Early Native American Writing

This collection of critical essays discusses the works of American Indian authors who wrote between 1630 and 1940 and produced some of the earliest literature in North American history. The first collection of critical essays to concentrate on this body of writing, the book highlights the writings of the American Indian authors considered, many of whom only recently rediscovered, as important contributions to American letters. American Indians writing in English offer a permanent record of the dramatic and often tragic confrontation between native culture and the communities of settlers arriving in the New World over four centuries. As white settlers arrived, bringing with them disease, technology, and Christianity, they also brought the English language - a tool which native Americans, accustomed to an oral tradition, would adopt in an effort to cross the barriers of cultural difference. Serving in their own time as a means of addressing a heedless oppressor, native American writings have since become a vital record of an experience whose history, as written by the mainstream, is incomplete. The essays collected here seek to recuperate that history, while bringing new attention to the texts themselves.