A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity: Dispatches from the Dakota War

Literary Perspectives on A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity

113 LITER ARY PERSPECTIVES ON A THRILLING NARR ATIVE OF INDIAN CAPTIVITY Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola In 2009 I posted a message on the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures discussion list requesting information on Native theories of “home.” I received many responses that helped me draft this introduction, including the following poem by the great Acoma Pueblo writer Simon J. Ortiz: What is home anymore? Is the “Indian reservation” home? Is Acoma home? Is Cherokee home? Is Pine Ridge home? Is Chinle home? Is the land under your feet and where you work and have lived for three years home? Is San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, or Chicago home? Where is home anymore?1 Though brief, this poem interrogates the complications and contradictions of linking identity to home, homelands, homelessness, and homecoming . Such issues are poignant and pressing for Native Americans today. But they originated centuries ago when Natives were first driven from their traditional land base and, as displaced people, were forced to grapple with “geographies of belonging.”2 Ironically, European American colonizers Figs. 9 (left) and 10 (above). A Thrilling Narrative, cover and title page, 1863. Held in the Reserve Collection, Minnesota Historical Society. The title, A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity, appeared on both the cover (fig. 9) and the title page (fig. 10) of the 1863 edition. The booklet measures 8¼ by 5½ inches. The original binding was sewn, with the golden-yellow wrap cover glued on. The staples visible on the cover are not original. 116 liTerAry inTroduCTion also had to reassess their identity and allegiance when faced with crosscultural contact in their new locale. In these ways both groups confronted issues of definition (“What is home?”) and space (“Where is home?”). The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 literally caused Dakotas and non-Dakotas to leave the place both claimed as home. For in the wake of war most Dakotas were forcibly exiled from their homelands, while most whites relocated but always had the option to return. Diane Wilson points out that there is an “immense difference between losing one’s homeland, as the Dakota did, and losing a homestead on land that was obtained through coercive treaties.”3 Nevertheless, one could say that all parties in the U.S.-Dakota War fought over “home rights” as well as land rights. Establishing a joint sense of home and belonging proved particularly challenging for John and Mary Renville, since their backgrounds and upbringings had been so very different before they married. Their captivity narrative locates them at a liminal point in that search as they confronted what and where their physical, cultural, emotional, and spiritual home might be. Focusing on “home” therefore provides a useful thematic entrée into this text. Initially titled “The Indian Captives: Leaves from a Journal,” the narrative appeared in thirteen installments, mostly a week but sometimes up to two weeks apart, in a small-town Wisconsin newspaper called the Berlin City Courant. The first installment came out on 25 December 1862, the day before the mass hangings at Mankato, and the last on 9 April 1863. First exiled to Berlin from the home base they had established at Hazlewood, the Renvilles were essentially exiled from Berlin when John’s Dakota background became public. Later in 1863 the Atlas Company of Minneapolis published a slightly changed book version with the more inflammatory and salable title A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity. The thirteen chapters in the book corresponded to the serialized newspaper articles. Mary copyrighted the volume under her name, and its title page stated “By Mrs. Mary Butler Renville,” but its last chapter still carried the joint signature “J. B. And M. A. RENVILLE,” which had appeared at the end of the final Courant installment.4 Significantly, John’s initials appeared before Mary’s to claim that the text belonged to him as much as to her and that both took respon- 117 liTerAry inTroduCTion sibility for it. Two addenda rounded out the book: the first giving information about the providential rescue of missionaries during the war and the second bolstering A Thrilling Narrative’s credibility with a statement by one of those evangelists, H. D. Cunningham. The Renvilles’ narrative has not been published since 1863. It is not known who decided to change the title of the newspaper version, with its sense of immediacy and reportage (“captives,” “leaves,” “journal”), to that of the...