after whites dispossessed them and debauched them with alcohol.,Native American Women Writers,S. Alice Callahan wrote the first novel A Child of the
15、 Forest, which was published in 1891. The novel stresses how a white girls progressive adoption of an identifiably Native American perspective enhances her relationship with a Native American girl named Wynema. Both the white girl named Genevieve and Wynema learn more about one anothers cultural cus
16、toms, and this cross-cultural appreciation fortifies their loving relationship. Sarah Winnemucca, another early Native American woman writer wrote a personal and tribal history called “Life among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims”,Leslie Silko,Leslie Silko (born 1948) is one of the foremost authors to emerge from the Native American literary renaissance of the 1970s. She blends western literary forms with the oral traditions of her Laguna Pueblo heritage to communicate Native Am
