American Indian Autobiography - Softcover

Brumble III, H. David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803217498 ISBN 13: 9780803217492

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2008

Synopsis

American Indian Autobiography is a kind of cultural kaleidoscope whose narratives come to us from a wide range of American Indians: warriors, farmers, Christian converts, rebels and assimilationists, peyotists, shamans, hunters, Sun Dancers, artists and Hollywood Indians, spiritualists, visionaries, mothers, fathers, and English professors. Many of these narratives are as-told-to autobiographies, and those who labored to set them down in writing are nearly as diverse as their subjects. Black Elk had a poet for his amanuensis; Maxidiwiac, a Hidatsa farmer who worked her fields with a bone-blade hoe, had an anthropologist. Two Leggings, the man who led the last Crow war party, speaks to us through a merchant from Bismarck, North Dakota. White Horse Eagle, an aged Osage, told his story to a Nazi historian. By discussing these remarkable narratives from a historical perspective, H. David Brumble III reveals how the various editors’ assumptions and methods influenced the autobiographies as well as the autobiographers. Brumble also—and perhaps most importantly—describes the various oral autobiographical traditions of the Indians themselves, including those of N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko. American Indian Autobiography includes an extensive bibliography; this Bison Books edition features a new introduction by the author.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

"In terms of its range, its sophistication, the insightfulness of its individual analyses--not to say the considerable gracefulness of the writing--Brumble's book is first rate."--Arnold Krupat, Sarah Lawrence College

About the Author

H. David Brumble III is a professor of English and religious studies at the University of Pittsburgh and is the author of several books, including, most recently, Classical Myths and Legends in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0803217498
• ISBN 13: 9780803217492
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 304