Bibliography

Brumble, H. David III. An Annotated Bibliography of American Indian and Eskimo Autobiographies. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981, 177 p.

This often-cited reference provides a listing of more than five hundred Native American autobiographies, dating from the eighteenth century to the present.

Ruoff, A. LaVonne Brown. American Indian Literatures: An Introduction, Bibliographic Review, and Selected Bibliography. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1990, 200 p.

An extensive bibliographical listing of Native American literature, including autobiography.

Biography

Brimlow, George F. "The Life of Sarah Winnemucca: The Formative Years." Oregon Historical Quarterly 53, No. 2 (June 1952): 103-34.

Provides a detailed account of the cultural origins and early life of Sarah Winnemucca, whose later lectures and autobiography were popularly and politically influential.

Fowler, Catherine S. "Sarah Winnemucca." In American Indian Intellectuals, edited by Margot Liberty, pp. 33-42. St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishing Company, 1978.

Offers a brief biography of Sarah Winnemucca and argues that her controversial stance on Native American assimilation has led to the neglect of her complex political views.

Smith, Donald B. "The Life of George Copway or Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (1818-1869) and a Review of His Writings." Journal of Canadian Studies 23, No. 3 (Fall 1988): 5-38.

Recounts the early life, conversion, and circumstances leading to the writing of the autobiographies of George Copway.

Criticism

Bloodworth, William. "Varieties of American Indian Autobiography." MELUS 5, No. 3 (Fall 1978): 67-81.

Develops a general classification of Native American autobiography according to the amount of Western influence each work underwent.

Brumble, H. David III. "Sam Blowsnake's Confessions: Crashing Thunder and the History of American Indian Autobiography." In Recovering the Word: Essays on Native American Literature, edited by Brian Swann and Arnold Krupat, pp. 537-51. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Contends that the autobiography of Sam Blowsnake differs significantly from earlier Native American memoirs, insofar as it is organized around a central dramatic experience and expresses a confessional "sense of self."

Carr, Helen. "In Other Words: Native American Women's Autobiography." In Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's Autobiography, edited by Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck, pp. 131-53. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988.

Criticizes the consideration of Native American autobiography as representative life-experiences, arguing that the literary form is more suited to the expression of individual recollections.

Krupat, Arnold. "The Indian Autobiography: Origins, Type, and Function." American Literature 53, No. 1 (March 1981): 22-42.

Examines the political context in which both early white and Native American autobiographies were written.

——. "Monologue and Dialogue in Native American Autobiography." In his The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon, pp. 132-201. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.

Claims that some Native American autobiographers deliberately adopt a Western model of individual identity, and in so doing suppress a more traditional dialogic understanding of identity.

Sanders, Thomas E., and Walter W. Peek. "Memories Miserable and Magnificent: Biography and Autobiography." In their Literature of the American Indian, pp. 409-44. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Glencoe Press, 1973.

Presents excerpts from autobiographical narratives that are indicative of the tension between traditional culture and the increasingly dominant Western influence.

Sands, Kathleen Mullen. "American Indian Autobiography." In Studies in American Indian Literature: Critical Essays and Course Designs, edited by Paula Gunn Allen, pp. 55-65. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1983.

Examines the narrator/editor collaborative relationship in Native American autobiographies.

Walsh, Susan. "'With Them Was My Home': Native American Autobiography and A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison." American Literature 64, No. 1 (March 1992): 49-70.

Reviews the context in which the collaborative memoir of Mary Jemison, a white woman who was captured and adopted by Senecas, was composed. The autobiography, the critic argues, is a "bicultural composition" and is "marked by Native American as well as Anglo-European narrative elements."

Wong, Hertha D. "Pictographs as Autobiography: Plains Indian Sketchbooks, Diaries, and Text Construction." In her Sending My Heart Back Across the Years: Tradition and Innovation in Native American Autobiography, pp. 57-87. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Studies the marginalized pictorial forms of autobiography and the ways the narratives changed through contact with the Euro-American culture.

——. "Pre-literate Native American Autobiography: Forms of Personal Narrative." MELUS 14, No. 1 (Spring 1987): 17-32.

Examines traditional Native American personal narratives—such as oral storytelling and pictorial renditions of events—forms of self-expression that the critic finds are often overlooked in favor of the collaborative and ethnographic autobiographies which dominate scholarly interest.