Beyond Two Worlds , livre ebook

BEYOND TWO WORLDS
SUNY series, Tribal Worlds: Critical Studies in American Indian Nation Building
—————
Brian Hosmer and Larry Nesper, editors
BEYOND TWO WORLDS
C RITICAL C ONVERSATIONS ON L ANGUAGE AND P OWER IN N ATIVE N ORTH A MERICA
Edited by
James Joseph Buss
and
C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa
“Wabansi Lakeside Chicago-Beyond Swag,” Jodi Webster. Graphite and Colored Pencil on Paper, Courtesy of Artist.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beyond two worlds : critical conversations on language and power in native North America / edited by James Joseph Buss and C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa.
pages cm. — (SUNY series, tribal worlds : critical studies in American Indian nation building)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5341-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Indians of North America—Ethinic identity. 2. Indians of North America—Cultural assimilation. I. Buss, James Joseph, author, editor of compilation. II. Genetin-Pilawa, C. Joseph, author, editor of compilation.
E98.E85B49 2014
970.004'97—dc23
2013047048
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
M ALINDA M AYNOR L OWERY
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The World Is Not Enough
J AMES J OSEPH B USS AND C. J OSEPH G ENETIN -P ILAWA
Part I: Historical Antecedents
1. “To Live and Die with Them”: Wendat Reactions to “Worldly” Rhetoric in the Land of the Dead
K ATHRYN M AGEE L ABELLE
2. “Willingly Complied and Removed to the Fort”: The Secret History of Competing Anglo-Visions for Virginia’s Southwest
K RISTALYN M ARIE S HEFVELAND
3. The Development of Two Worlds: British and Cherokee Spatial Understandings in the Eighteenth-Century Southeast
I AN D. C HAMBERS
Interlude: Diagramming Worlds
N ANCY S HOEMAKER
Part II: The Real and the Imagined
4. Imagined Worlds and Archival Realities: The Patchwork World of Early Nineteenth-Century Indiana
J AMES J OSEPH B USS
5. The Indians’ Capital City: Diplomatic Visits, Place, and Two-Worlds Discourse in Nineteenth-Century Washington, DC
C. J OSEPH G ENETIN -P ILAWA
6. Under One Big Tent: Race, Resistance, and Community Building in Two Nineteenth-Century Circus Towns
S AKINA M. H UGHES
Interlude: Of Two Worlds and Intimate Domains
S USAN E. G RAY
Part III: Consequences and Implications
7. nahi meehtohseeniwinki: iilinweeyankwi neehi iši meehtohseeniwiyankwi aatotamankwi: To Live Well: Our Language and Our Lives
G EORGE I RONSTRACK
8. Moving in Multiple Worlds: Native Indian Service Employees
C ATHLEEN D. C AHILL
Interlude: Working and Between-ness
B RIAN H OSMER
Part IV: Beyond Two Worlds
9. “born in the opposition”: D’Arcy McNickle, Ethnobiographically
D ANIEL M. C OBB , K YLE D. F IELDS , AND J OSEPH C HEATLE
10. To Come to a Better Understanding: Complicating the “Two-Worlds” Trope
S ANDE G ARNER
Afterword: How Many Worlds?: Place, Power, and Incommensurability
C OLL T HRUSH
Contributor Biographies
Index
Illustrations Figure 1 Euler Diagram of Eastern North America as Suggested by the Three Preceding Essays. Figure 2 Euler Diagram of Richard White’s The Middle Ground. Figure 3 Euler Diagram of Nancy Shoemaker’s A Strange Likeness . Figure 4 Euler Diagram Comparing European Visions of Colonization. Figure 5 Euler Diagram of Wendat Worlds. Figure 6 Euler Diagram of Indian-European Relations in the Eighteenth-Century Southeast. Figure 7 Antonio Capellano, Preservation of Captain Smith by Pocahontas . Figure 8 Enrico Causici, Landing of the Pilgrims . Figure 9 Nicholas Gevelot, William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians . Figure 10 Enrico Causici, Conflict of Daniel Boone and the Indians . Figure 11 Kitsilano Point. Figure 12 University of British Columbia, Museum of Anthropology. Figure 13 Neely Mansion.
Preface
The Lumber River, the home of the Lumbee Indians to whom I belong, hosts our stories and our graves. The river is a generous host; it knew our flaws before we knew them ourselves; it keeps our secrets and our bodies. Then, in the time before the present time, our land as we now know it began to form. At that time there was the Upper World and the Lower World, two perfect opposites held in ideal tension. Lest we mistake it for John the Revelator’s more recent visions of heaven and hell, the Upper World and Lower World are not rewards or punishments for human behavior in This World. No, these worlds are ancient systems of creation in their own right, generating powerful forces of harmony and disharmony, both of which are essential for all to be right within the nation, in This World. When one world is out of balance, the others are affected. 1 Humans who travel between Worlds have extraordinary spiritual power, and great need. The farmer who puts a dead snake in a tree attempts to bring the Lower World of the snake together with the Upper World of nourishment, to generate rain, prosperity, and harmony in This World.
Some of our ancestors said that in the beginning, the Creator took the form of a Great Hare, a rabbit. With the hare were four invisible forces, each taking shape as a wind from the North, South, East, and West. The hare made humans first, and then protected them from spirits who wanted to consume them. In the meantime, the Hare created the land, water, plants, and other animals. When he had created the deer, he placed his people on the land and instructed them in how to hunt. 2
Other storytellers among our ancestors put the woman, not the animals, at the center of Creation. But as the eternal feminine sustains the nation, creation was a communal affair. It took a congregation of animals, men, women, elders, and particularly unruly children, to make the world. In the time before the present time, all of This World was water, and the Elder Spirits of This World wanted land as well. So they consulted the Sky People, whose world was held together by a great tree, one of our tall pines. The Sky People created a baby girl and nurtured her into womanhood; she became known as Sky Woman. Accidentally or by force, the tree toppled. Sky Woman fell through the firmament, grabbing at the roots of the tree to save herself. The roots gave her seeds: in her right hand, corn, beans, and squash; in her left hand, tobacco. In her womb she also carried her own seed, a lynx whose name is sometimes translated as “Hanging Flowers.” When she fell, the animals of the water decided to build a place for her, and a turtle volunteered to serve as her home. The water beings mounded mud on top of the turtle’s back, and Sky Woman and her daughter Hanging Flowers proceeded to plant their seeds. 3
The turtle can hinder as well as help; sometimes he needs a rabbit to remind him to share. Some of our ancestors may have told a tale about how the People obtained water. A big-headed, arrogant, snapping turtle sat over a spring—what we call a “branch” off of a swamp—and wanted all the water for himself. Sweet and cunning as a child, Rabbit went to Snapping Turtle and said cheerfully, “if you give me a drink I’ll say thank you!” Snapping Turtle refused but Rabbit had a plan. He scratched a ditch in the soft, wet dirt beneath the turtle, and the water escaped: “Run much so the earth all over was a water branch,” said a Catawba storyteller. And so the water flows easily. 4
These stories of our creation come from three “different” peoples, the Algonquian, Siouan, and the Iroquoian, but in our history they are shared. That is what it means to be Lumbee: like the rabbit, we defy the powerful and share the water, sometimes at great risk to ourselves, but always with the blessing of the ancestors. Those ancestors are also non-Indians—newcomers from other continents who we adopted if we loved them, killed them if they insisted.
“Land” is hardly the right term for the Lumbees’ homeplace—it is water and soil, two perfect opposites flowing together since ancient times. There are dense swamps where the water runs southwest, finger-like, toward the river. But the river is not the wide Shenandoah or roaring Colorado; the Lumber meanders slowly, twisting and turning an intricate design that changes periodically as her waters forge new paths.
In the Indian section of the county, seen from above, the Lumber River looks like a great snake, twisting and turning, swelling and breathing with the spring and summer rains. Snakes, in fact, have found a comfortable home there; the river hosts brown water snakes and cottonmouths (or water moccasins), which are often confused with each other. The difference is important; Cottonmouths are deadly and brown snakes are not. Varieties of turtles—what we and lo