A History of American Literature

134 Inventing Americas: 1800–1865

American writers at this time: that urge toward self-emancipation that the writings

of the Transcendentalists and slave narratives certainly shared. But, as Douglass and

Jacobs clearly illustrate, the self could take on quite different shapes and colorations –

and emancipation was far more difficult, far more of a challenge, for some. America

was becoming even more of a mosaic of different cultures, colliding interests, and

conflicting voices: for many writers there was not one America but several, often at

war with each other. Douglass and Jacobs inevitably register this, since they were

born into collision and conflict, the denial of their individual voices and their cul-

tural integrity by that form of social violence known as slavery. So, to a lesser extent,

do Emerson, Fuller, and Thoreau, all of whom, after all, recognized the challenges to

selfhood posed by various forms of injustice – the denial of people as individuals

because they were of the “wrong” race or gender. And so, too, do other writers,

deeply aware of the many Americas, the various, often opposing forces that existed

in the new republic: among them, the many who wrote in and from the Native

American and Mexican-American communities, those who engaged in the great

debate over slavery, and those who wrote about the condition of women.

Native American writing

Within the Native American tribes, so far as they were able or managed to survive,

the oral traditions of folktale, legend, and poetry persisted. Some white writers like

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow chose to appropriate them. Others, like William

Channing, writing in the North American Review in 1815, even went so far as to

claim that the “oral literature of the aborigines” was the only truly national litera-

ture, blessed with a common speech that was “the very language of poetry.” But

writing in English by Native Americans inevitably reflected acculturation and the

consequences, in particular, of removal and various assimilationist policies. Most of

this writing, in fact, came from those whose tribes had been displaced in the East or

forced to move to the West. That meant, mainly, the Cherokees in the South, who

had acculturated rapidly (although, in the end, it did them no good), and the Six

Nations and Ojibwas in the Northeast and around the Great Lakes. Such writing

necessarily explored Native American interests and settings, and addressed issues of

particular, often pressing importance to the tribes. But it was also likely to be written

according to the conventions of the dominant, white culture of the time and, very

often, reflected its tastes and habits of mind.

Nowhere is the shaping influence of white culture more evident here than in the

poetry written in English by Native Americans. John Rollin Ridge (1827–1867), for

instance, was a Cherokee. He was actively involved in Indian issues. But his pub-

lished work is notable, not only for Ridge’s insistence that his people had to become

“civilized” – that is, assimilated into white society – in order to survive, but also for

his wholesale adoption of white literary forms. In 1845 he published Life and

Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit. The claim made

here that it is a true story is simply a bow to one of the literary conventions of the

day: it is, in fact, a fairly standard popular romance. As for the poems Ridge produced

GGray_c02.indd 134ray_c 02 .indd 134 8 8/1/2011 7:54:39 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 39 AM