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

Preface

xv PREFACE hiSToriCAl ConSiderATionS, by CArrie reber ZemAn In “Historical Perspectives on A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity” I have privileged primary sources, quoting them sometimes at length rather than simply providing the citation. Both practical and philosophical concerns suggested this approach. Because the primary text, A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity, until now has been obscure, almost no secondary work has been done on the text (before my coeditor addressed it in 2009) and very little has been done on its authors. Thus the historical work this project posed was not the refinement or the reinterpretation of previous work (other than my own as-yet-unpublished work on the Sioux Agency) but the raw, preliminary sifting of the primary-source literature to see what turned up. Therefore, my historical work in this volume rests heavily on primary sources. The exceptions are discussions of subjects like interracial marriage and the Underground Railroad movement, where an existing body of analytical work contextualizes elements of the Renvilles’ story. In a few instances, like my discussion of the causes of the 1862 war, I have chosen to largely ignore the secondary literature in order to foreground period arguments in the fresh context of this story. A philosophical concern undergirds these practical considerations. The secondary literature on the Dakota War of 1862 is so vast and varied that scholars can posit and seemingly support just about any assertion that suits their dialectic fancy. Because many primary sources are not readily accessible to those who live distant from major repositories, general xvi prefACe readers may be unaware of the depth and breadth of the primary literature that has yet to be mined in this century by scholars. My intent is to challenge readers to wrestle with the sources themselves, not simply my own or anyone else’s interpretation of them. Readers should also be aware that I am not Native but European American , which posed challenges for a story heavily dependent on Dakotaauthored sources. The primary author of A Thrilling Narrative, Mary Butler Renville, was the only person of my own ethnicity to spend the entire war in the Upper Camp. The secondary author, John Baptiste Renville, and every other Peace Party leader who appears in this story, was Dakota. Several conscious choices help mitigate this problem of a non-Dakota author approaching a Dakota story. I have chosen to privilege period Dakota sources as primary evidence and to privilege those sources’ interpretations of their own narrative, even where it differs from the received (secondary, European American) story. While some readers may find this approach unbalanced, my intent in this volume is to tell a little-known part of the larger story of the 1862 war. The wider body of literature on this subject details the non-Native aspects. Therefore, privileging Dakota perspectives is a natural extension of my and my coeditor’s resolve to bring A Thrilling Narrative back into print. In addition, my coeditor and I have sought out the meaningful participation of modern Dakota scholars since the earliest days of this project, and we are grateful for their help and perspectives, particularly in interpreting their own history and ethnography and representing the Dakota language. Last, I approach this story as a Christian in the Reformed theological tradition, a worldview that holds much in common with the Presbyterians in this story. I do not excuse the missionaries’ obvious ethnocentrism, which has never been part of the Gospel and was, unfortunately, bound up in the missiology of their day. Yet as Mary Butler Renville’s and John Baptiste Renville’s biographer I have done my best to faithfully represent their theological perspective to allow readers to understand and evaluate the worldview the authors brought to the story. xvii prefACe liTerAry ConSiderATionS, by KAThryn ZAbelle derouniAn-STodolA In “Literary Perspectives on A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity” I approach the material from the vantage point of captivity narrative studies, a field to which I have contributed for the past thirty years. Therefore I situate A Thrilling Narrative within the extensive scholarship on captivity narratives in general and U.S.-Dakota War captivity narratives in particular . Additionally, I contextualize John and Mary Renville’s search for a home base through the growing amount of literature on what might be termed home studies. Native American scholars, including Simon J. Ortiz and N. Scott Momaday, have contributed some of the most exciting and extensive reflections on...