No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Edgar Huntly's Gun Violence and Indigenous Mechanisms of Peace
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2021
Abstract
This essay analyzes American gun culture, past and present, through two lenses: a set of early Euro-American writings on weapons and defense, including Charles Brockden Brown's well-known novel Edgar Huntly, and a little-known but capacious archive of Native American materials, philosophy, and story. While the Euro-American writings and the Indigenous archive both raise crucial questions about the relation between weapons and human subjectivity, only the Indigenous archive presents vital alternative object orientations that promote peace. Considering wampum belts in particular as an Indigenous mechanism of peace, this essay argues that to understand American gun violence we must pay attention to Indigenous efforts to cultivate relationships by putting forth healing objects and burying the weapons of war, efforts that are largely erased from the colonial records and from the contemporary imagination of the past. Ultimately, Native American theorizations of object orientation and human subjectivity challenge both our understanding of the colonial past and our current conversation surrounding gun violence.
- Type
- Essays
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Modern Language Association of America
References
Works Cited
Adams, John. Letter to Abigail Adams. 17 June 1775. Massachusetts Historical Society: Adams Family Papers, www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17750611ja.Google Scholar
Alfred, Taiaiake. Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto. Oxford UP, 2009.Google Scholar
Barnard, Philip, and Shapiro, Stephen. Introduction. Brown, , Edgar Huntly, pp. ix–xlii.Google Scholar
Barnard, Philip, et al. Introduction. Revising Charles Brockden Brown: Culture, Politics, and Sexuality in the Early Republic. U of Tennessee P, 2004, pp. ix–xlii.Google Scholar
Boyd, Julian P., editor. Indian Treaties Printed by Benjamin Franklin, 1736–1762. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1938.Google Scholar
Brooks, Lisa. The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast. U of Minnesota P, 2008.Google Scholar
Brown, Charles Brockden. An Address to the Government of the United States on the Cession of Louisiana to the French; and on the Late Breach of Treaty by the Spaniards: Including the Translation of a Memorial, on the War of St. Domingo, and Cession of the Mississippi to France, Drawn Up by a French Counsellor of State. John Conrad, 1803.Google Scholar
Brown, Charles Brockden. “The Difference between History and Romance.” Brown, , Edgar Huntly, pp. 232–35.Google Scholar
Brown, Charles Brockden. Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-walker. Edited by Barnard, Philip and Shapiro, Stephen, Hackett, 2006.Google Scholar
Bruchac, Margaret M. “Broken Chains of Custody: Possessing, Dispossessing, and Repossessing Lost Wampum Belts.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 162, no. 1, 2018, pp. 56–105.Google Scholar
Byrd, Jodi. The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism. U of Minnesota P, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calcaterra, Angela. Literary Indians: Aesthetics and Encounter in American Literature to 1920. U of North Carolina P, 2018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlson, Jennifer, and Goss, Kristin A.. “Gendering the Second Amendment.” Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 80, no. 2, 2017, pp. 103–28.Google Scholar
Cornell, Saul. “The Right to Keep and Carry Arms in Anglo-American Law: Preserving Liberty and Keeping the Peace.” Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 80, no. 2, 2017, pp. 11–54.Google Scholar
Cornell, Saul. A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America. Oxford UP, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“The Declaration of Independence as Adopted by Congress.” The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. Vol. 1 (1760–76), Princeton UP, 1950, pp. 429–33. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/declaration-independence-adopted-congress.Google Scholar
Deer, Sarah. The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America. U of Minnesota P, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeLucia, Christine. “Fugitive Collections in New England Indian Country: Indigenous Material Culture and Early American History Making at Ezra Stiles's Yale Museum.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 1, 2018, pp. 109–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle, editor. Women's Indian Captivity Narratives. Penguin 1998.Google Scholar
Dunbar-Ortiz, Roxanne. Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment. City Light Books, 2018.Google Scholar
Estes, Nick. Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. Verso, 2019.Google Scholar
Gardner, Jared. Master Plots: Race and the Founding of an American Literature, 1787–1845. Johns Hopkins UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Goudie, Sean X. “On the Origin of American Specie(s): The West Indies, Classification, and the Emergence of Supremacist Consciousness in Arthur Mervyn.” Barnard et al., pp. 60–86.Google Scholar
Haudenosaunee Great Law. Parker and Newhouse, pp. 30–60.Google Scholar
Heckewelder, John. History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1881.Google Scholar
Hewitt, J. N. B. “Means Used in the Settlement of Murder.” National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, MS 3563.Google Scholar
Hill, Richard W., Sr. Interview. By Timothy Powell. American Philosophical Society Video Archives, diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/video/interview-rick-hill.Google Scholar
Hill, Richard W. “Regenerating Identity: Repatriation and the Indian Frame of Mind.” The Future of the Past: Archaeologists, Native Americans, and Repatriation, edited by Bray, Tamara L., Garland Publishing, 2001, pp. 127–37.Google Scholar
Hinds, Janie. “Deb's Dogs: Animals, Indians, and Postcolonial Desire in Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly.” Early American Literature, vol. 39, no. 2, 2004, pp. 323–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Home, Henry, Kames, Lord. Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion: Corrected and Improved, in a Third Edition. 1779. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, 30 June 2020, libproxy.library.unt.edu:7417/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=txshracd2679&tabID=T001&docId=CW123434100&type=multipage&contentSet=ECCOArticles&version=1.0&docLevel=FASCIMIL.Google Scholar
Home page. National Rifle Association, 2020, home.nra.org/.Google Scholar
Jensen, Toni. “Women in the Fracklands: On Water, Land, Bodies, and Standing Rock.” Catapult, 3 Jan. 2017, catapult.co/stories/women-in-the-fracklands-on-water-land-bodies-and-standing-rock.Google Scholar
Kamrath, Mark L. The Historicism of Charles Brockden Brown: Radical History and the Early Republic. Kent State UP, 2010.Google Scholar
Kelsey, Penelope Myrtle. Reading the Wampum: Essays on Hodinöshö:ni’ Visual Code and Epistemological Recovery. Syracuse UP, 2014.Google Scholar
Kirkland, Samuel. Diaries, 1764-11-16–1765-05-02. Samuel Kirkland Papers, Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, MS 867, box 1, folder 1.Google Scholar
Lansford, Tom. “American Revolution.” Guns in American Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture, and the Law, edited by Carter, Gregg Lee, 2nd ed., vol. 1, ABC-CLIO, 2012, pp. 26–29.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Harvard UP, 1999.Google Scholar
Le Moine, Simon. “Letter from Father Simon le Moine, Written to Reverend Father Hierosme Lalemant, Superior of the Missions of the Society of Jesus in New France.” 25 Aug. 1661 and 11 Sept. 1661. The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791, edited by Thwaites, Reuben Gold, vol. 47, Burrows Brothers, 1899, pp. 89–95.Google Scholar
Levine, Robert S. Dislocating Race and Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-Century American Literary Nationalism. U of North Carolina P, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luck, Chad. “Re-walking the Purchase: Edgar Huntly, David Hume, and the Origins of Ownership.” Early American Literature, vol. 44, no. 2, 2009, pp. 271–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mather, Cotton. A Notable Exploit; Wherein, Dux Faemina Facti, from Magnalia Christi Americana by Cotton Mather (1702). Derounian-Stodola, pp. 58–60.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Theresa. In Divided Unity: Haudenosaunee Reclamation at Grand River. U of Arizona P, 2016.Google Scholar
Merrell, James H. “‘I Desire All That I Have Said … May Be Taken Down Aright’: Revisiting Teedyuscung's 1756 Treaty Council Speeches.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 4, 2006, pp. 777–826.Google Scholar
“Minutes of Conferences Held at Lancaster in August, 1762: With the Sachems and Warriors of Several Tribes of Northern and Western Indians.” Boyd, pp. 265–98.Google Scholar
“Minutes of Conferences Held with the Indians at Easton in the Months of July, and August, 1757.” Boyd, pp. 189–212.Google Scholar
“Minutes of Conferences Held with the Indians, at Easton, in the Months of July and November, 1756; Together with Two Messages Sent by the Government to the Indians Residing on Sasquehannah. …” Boyd, pp. 135–66.Google Scholar
Ogden, Emily. “Edgar Huntly and the Regulation of the Senses.” American Literature, vol. 85, no. 3, 2013, pp. 419–45.Google Scholar
Paine, Thomas. “The Crisis I.” The Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 1 (1774–79), edited by Conway, Moncure Daniel, AMS Press, 1967, pp. 170–79.Google Scholar
Paine, Thomas. “Thoughts on Defensive War.” The Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. 1 (1774–79), edited by Conway, Moncure Daniel, AMS Press, 1967, pp. 55–58.Google Scholar
Parker, Arthur C., and Newhouse, Seth. The Constitution of the Five Nations. U of the State of New York, 1916.Google Scholar
Porter, Tom. And Grandma Said … Iroquois Teachings as Passed Down through the Oral Tradition. Transcribed and edited by Forrester, Lesley, Xlibris, 2008.Google Scholar
Post, Frederick. “The Second Journal of Christian Frederick Post, from Philadelphia to the Ohio, on a Message from the Government of Pennsylvania to the Indians on the Ohio, in the Latter Part of the Same Year. …” Proud, vol. 2, pp. 96–132.Google Scholar
Proud, Robert. The History of Pennsylvania, in North America. Zachariah Poulson, 1798.Google Scholar
Riley, Angela R. “Indians and Guns.” Georgetown Law Journal, vol. 100, no. 5, 2012, pp. 1675–1745.Google Scholar
Rowlandson, Mary. A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson. 1682. Derounian-Stodola, pp. 7–51.Google Scholar
Seaver, James E. A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison. 1824. Derounian-Stodola, pp. 122–210.Google Scholar
Silverman, David J. Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America. Harvard UP, 2016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1820. U of Oklahoma P, 1973.Google Scholar
Speck, Frank G. Oklahoma Delaware Ceremonies, Feasts, and Dances. American Philosophical Society, 1937.Google Scholar
Stevens, Scott Manning. “Tomahawk: Materiality and Depictions of the Haudenosaunee.” Early American Literature, vol. 53, no. 2, 2018, pp. 475–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swimmer, . “Origin of Disease and Medicine.” James Mooney's History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Bright Mountain Books, 1992, pp. 250–52.Google Scholar
Trump, Donald. “Remarks by President Trump on the Mass Shootings in Texas and Ohio.” 5 Aug. 2019, www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-mass-shootings-texas-ohio/.Google Scholar
Tweedy, Ann E. “‘Hostile Indian Tribes … Outlaws, Wolves, … Bears … Grizzlies and Things Like That?’ How the Second Amendment and Supreme Court Precedent Target Tribal Self-Defense.” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, vol. 13, no. 3, 2011, pp. 687–758.Google Scholar
United States, Supreme Court. District of Columbia v. Heller. 26 June 2008. Legal Information Institute, Cornell U Law School, www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/07-290.Google Scholar
Wallace, Paul. White Roots of Peace: The Iroquois Book of Life. 1946. Clear Light Publishers, 1994.Google Scholar
Weiser, Conrad. “A Journal of the Proceedings of Conrad Weiser: On His Journey to Ohio with a Message and Present from the Government of Pensilvania to the Indians There, 1748 Aug. 11–Oct. 2.” Edward E. Ayer Collection, Newberry Library, Chicago, MS 3200, box 1, item 1. Manuscript.Google Scholar
Williams, Robert A. Jr. Linking Arms Together: American Indian Treaty Visions of Law and Peace, 1600–1800. Routledge, 1999.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 8, no. 4, 2006, pp. 387–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zeisberger, David. David Zeisberger's History of the Northern American Indians. Edited by Hulbert, Archer Butler and Schwarze, William Nathaniel, Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1910.Google Scholar