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p Acknowledgments One day, as we walked down the hall of the English Building at the University of Illinois, Carol Thomas Neely, the feminist literary historian and Shakespeare critic, said that in the long run, good editing of valuable but little known or unknown literary writing would make more difference to readers than almost any literary criticism, no matter how good the criticism. Carol got me wondering. Could I think of something out there waiting to be edited that readers would find more valuable than the best literary criticism I might aspire to write? Could I enjoy editorial work as much as critical work? How could editorial work also be critical work? Could I combine editing and literary criticism? Those questions led to this book and to the other book that spun off from the work on this one: The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft. I will always be grateful to Carol Neely for laying down the challenge. Many people have helped with this book, and I am enormously grateful to them. First and most, it is an honor to name Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., and James W. Parins, whose monumental bibliographical and archival work have proved invaluable. Their Biobibibliography of Native American Writers is a treasure trove, as are their Native American Press Archives at the Sequoyah Research Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where Dan Littlefield was a helpful and gracious host. I see this book partly as a challenge to other scholars to make more use of the cornucopia of resources that these two indefatigable and welcoming scholars have built over many years of imaginative and dogged work. Jodi Byrd, D. Anthony Clark, Jill Doerfler, Tol Foster, and Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert provided keen and helpful readings of part of the manuscript. LeAnne Howe has been a paragon of support and encouragement. Brenda Farnell, Frederick E. Hoxie, and Debbie Reese helped in many ways to set the atmosphere that made this research possible. The support of all these colleagues offers testimony to the superb Program in American Indian Studies they have helped build as faculty and visiting scholars at the University of Illinois. Robert Warrior, recently arrived to lead our program, helped in both practical and abstract ways to foster the completion of this project. In the Department of English at Illinois, William J. Maxwell and Michael Rothberg provided astute readings of part of the manuscript, and Nina Baym and Cary Nelson provided muchappreciated encouragement as well as inspiring models in their own scholarship. Early in the research, Isabel Quintana-Wulf and Cristina Stanciu helped figure out many of the tasks that daunted me, and near the end, Ann Hubert provided terrific help with Eleazar’s Latin and Greek. Carter Revard read part of the manuscript and offered valuable encouragement and insight. Siobhan Senier pointed me to the papers of Molly Spotted Elk and helped 438 Acknowledgments make them available and transcribe them. I eagerly await her anthology of American Indian writing from New England. John D. Nichols and Margaret Noori helped with Ojibwe language topics and provided inspiration and encouragement. Ron Wilburn offered stimulating discussions of Ann Plato. Gretchen Harvey helped with the research on Ruth Muskrat. Rosemary McCombs Maxey cheerfully translated James Roane Gregory ’s title “Otheen, Okiyetos.” Raymond J. DeMallie helped with a language question. Mark Wasserman unraveled some historical knots. And Marlie P. Wasserman was a constant source of cheerful support. Librarians are my heroes and (more often) heroines—and many more librarians and library workers have helped with this book than I can name. In most cases I do not even know their names. But some of those who stand out include Jo Kibbey, Kathleen Kluegel, and Mary Stuart at the University of Illinois, who each helped in many ways. I am indescribably grateful for the tireless work of Kathryn Danner and Nick Rudd and their colleagues in the Interlibrary Loan office at the University of Illinois Library. I am also grateful to librarians at the American Antiquarian Society, the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University, the Arkansas History Commission, the Harris Collection at Brown University, the University of Kansas Library, the Maine Folklife Center, the Newberry Library, the Nash Library at the University of Oklahoma, the University of Tulsa Library, and the Wisconsin Historical Society, among many others, along with the many additional librarians and archivists thanked in The Sound the Stars Make Rushing Through the Sky. For most of...

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