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5 - Nineteenth-Century American Indian Newspapers and the Construction of Sovereignty

from Part I - Traces and Removals (Pre-1870s)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

By
Oliver Scheiding
Edited by
Melanie Benson Taylor
Melanie Benson Taylor
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
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Summary

The chapter points to the textual plurality of early Native newspapers, and particularly how their dense texture simultaneously conserves traditions and adapts to the new circumstances of modernization. The close readings in this chapter discuss two Indigenous periodicals: The Cherokee Phoenix and Copway’s American Indian, as well as related nonfiction texts. The chapter argues that antebellum Native publications are complex media artifacts whose relation to the construction of sovereignty is articulated through seriality; the circulation and reprinting of particular types of texts for particular readers; and material properties like the nonlinear and multisensory dynamics of the periodical’s page arrangements. It shows that the papers’ somewhat chaotic mixture of clippings, texts, and images constitutes a powerful discursive construct and, as a distinct media form, places Native writing at the vanguard of a transnational and transindigenous criticism of imperialism in the tumultuous decades of the early nineteenth century.

Keywords

American NewspapersNative American PeriodicalsIndian AuthorsCriticism and interpretationElias BoudinotCherokeeGeorge CopwayMississaugas OjibwaAmerican LiteratureIndians in LiteratureIndians of North America
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Native American Literature , pp. 89 - 112
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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