Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-h6jzd Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2025-02-20T05:21:55.277Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Written in the Birch Bark: The Linguistic-Material Worldmaking of Simon Pokagon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jonathan Berliner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Simon Pokagon's writings exemplify a complex process of linguistic‐material worldmaking. His birch‐bark booklets bring together multiple cultural traditions, including nineteenth‐century tourist art, traditional Algonquian writing, and a long history of writing on bark that dates to the early history of writing itself. Neither purely things nor purely texts, these documents interweave nature and culture in such a way that Pokagon can be said to be engaging in a process of naturalization whereby the cultural is presented as a feature of nature. To promote his reformist agenda, Pokagon capitalizes on a rich cache of naturalist symbolism that was of particularly high cultural value in Victorian America. What is perhaps most notable about Pokagon's use of naturalization is that he makes this linguistic trope into a materialist discourse. (JB)

Type
Cluster on Textual Materialism
Information
PMLA , Volume 125 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 73 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Allan, Stuart. “News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse and the Construction of Hegemony.” Approaches to Media Discourse. Ed. Bell, Allan and Garrett, Peter. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. 105–41. Print.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Trans. Emerson, Caryl. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barker, Frank. Message to the author. 8 Apr. 2007. E-mail. Benjamin, Walter. “The Task of the Translator.” Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1969. 69-82. Print.Google Scholar
Berliner, Jonathan. “Discursive Ground: Naturalization in American Literature, 1836-1918.” Diss. U of Chicago, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Blessing, Fred K. “Birchbark Mide Scrolls from Minnesota.” Minnesota Archaeologist 25 (1963): 89–142. Print.Google Scholar
Brotherston, Gordon. Book of the Fourth World: Reading the Native Americas through Their Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Brown, Bill. “The Popular, the Populist, and the Populace: Locating Hamlin Garland in the Politics of Culture.” Arizona Quarterly 50.3 (1994): 89–110. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brumble, H. David III. American Indian Autobiography. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Buechner, Cecilia Bain. “The Pokagons.” Indiana Historical Society Publications 10.5 (1933): 279–340. Print.Google Scholar
Cheyfitz, Eric. The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Chow, Rey. Writing Diaspora: Tactics of Intervention in Contemporary Cultural Studies. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1993. Print.Google Scholar
Claspy, Everett. The Potawatomi Indians of Southwestern Michigan. Dowagiac: n.p., 1966. Print.Google Scholar
Clifton, James A. The Pokagons, 1683-1983: Catholic Potawatomi Indians of the St. Joseph River Valley. New York: Lanham, 1984. Print.Google Scholar
Clifton, James A. The Prairie People: Continuity and Change in Potawatomi Indian Culture, 1665-1965. Lawrence: Regents P of Kansas, 1977. Print.Google Scholar
“Codex.” Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. Oxford UP, 1989. Web. 6 Aug. 2009.Google Scholar
Columbus, Christopher. Four Voyages to the New World. Trans. and ed. Major, R. H. New York: Corinth, 1961. Print.Google Scholar
Copway, George. Indian Life and Indian History. Boston: Albert Colby, 1858. Print.Google Scholar
Deloria, Philip J. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
de Man, Paul. “Autobiography as De-facement.” MLN 94.5 (1979): 919–30. Print.Google Scholar
de Man, Paul. “‘Conclusions’: Walter Benjamin's ‘The Task of the Translator.‘” Yale French Studies 69 (1985): 25–46. Print.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “Des Tours de Babel.” Trans. Joseph F. Graham. Acts of Religion. By Derrida. Ed. Gil Anidjar. New York: Routledge, 2002. 102–34. Print.Google Scholar
DeWeese, Helen Noble. Letter to Louise Engle. 1975. Papers of Louise Engle. Hartford, MI. TS.Google Scholar
Dippie, Brian W. The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy. Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Diringer, David. The Book before Printing: Ancient, Medieval, and Oriental. 1953. New York: Dover, 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Dirlik, Arif. The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism. Boulder: Westview, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Engle, C[enius] H. “Aboriginal History.” A History of Van Buren County Michigan. Vol. 1. Ed. O. W. Rowland. Chicago: Lewis, 1912. 1–52. Print.Google Scholar
Engle, C[enius] H. “Publisher's Notes.” Pokagon, Queen 5-33. Engle, Louise. Personal interview. July 2005.Google Scholar
Engle, Washington A. Diaries. Ca. 1856-97. MS. Louise Engle Collection, Archives and Regional History Collections, Western Michigan U, Kalamazoo.Google Scholar
Erdrich, Louise. Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country. Washington: Natl. Geographic, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Fischer, Steven Roger. A History of Writing. London: Reaktion, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Gaur, Albertine. A History of Writing. London: British Lib., 1984. Print.Google Scholar
Goodman, Nelson. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978. Print.Google Scholar
Halberstam, Judith. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York UP, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Harvey, Graham. Animism: Respecting the Living World. London: Hurst, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Hertzberg, Hazel W. The Search for an American Indian Identity: Modern Pan-Indian Movements. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1971. Print.Google Scholar
Historical Account of the Substances Which Have Been Used to Describe Events, and to Convey Ideas, from the Earliest Date, to the Invention of Paper. London: T. Burton, 1800. Print.Google Scholar
Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2002. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Basil H. Honour Earth Mother. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Jordan, Tracey Sue. “Braving New Worlds: Breed Fictions, Mixedblood Identities.” Diss. Columbia U, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Knowles, Joseph. Alone in the Wilderness. Boston: Small, 1913.Google Scholar
Konkle, Maureen. Writing Indian Nations: Native Intellectuals and the Politics of Historiography, 1827-1863. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2004.Google Scholar
Krupat, Arnold. Red Matters: Native American Studies. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krupat, Arnold. The Voice in the Margin: Native American Literature and the Canon. Berkeley: U of California P, 1989.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
La Flesche, Francis. The Middle Five: Indian Schoolboys of the Omaha Tribe. 1900. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1978. Print.Google Scholar
Landes, Ruth. Ojibwa Religion and the Midéwiwin. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1968. Print.Google Scholar
Lehmann-Haupt, Hellmut. The Book in America: A History of the Making and Selling of Books in the United States. 2nd ed. New York: Bowker, 1951. Print.Google Scholar
“Liber.” Oxford Latin Dictionary. 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Maddox, Lucy. Citizen Indians: Native American Intellectuals, Race, and Reform. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Martin, Lawrence T. “Simon Pokagon: Charlatan or Authentic Spokesman for the Nineteenth-Century Anishinaabeg?” Papers of the Twenty-Ninth AlgonquinGoogle Scholar
Conference. Ed. Pentland, David H. Winnipeg: U of Manitoba P, 1998. 182–91. Print.Google Scholar
Murray, David. Forked Tongues: Speech, Writing, and Representation in North American Indian Texts. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Nash, Roderick Frazier. Wilderness and the American Mind. 4th ed. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Payne, John Howard, transcriber. “Notable Persons in Cherokee History: Sequoyah or George Gist.” 1835. By George Lowry. Journal of Cherokee Studies 2.4 (1977): 385-92. Print.Google Scholar
Peyer, Bernd C. “The Thinking Indian”: Native American Writers, 1850s-1920s. Frankfurt: Lang, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Phillips, Ruth B. Trading Identities: The Souvenir in Native North American Art from the Northeast, 1700-1900. Seattle: U of Washington P, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Pokagon, Simon. “The Algonquin Language.” Pokagon, Queen 35–48.Google Scholar
Pokagon, Simon. Chicago Day address. Pokagon, Queen 20–23.Google Scholar
Pokagon, Simon. Letter to Mayor Carter Harrison. Pokagon, Queen 16.Google Scholar
Pokagon, Simon. “Preface of The Red Man's Greeting.” Pokagon, Queen 253.Google Scholar
Pokagon, Simon. Queen of the Woods [O-gî-mäw-kwě mit-i-gwä-kî]. Hartford: C. H. Engle, 1899. Print.Google Scholar
Pokagon, Simon. The Red Man's Greeting. Hartford: C. H. Engle, 1893. Print.Google Scholar
Pokagon, Simon. The Red Man's Rebuke. Hartford: C. H. Engle, 1893. Rpt. in Walker 211–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pokagon, Simon. “Simon Pokagon on Naming the Indians.” American Monthly Review of Reviews 16 (1897): 320–21. Print.Google Scholar
Pulitano, Elvira. Toward a Native American Critical Theory. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Rhodes, Richard A. Eastern Ojibwa-Chippewa-Ottawa Dictionary. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1985. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruoff, A. LaVonne Brown. “Simon Pokagon.” Handbook of Native American Literature. Ed. Wiget, Andrew. New York: Garland, 1996. 277–79. Print.Google Scholar
Seton, Ernest Thompson. The Birch-Bark Roll of the Outdoor Life. 6th ed. New York: Doubleday, 1907. Print.Google Scholar
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Ed. Nelson, Cary and Grossberg, Lawrence. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988. 271–313. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Testimonials.” The Papers of Carlos Montezuma, 1892-1937. Madison: State Hist. Soc. of Wisconsin, 1975. Reel 5. Microfilm.Google Scholar
Thomas, Nicholas. “Cold Fusion.” American Anthropologist 98.1 (1996): 9–16. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Edward Maunde. An Introduction to Greek and Latin Paleography. Oxford: Clarendon, 1912. Print.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, Alan. Shades of Hiawatha: Staging Indians, Making Americans, 1880-1930. New York: Hill, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Treuer, David. Native American Fiction: A User's Manual. Saint Paul: Graywolf, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Vilkuna, Asko. “The Tale of the Birch-Bark Strip.” Trans. Douglas Robinson. Ethnologia Scandinavica (1975): 73–80. Print.Google Scholar
Vizenor, Gerald. Manifest Manners: Postindian Warriors of Survivance. Hanover: Wesleyan UP, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Walker, Cheryl. Indian Nation: Native American Literature and Nineteenth-Century Nationalisms. Durham: Duke UP, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Warrior, Robert Allen. Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Weaver, Jace. “Splitting the Earth: First Utterances and Pluralist Separatism.” American Indian Literary Nationalism. Ed. Weaver, Craig Womack, S., and Warrior, Robert. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 2006. 1–89. Print.Google Scholar
Womack, Craig S. Red on Red: Native American Literary Separatism. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999. Print.Google Scholar