Indiana University Department of History

Trustees of Indiana University

Department of History, Indiana University

Review
Author(s): Renée Bergland
Review by: Renée Bergland
Source: Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 103, No. 2 (JUNE 2007), pp. 212-214
Published by: Indiana University Department of History ; Trustees of Indiana University
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212 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

The Indian Chief as Tragic Hero

Native Resistance and the Literatures ofAmerica, from Moctezuma to
Tecumseh
By Gordon M. Sayre
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Pp. 368. Illustrations. $22.50)

InjunJoe'sGhost
The Indian Mixed-Blood inAmerican Writing
By Harry J. Brown
(Columbia: University ofMissouri Press, 2004. Pp. viri, 271. Notes, bibliography, index. $47.50.)

In the 1500s, indigenous Mexican search for traces of indigeneitywher

a
boys attending mission school out ever they can, from the libraries of
side the Aztec cap?tol of Tenochtit Italy to the landfills of the Canadian
lan painted hundreds of images of the West. Both Gordon Sayre and Harry
conquest of Mexico. A Franciscan J. Brown take us into these exciting
friar, Bernadino de Sahagun, used ly expanded new archives, and both
their art to illustrate a twelve-volume connect the new materials tomore
history of New Spain. But the book familiar sources.

(known as the Florentine Codex) In The Indian Chief as TragicHero,

was considered too radical for pub Sayre focuses on poems, plays, and
lication, and it languished in a pri novels about Indian chiefs. He puts
vate library in Florence formore than these literaryworks into the context
three hundred years. Few scholars of an array of sources that includes
today have examined the pictures. non-alphabetic native records like the
Even fewer scholars have seen the images of the Florentine Codex, as
images from The Half Breed or The well as unsuspected textual sources
Place Beyond theWind, silent films including Aristotle's Poetics, Ren?
released in 1916 starring respective Girard's literary theories, and even, in
ly Douglas Fairbanks and Lon the case of Pontiac, thehistory of the
Chaney as mixed-blood Indian pro American automobile industry.
Pon

tagonists. Like many silents, the films tiac is one of the best examples of
were never intentionally preserved; Sayre's central thesis:Although he led
in 1978 theywere salvaged from a an uprising thatwas considered ter
cache of 510 reels that had been rorist, Pontiac was framed as a
tragic
buried in an abandoned swimming hero, and almost instantly absorbed
pool beneath an ice skating rink in into American culture as an admirable

the Yukon.
figure. It is hard to imagine Detroit
Today, scholars who write about automakers rolling out a new line of
Native Americans must go beyond the "Bin Ladens." What sort of collective
familiar archive of nationalist national forgettingmade Pontiac an
romances and official histories and attractive brand name?

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 REVIEWS 213

Sayre argues that stories of vio uncrossed hero, the undefiled white
lent native resistance to colonialism maiden?that were once unassail
cast regular Indian rebels as brutal or able" (p. 245). It is an interesting
demonic, but their leaders?he looks argument, and although the book
in
particular
at Moctezuma, Metacom, could certainly engage more fully the
Pontiac, Logan, and Tecumseh?are work of other scholars, Injun Joe's
framed as tragic heroes who offer Ghost asks fascinating questions
their conquerors an opportunity for about mixed-blood Indians and offers
catharsis, a psychological cleansing a wide range of literary sources for
that can heal the spiritual wounds of consideration.
violence. Sayre works deftlywith his Although Brown uses the figure
multitude of sources; his book is a tri of the ghost, he does not give much
umphant example of the benefits of thought to the metaphor. Neither
interdisciplinarity and the inclusive does Sayre. But both books are haunt
to evidence. ed nonetheless. Brown accords
approach
Brown's
Injun Joe's Ghost also mixed-blood Indians the power to
works within a remarkably broad "haunt us to death" (p. 15). More
archive, ranging from one of the ear explicitly, Sayremuses that "the ques
liestAmerican novels, Susannah Row tion that haunts my crossbreed off
son's Reuben and Rachel (1798), spring of literary genre studies and
through antebellum historical Native American ethnohistory is
romances, dime westerns, magazine whether the literary expressions of
fiction, the silent films discovered in the Indian tragicheroes actually con
the Yukon, and
twentieth-century vey anything of Native American
writings of the Native American experience" (p. 34). These questions
Renaissance. Brown argues that "the haunt every scholarly work that
... focuses on Native Americans
figureof themixed-blood provides in
a mirror inwhich we might observe American literature, and cul
history,
and interpret changes in theway we ture; in facing them,Brown and Sayre
view ourselves as a nation" (p. 246). introduce us to fascinating archives,
The fundamental shift from the eigh ask exciting new questions, and offer
was
teenth century to the twenty-first some startling answers. Brown tells
a move to "revise the concept of us that the dialectics of racialism are
hybridity frombiological terms to cul subsiding, and that the new cultural
tural terms" (p. 157). As a result of ism will make mixed blood Indians
this cultural turn, "the nation's coun central rather than spectral. Sayre
ternarratives have become its master shows that a cultural studies
narratives .... The subaltern has not
approach uniting disparate theories,
only spoken, but it has usurped the images, histories, and a vast range of
dominant discourse and shattered the texts can offer new insight into the
idols?the vanishing Indian, the past and perhaps allow particular his

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214 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY

torical human beings such as Ponti Ren?e Bergland teaches American lit
ac to emerge from the veils of nation erature and gender/cultural studies at
alist mythology that have almost Simmons College, Boston. She is the
completely obscured them. author of The National Uncanny: Indi
an Ghosts and American Subjects
(2000).

The Boundaries ofAmerican Political Culture

in theCivil War Era
By Mark E. Neely Jr.
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Pp. xiv, 159. Illustrations, notes, select
ed bibliography, index. $29.95.)

Mark Neely's twelfthbook proposes minstrel shows and other forms of

to locate the boundaries between entertainment todeliver political mes
political and private life during the sages to the public. Additionally, he
Civil War era. Originally presented as analyzes the role ofUnion Leagues in
a series of lectures at Pennsylvania fundraising and in engaging individ
State University in 2002, The Bound uals in politics through club activi
aries of American Political Culture ties. In contrast to Glenn C.

responded to arguments by social his Altschuler and Stuart M. Blumin's

torians that politics played only a contention that political activities in
marginal role in the daily lives of nineteenth-century
America were

nineteenth-century Americans. The

largely ignored by common Ameri
author finds thatduring theCivilWar cans, Neely finds considerable over
era, engagement between political lap between the public and private
and private lifewas without parallel. spheres of everyday life,and contends
Neely's highly original analysis of that politics, while not all-consum
the boundaries of political culture ing, certainly pervaded the daily lives
depends on his use of a wide range of of most Americans.

often-overlooked popular cultural One

of the strengths of Neely's
evidence. He examines, for example, study is his creative use of cultural
political material found in thehome, material and artifacts, resources not

such as lithographs, paintings, news always fullyexplored by political his

papers, and photographs, as well as torians. For example, Neely finds that
political material found in public many commercially produced small
areas, like cartoons and posters. In folio lithographic prints?which were
connecting politics to everyday life, clearly intended to be hung in the
Neely also explores partisan use of home?depicted political figures and

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