Contents

• Literary History
• Law & Literature
• Online Resources

ENG 604

• Class Description
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• Schedule of Readings
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Literary History

• Pre-Contact
  • Overview
  • Scholarship
  • Bibliography
• Early Written
  • Overview
  • Scholarship
  • Bibliography
• Reservation/Allotment Era
  • Overview
  • Scholarship
  • Bibliography
• New Deal Era
  • Overview
  • Scholarship
  • Bibliography
• Contemporary
  • Overview
  • Scholarship
  • Bibliography

Pre-Contact Autobiography: Scholarship

Within the discipline of English, the work of two scholars in particular has been instrumental in recognizing the existence of pre-contact modes of autobiographical discourse. H. David Brumble III and Hertha Dawn Wong have argued for the existence of several important "genres" of self-expression in the oral and pictorial traditions of Indian peoples; in Brumble's and Wong's views, these genres also provide important elements that have been incorporated into subsequent written Indian autobiography.

The modes of pre-contact autobiography (which can appear in both oral, pictorial, or mixed forms) that are described by Brumble and Wong include the following:

1. Coup-Tales (sometimes referred to as "kill songs"): This refers to narratives told by an individual to recount acts of bravery, especially (but not exclusively) in combat. Coup tales were sometimes acted out—not merely recited—and generally required some type of corroboration from others in the community. This form of autobiographical expression was typically spare in its use of detail and highlights the importance of communal recognition for the Indian "individual."
2. Self-Examination or Confession: This category refers typically to a tale told in preparation for participation in a ceremony or to seek forgiveness from the community for a failure on the part of the speaker (perhaps in battle). Such confessions are often necessary components of healing rituals, offering an explanation for the illness in question.
3. Self-Vindications: A public defense of self invoked as a defense from blame being cast at one by another. Brumble uses the example of narratives designed to defend against accusations of witchcraft.
4. Tales of the Acquisition of Powers or of Vision Quests: In most traditional Indian cultures, the ability to access and use "sacred" power requires a public recounting (and sometimes performance) of the experience by which the individual's relationship to the sacred was established. This may involve, for example, the description (and subsequent public interpretation) of a vision.
5. Tales of the Acquisition of Names: Particularly among Plains nations, narratives dealing with the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of names can constitute a kind of serially structured life-story, as Wong has noted.
6. Tales of Education: A kind of narrative about the self whose broader purpose is the dissemination of knowledge to others. An adult, speaking of his or her own experiences, may in fact be conveying important cultural lessons to (often younger) listeners.
7. Pictographic Autography: A form of "signature" that links the "name" of an individual, metonymically, with a larger narrative. This form is related in some respects to the pictorial calendars (Winter Counts) kept by many traditional Indian peoples.

There are surely other "forms" of self-narration recognized by traditional Indian communities that have yet to be understood and appreciated by outside commentators. Fortunately in the wake of the work of writers such as Brumble and Wong, autobiography scholarship has become increasingly attentive to that possibility.