Sending My Heart Back Across the Years : Tradition and Innovation in Native American Autobiography

Using contemporary autobiography theory and literary, historical, and ethnographic approaches, Wong explores the transformation of Native American autobiography from pre-contact oral and pictographic personal narratives through late nineteenth-/early twentieth-century life histories to written contemporary autobiographies. This book expands the definition of autobiography to include non-written forms of personal narrative and non-Western concepts of self, highlighting the incorporation of traditional tribal modes of self-narration with Western forms of autobiography and charting the historical transition from orality to literacy. Contents......Page 10 Introduction......Page 14 1 Native American Self-Narration and Autobiography Theory......Page 22 Native American Concepts of Self, Life, and Language......Page 24 The Web of Self-Narration: Native American and Euro-American Autobiographical Traditions......Page 31 2 Pre-Contact Oral and Pictographic Autobiographical Narratives: Coup Tales, Vision Stories, and Naming Practices......Page 36 Coup Tales......Page 37 Nineteenth-Century Plains Indian Names and Autobiography......Page 48 3 Pictographs as Autobiography: Plains Indian Sketchbooks, Diaries, and Text Construction......Page 68 Sketchbooks of the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries......Page 69 A Cheyenne Diarist and Indigenous Text Production......Page 88 4 Literary Boundary Cultures: The Life Histories of Plenty-Coups, Pretty-Shield, Sam Blowsnake, and Mountain Wolf Woman......Page 99 Two Crow Life Histories......Page 102 Two Winnebago Life Histories......Page 115 Performance, Ceremony, and Self-Narration......Page 124 5 Oral and Written Collaborative Autobiography: Nicholas Black Elk and Charles Alexander Eastman......Page 128 Nicholas Black Elk......Page 129 Charles Alexander Eastman......Page 150 6 Contemporary Innovations of Oral Traditions: N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko......Page 164 N. Scott Momaday......Page 166 Leslie Marmon Silko......Page 197 Conclusion......Page 207 Notes......Page 212 Works Cited......Page 236 B......Page 248 C......Page 249 E......Page 250 I......Page 251 M......Page 252 N......Page 253 P......Page 254 S......Page 255 T......Page 256 Z......Page 257 Using contemporary autobiography theory, and literary and anthropological approaches, Wong traces the development of Native American autobiography from pre-literate oral, artistic, and dramatic personal narratives through late nineteenth and early twentieth-century life histories to contemporary autobiographies