Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Native American Autobiography - Autobiographical Works During The Turn Of The Century

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AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WORKS DURING THE TURN OF THE CENTURY

H. David Brumble III (essay date 1985)

SOURCE: "Albert Hensley's Two Autobiographies," in American Quarterly, Johns Hopkins University Press, Vol. 37, No. 5, Winter, 1985, pp. 702-18.

[In the essay that follows, Brumble disputes the common conception of Native American autobiographies as "transparent" rather than consciously literary, and claims that works such as those by Albert Hensley, a, member of the Winnebago tribe, reflect a deliberate narrative coherence.]

Peyote, The Divine Cactus, The Vision Sender, Came to the Wisconsin Winnebago in the last decade of the nineteenth century, years that were especially difficult for that Indian tribe. Most Americans were still convinced that America was the great melting pot, and so believed as well that it was the manifest duty of Indians to melt as soon as possible. The official expression of this sentiment was the Dawes Act of...

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1. Introduction
2. Representative Works
3. Overview
4. Problems Of Authorship
5. The Evolution Of Native American Autobiography
6. Political Issues
7. Gender And Autobiography
8. Autobiographical Works During The Turn Of The Century
9. Further Reading
10. Copyright

1. Autobiography