Literacy and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation, 1820–1907 by James W. Parins (review)

Traversing the boundaries of history, biography, and literary and cultural studies, Literacy and Intellectual Life in the Cherokee Nation is an extensively researched, nuanced exploration of an Indigenous people’s qualified adoption and repurposing of settler-colonial technologies to their own ends, as well as the story of the development of a national ethos and collective commitment to distinctly Cherokee understandings of language, literacy, education, intellectualism, and nationhood. To characterize the text as ambitious would be an understatement. In just over 253 text pages, Parins examines everything from early literacy efforts propelled by Christian mission organizations driving the revolutionary developments of Sequoyah’s syllabary, Cherokee constitutional law, and the national press, to post-Removal debates over education philosophy, the explosion of newspapers and periodicals throughout Indian Territory, and the emergence of a prolific Cherokee intelligentsia writing across a variety of genres, forms, and geographic locales. Drawing upon focused examinations of specific historical figures, the last half of the book highlights the voluminous forms—petitions, testimonies, correspondences, editorials, poetry, fiction—through which Cherokees navigated internal crises generated by Removal and the Civil War, as well as external efforts to stave off judicial incursions, industrial and railroad interests, and advocates for allotment, territorialization, and tribal dissolution throughout the late nineteenth century. An epilogue connects the historical narrative to contemporary efforts to strengthen Cherokee language literacy via legislation and policy; recovery, revitalization, and immersion programs; technological innovations; and a continued legacy of literary and intellectual output. The nod to contemporary Cherokee literacy movements transforms the narrative from one of disruption, dislocation, and dissolution to one of adaptation, innovation, and continuity-through-change.

In a project so titled, it is not surprising that language itself emerges as a central actor, whether in its implication assimilationist federal policies and legal decisions, its power to advance Cherokee agendas, or its place within larger debates over Cherokee cultural and political identity. Parins frames the introduction of graphic literacy to Cherokee people (ch. 2) as both a product of and reaction to missionary efforts to “civilize” Cherokees through biblical instruction and institutionalized education. Though initially introduced as an explicitly assimilationist technology, the innovation of Sequoyah’s syllabary (ch. 5) quickly repurposed literacy to cohere Cherokee national identity and advance Cherokee political and intellectual goals. At the same time, such adaptations also exposed growing divisions within the nation along racial, cultural, gendered, and economic lines. Parins outlines how the national press (ch. 3) and post-Removal newspaper industry (ch. 6) were used both as open forums to debate shifting political conditions in the territory and as propagandistic organs of partisan politics, the latter indexed not only by the political commitments of their editors but also in the amount of Cherokee-language content they elected to offer and the consequent readerships they sought to reach. This tension is best illustrated in heated contests over education policy and the relationship between language instruction, curricular design, and the ultimate means and ends of a free, Indigenous national education system (ch. 4). Questions over party politics, national policy, and political leadership in the nation were also framed as much around a candidate’s relationship to language as they were around questions of platform or personality, with language often standing in as an indication of one’s social, cultural, and political commitments. Though Parins frames “Cherokee literacy” as communication in both Cherokee and English, the uneasy relationship between the two remained (and still remains!) a site of contestation and debate.

As in his previous work, Parins is at his best when ferreting out the often-shifting interests motivating his principle actors and their relationships to the larger contexts in which they operate. To this point, the last half of the book examines the lives and writings of recognizable and lesser-known names in Cherokee history. While these figures’ educational attainments, business acumen, and literary-political service to the...