American Indian Autobiography

American Indian autobiography is a kind of cultural kaleidoscope. The narratives come to us from many different Indians—from Crows, Hidatsas, Navajos, Osages, Kiowas, Hopis, Pequods, Chippewas, Kwakiutls—from warriors, farmers, Christian converts, rebels and assimilationists, Peyotists, shamans, hunters, Sun Dancers, artists and Hollywood Indians, spiritualists, visionaries, mothers, fathers, and English professors. And if this is not variety enough, we might remember that many of these narratives are as-told-to autobiographies—and those who set them down in writing are nearly as diverse as their subjects. Black Elk had a poet for his amanuensis; Maxidiwiac, a Hidatsa farmer who worked her fields with a bone-blade hoe, had an anthropologist, and so on.

David Brumble discusses these remarkable narratives in historical terms. The effects, for example, of the editors' assumptions and methods upon autobiographies and autobiographers are never far from his attention. But American Indian Autobiography also—and perhaps most important—describes the Indians' own oral autobiographical traditions. Brumble insists upon the continuing influence of these traditions, right down to the very literate autobiographies of N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Silko.

The book includes an extensive bibliography, which lists all the autobiographies mentioned and brings up to date the author's previous Annotated Bibliography. It is thus an invaluable resource for students of Native American subjects and American history and literature, as well as a gripping narrative in itself.