Introduction
On a hot summer day in St. Louis, Missouri, a band of middle-aged Unitarian Universalist women adventurers of European background — myself among them — our consciousness raised by a morning lecture at our denomination's annual gathering, traversed the Mississippi River by light rail, and climbed on to a municipal bus destined for the Cahokia Mounds in Collinsville, Illinois. These extensive earthworks, monumental in scope and longevity, could only be accepted by earlier explorers as possible creations of the Lost Tribes of Israel or perhaps the accomplishments of earlier Welsh adventurers. Robert Thayer, in a Unitarian Universalist Historical Society presentation referenced above reported that the Spanish explorer, Cortes reported that upon his being introduced to the Aztec monarch Montezuma, the Mesoamerican clearly said, "Welsh!" Should this have been the case, Cortes would have shown his solidarity with the theories of other Europeans who were willing to consider innumerable other candidates for the origins of New World peoples. Charles Mann notes that candidates for origins included ". . .Phoenicians, Basques, Chinese, Scythians, Romans, Africans, 'Hindoos,' ancient Greeks, Assyrians, Egyptians, the inhabitants of Atlantis. . ." and the Welsh! (143) With the information gained by a visit to the mounds and their Interpretive Center, later to be shared with the students at A. Philip Randolph, I began to create a framework for explorations and discoveries in Philadelphia and for enriching the American literature curriculum.
Explorers or Invaders?
Mounds as Exemplars
Cahokia Mounds history might serve as a paradigm for European adventures in the New World: the mounds were actually constructed by the Mississippians (predecessors in the area to the lake Woodland culture), who had moved on before the arrival of the Cahokians. The largest of the massive earthworks is named Monks Mound in recognition of Spanish missionaries. Thus the creator society became invisible and, until recent times, remained unacknowledged and unexplained.
Average American Childhood
As a child growing up in the United States in the 1950's and 1960's, I felt quite at home playing cowboys and Indians, although in truth, I do not recall anyone insisting on taking the part of an Indian. Happy that "cowgirl" (who would want to be Dale Evans waiting back at the ranch or the forever tripping-over-a-rock damsel in distress?) was not a role anyone was expected to play, I donned my winter holiday gift cowboy outfit, slipped my toy gun into its holster and waited patiently for spring when it would be time to run up and down the block yelling "You're dead!" at my playmates. In the interim there were hours to spend watching television with Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and the Lone Ranger, the latter being in perpetuity the "man with the plan" which he imparted into Tonto's (a common Spanish epithet meaning "stupid," "wild," or "fool," although not necessarily intended as an insult by the producers*) ear. *(http://www.endeavorcomics.com/largent/ranger/faq.html)
Treatment of Native Americans in those black-and-white simple tales was, as I recall, rather benign. Most, except for faithful Tonto, were extras, in the background, occasionally offering assistance to the main characters, but lacking names, homes, gainful employment and families. Movie Westerns presented a much more frightening image of "Injuns," showing homesteads laid waste by raiding war parties or full-scale battles with the noble U.S. Cavalry, resplendent in their blue uniforms and epaulettes, crisply shooting the enemy off their horses, even as an occasional private or corporal bit the dust, felled by a deadly arrow. It should be noted that all youngsters of my generation received their earliest medical training when we were instructed never to pull an arrow from a wound.
I had no awareness that Wissahickon Avenue, the street which intersected mine, three doors away, named in turn after a lengthy creek running through Northwest Philadelphia, meant 'catfish stream,' and that the original appellation was derived from the Indian word, 'misamekhan.' It would be difficult for any person, native or tourist, to travel around Philadelphia without encountering a street bearing a name from the Indian past: Manayunk, Passayunk, Cherokee, Wyoming, Susquehanna. Ironically, attribution for many of these names is assigned to the Delaware tribe, called after an Englishman, Lord de la Warr! The tribe itself, and its associated group, the Lenni Lenape, can now be found in Oklahoma and Ontario, forced there through policies that resemble, at least in part, the brutal forced Westward relocation of the Cherokees that has come to be known as "The Trail of Tears."
No visible or self-identified Native American attended my elementary, junior or senior high school or college, although the Girl Scout camp I attended at ages 10 and 11 was respectfully though mysteriously called "Indian Run." In elementary school, we sang in chorus, "One little, two little, three little Indians," unaware that its reversal second verse, "Ten little, nine little, eight little Indians," could be described by a modern Native American writer as indicating the Anglo American expectation that this first American league of nations would indeed disappear.
Even as my home and religious training propelled me to civil rights, feminist, peace and gay rights marches, meetings and letter-writing campaigns, it has remained remarkably easy to maintain a comfortable ignorance regarding Native American creations, issues and plights. Native Americans, activists now in their own cause, did not see the need to wait for me or for my denomination to develop sensitivity and awareness. The Unitarian Universalist Association, at its General Assembly this year in St. Louis, opened with a now-required and traditional tribute to Native Americans. Unable to locate a tribe nearby, the church leadership cast their invitation to the next nearest Indian council. Came back the reply: "We have neither the time nor interest to travel a distance to make you feel good. Work on your own issues!" Nevertheless, the four-day program featured several workshops devoted to American Indian history and concerns, one of which was entitled "Indian Mounds and White Responses." Attendance at this 8:00 a.m. session filled the room to overflowing. I came away with three learnings: first, that a visit to the Cahokia Mounds was an immediate priority; second, that one of the greatest mistaken concepts adopted by Europeans "Coming to America" was that Native American culture was fixed in time, unchanging and inflexible; third, that some Native nations encountered difficulties with climate change not unlike what the world at large faces today.
Textbooks and curricula of the 1950's and 1960's provided a firm foundation for ignorance regarding Native Americans. Today's texts reflect a substantially greater inclusivity and sensitivity. The survey I anticipate sharing with my students contains both primary sources and commentary that indicate real progress. Native voices published independently, however, make clear that there is still much work to do in addressing what Buffy St. Marie, quoted by Paula Gunn Allen in the preface to her book Spider Woman's Granddaughters, points out is a continuing neglect of monumental proportions: Germany benefited from a grand reconstruction effort following World War II. Native American nations still wait, their numbers, though rebounding somewhat in recent years, will probably never recover from the decimation brought by disease and devastating displacements. My students may raise questions of a similar nature in noting that Congress provided compensation for former Japanese internees, but is unlikely even to discuss the idea of reparations for slavery.
Literary Invaders
Robert Spiller and compatriots exemplified the drive toward making Native Americans
invisible, at least in the field of literature, when they suggested in their tome, Literary History of the United States, that:
- The literary history of this nation began when the first settler from abroad of
- sensitive mind paused in his adventure long enough to feel that he was under a
- different sky, breathing new air. . . (xix).
Showing respect, but limited understanding, Spiller generously suggests that although Indian literary traditions are primarily oral, their expression is ". . .analogous in many of its details of form and substance to the genres familiar to students of European literature" (Spiller et al, 695). Native writer and editor, Paula Gunn Allen demurs, almost a quarter of a century later: "The stories in the oral tradition follow certain aesthetic processes that differ from the processes employed in the modern Western tradition" (Allen, 1989: 2). My students, by spending time looking at works in both traditions, will develop their own conclusions.
As an interesting sidelight, Spiller reveals the minimal knowledge a mid-20th century specialist in United States history had regarding Mayan written literature by giving credit to the "early Spanish colonizers" for preserving "some poor fragments." Spanish Bishop Landa, one of those very same colonizers, had in fact burned hundreds of volumes of the Maya books (probably of many different kinds—almanacs, histories, religious guides to divination, etc.) as a corrective for this 'devil's literature.' A subsequent father of the church did indeed, however, help translate verses preserved by Mayans themselves into Spanish, paving the way for our ultimate opportunity to read them in English.
Stolen Language
The exact number of Native American languages (not dialects) existing prior to European contact is not known. Estimates vary from 200 to 600. What is known is that starting with Columbus, indigenous languages were ignored or devalued, squelched or marginalized so that today, the majority have disappeared and the many more (there are some strong ones!) are headed in that direction.
The importance of language preservation to a people cannot be minimized. In the words of O'odham speaker and educator Arlene Joyce Hughes: "Our language, our Himdag, is the number-one source of our soul, our pride, our being, our strength, and our identity." When, as a youngster in school, a teacher learned she was speaking her own language and not English, she was summarily "dragged. . .into a closet in the basement. . ." and left there. She can still ". . .smell the mildew of the dark closet. . .and the sound of footsteps from above." Today, Hughes is part of a program funded by the federal government that is dedicated to preserving the language for its own sake, and encouraging the "meta linguistic awareness" that provides students with an academic advantage (McCarty).
"Connecticut Shore:" Our languages are remembered here/by the shapes of stone/whose truth names embrace/Algonquin words/that sank beneath/the measured weight/yet remain undrowned/by imperial English. Joseph Bruchac (Holt's commentator on Native American literature)
Comments: