Annette Kolodny

Fictions of American Prehistory: Indians, Archeology, and National Origin Myths

In the midst of a national debate about the meaning and impact of Columbus’s first landfall in the Americas, Vine Deloria Jr. attempted to alter the context of discussion by insisting that ‘‘we need to know the truth about North American prehistory.’’ By using the term prehistory, Deloria followed common practice among archeologists and anthropologists in referring to events in the Americas that predate Columbus and (European) written histories, also known as the precontact period. His 1992 address to the Society for American Archeology argued ‘‘that unless and until we [Indians] are in some way connected with world history as early peoples, . . . we will never be accorded full humanity. We cannot be primitive peoples who were suddenly discovered half a millennium ago.’’ A member of the Standing Rock Sioux nation, a political scientist, and a longtime analyst of Indian-white relations, Deloria wanted the assembled archeologists to understand how the various quincentenary observances (including their own) of Columbus’s so-called ‘‘discovery’’ inevitably ended up ‘‘regard[ing Indians] as freaks outside historical time.’’ For Deloria, that ‘‘interpretation’’ is ‘‘all wrong.’’ 1 Interpretations of prehistory have never been solely the province of archeology, however. American prehistory has always been up for grabs, generating one fiction after another, with archeology providing just one source of such narratives. As a result, the fictions of prehistory offer a rich—and virtually untouched—field for the literary historian and, as I shall try to demonstrate here, an especially rich field for those interested in national origin myths and their implications for Native peoples. I call the field rich because from the earliest period of colonization onward, Euro-Americans told two dominant but compet-

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination.

In this work of feminist literary criticism the authors explore the works of many major 19th-century women writers. They chart a tangible desire expressed for freedom from the restraints of a confining patriarchal society and trace a distinctive female literary tradition.

The Life and Traditions of the Red Man: Reading Line: A rediscovered treasure of Native American literature

Illustrations vii Preface / Charles Norman Shay ix Acknowledgments xiii A Summary History of the Penobscot Nation / Annette Kolodny 1 Introduction to Joseph Nicolars 1893 The Life and Traditions of the Red Man / Annette Kolodny 35 A Note on Nicolars Text 89 Joseph Nicolars The Life and Traditions of the Red Man Preface 95 1. The Creation.-Klose-kur-behs Journey.-Meeting his Companions.-The Marriage 97 2. With the aid of May May, Klose-kur-beh destroyed the Serpent.-The Sea Voyage. 114 3. Klose-kur-behs hunting.-The first mother changed into corn and tobacco. 130 4. The winter and the seven years famine.-The discovery of the frist white mans track. 142 5. The fish famine.-The capture of the white swan and the white spiritual men driven away. 161 6. The winding up the war with the May-Quays.-The grand council established-The arrival and settlement of the white man. 184 Conclusion 195 Notes to the Nicolar Text 201 Afterword / Bonnie D. Newsom 213 Works Consulted and Recommendations for Further Reading 215 Illustration Credits 221

The Land before Her: Fantasy and Experience of the American Frontiers, 1630-1860.

To discover how women constructed their own mythology of the West, Kolodny examines the evidence of three generations of womens writing about the frontier. She finds that, although the American frontiersman imagined the wilderness as virgin land, an unspoiled Eve to be taken, the pioneer woman at his side dreamed more modestly of a garden to be cultivated. Both intellectual and cultural history, this volume continues Kolodnys study of frontier mythology begun in The Lay of the Land .