Bradford's Indian Book
Being the True Roote & Rise of American Letters as Revealed by the Native Text Embedded in <i>Of Plimoth Plantation</i>
Publication Year: 2011
William Bradford, a leader among the Pilgrims, carefully recorded the voyage of the Mayflower and the daily life of Plymouth Colony in a work--part journal, part history-- he titled Of Plimoth Plantation. This remarkable document is the authoritative chronicle of the Pilgrims' experiences as well as a powerful testament to the cultural and literary exchange that existed between the newly arrived Europeans and the Native Americans who were their neighbors and friends.
In Bradford's Indian Book, Betty Booth Donohue examines Of Plimoth Plantation with reference to the ways Bradford incorporated Native American philosophy and culture into his writing. By highlighting this largely unrecognized influence in a founding American literary document, Donohue sheds important light on the Native contribution to the new national literature.
Published by: University Press of Florida
Cover
Frontispiece
Title Page, Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
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pp. ix-
For seeing me begin this journey, I want to thank the late Paula Gunn Allen, Michael Colacurcio, and Eric Sundquist of the University of California, Los Angeles. Their belief in the validity of the undertaking and their material assistance were invaluable. For bibliographic support, I want...
Preface
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pp. xi-xxiii
When Massachusetts Natives met English settlers in 1620, literary events took place. The American Indian oral tradition confronted English-speaking immigrants and changed their discursive propensities. As the English-speaking immigrants wrote, they produced a new literature that...
Prelude: The Beginning They Told
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pp. 1-
Stories came first. They spun the earth into being and gave it shape. When their work was completed, they disappeared into what they had just created. After the stories were safely hidden, Holy People and animals appeared on the earth’s surface and made everything useful and good. Finally humans arrived...
Part the First: Preparing the Ground
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pp. 3-
1. Land and Medicine
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pp. 5-18
Of Plimoth Plantation exhibits certain characteristics of Native healing narratives, the most powerful of all Native genres. These ceremonial texts, designed to effect change, incorporate narrative, song, poetry, dance, and sacred objects in a prescribed form. The chants are composed of...
2. The Earth as Narrative Source
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pp. 19-38
The most important stratum of narrative in a medicine text is its land narrative, which, among other things, sets spatial boundaries and prescribes the work’s major themes. Of Plimoth Plantation has a land narrative that assumes ritual form and demonstrates spatial and thematic content...
3. The Ritual Meeting of Two Cultures
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pp. 39-55
The Mayflower had touched American shores in November 1620. After exploring their new homeland for several weeks, the Newcomers finally located a place “fitt for situation; at least it was ye best they could find, and ye season, & their presente necessitie, made them glad to accepte...
4. Corn and Wampum
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pp. 56-70
Running through Bradford’s chronicle is a narrative of corn, which at midpoint transforms into a narrative of wampum. This lustrous, gold-changing-to-white-then-purple strand of Bradford’s text replicates mottled kernels of Indian corn while it illuminates a work grounded...
5. Animals and Tricksters
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pp. 71-86
Human characters, or characters understood to be human, play minor roles in American Indian medicine texts. There is, however, a blurring between entities described as human and those described as animal. A Micmac storyteller explains the concept like this: “In the beginning...
Part the Second: The People and American Literature
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pp. 87-
6. The Native Hagiography
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pp. 89-104
Written documents recounting the colonists’ experiences with American Indians accumulated quickly in the early days of the new nation, and concurrently a European American oral tradition that further preserved accounts of American Indian agency in English affairs also developed...
7. Tisquantum
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pp. 105-120
Death came suddenly and unexpectedly to Tisquantum in the autumn of 1622. Although his sojourn among the Plymoutheans had been brief, his legacy to them was apocryphal, long-lived, and far-reaching. Pniese, poet, and shape-shifter, it is hardly remarkable that such an extraordinary...
8. The Indeans
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pp. 121-133
Though not as prolix as Bradford, Winslow made his own inestimable contributions to Old Algonquia’s written history. The embers from his fires often explode with fascinating vignettes of Algonquian men and women. He relished his encounters with American Natives, and...
9. Of Plimoth Plantation as Medicine Text
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pp. 134-145
Of Plimoth Plantation is an artfully designed narrative construct divided into two parts that differ in form, length, style, and content. The first book, consisting of 104 pages, bears the title, Of Plimoth Plantation, and is divided into chapters designated “1. Chapter.,” “2. Chap.,” and the like...
Cherokee Glossary
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pp. 147-149
Notes
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pp. 151-162
Bibliography
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pp. 163-184
Index
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pp. 185-192
About the Author
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pp. 193-
E-ISBN-13: 9780813040561
Print-ISBN-13: 9780813037370
Print-ISBN-10: 0813037379
Page Count: 216
Publication Year: 2011
