Reason, Cultivation, and (In)Voluntary Land Transfers

In searching for a “hot spot” in Life of Black Hawk this week, I found myself settling on a passage that both J. Gerald Kennedy and Mark Rifkin discuss:

My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon, and cultivate, as far as is necessary for their subsistence; and so long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have the right to the soil—but if they voluntarily leave it, then any other people have a right to settle upon it. Nothing can be sold, but such things as can be carried away. (56)

This passage is such a hot spot because it not only shows the strong ideological differences between white and Native American conceptions of land ownership but also contradicts the dominant narrative about Native Americans.

 

In the introduction to the text, Rifkin explains that “rationalism enables Black Hawk to understand the ethics of land conservation” (xxii). Black Hawk’s rationalism contradicts white expectations of natives as “savages” and places him right in the middle of the debate about racial difference that Reginald Horsman discusses in Race and Manifest Destiny. Horsman asserts, “Before 1815 the prevailing intellectual view in America as well as in Europe was that environment, not innate racial differences, accounted for the marked gaps in achievement between different peoples and different nations” (98). Even Thomas Jefferson took a “classic Enlightenment position” about Native Americans, writing that “proofs of genius given by the Indians of N. America, place them on a level with Whites in the same uncultivated state” (Horsman 107). Black Hawk’s explicit mention of “reason” both supports and contradicts Enlightenment thinkers. The capacity to reason is an inherent human capability that all races share, thus this passage seems to be in agreement with the Enlightenment thinkers who argued against inherent racial differences. However, the passage also shows that different environments won’t always lead to differing abilities. Just because Black Hawk’s reason led him to a different understanding of land ownership does not mean his reasoning capabilities are inferior to a white person’s; he should not have to be equated to a white person who is still in an “uncultivated state.”

 

Black Hawk’s use of the word “cultivate” also has the double-sided effect of supporting and contradicting white ideology. Whites who first came to America saw it as their Christian prerogative to cultivate and tame the wilderness, and cultivation additionally became a measure of progress and civilization. White Americans used agriculture and cultivation as another marker of their superiority over the Native Americans. Horsman explains, “Ignoring the extensive agricultural development among the Indian tribes with which the United States was in contact…placed the whole confrontation in the simple context of a primitive hunting society, on a lower stage of human evolution, encountering an American agrarian society at the highest stage of human development” (107). Both Horsman and Rifkin point to the inaccuracy of this narrative. Rifkin argues that Black Hawk’s presentation of the story of the origin of corn forges “a connection between the hunting grounds and the fields of Saukenuk by portraying hunting not as the antithesis of cultivation but its (differently gendered) partner” (687). As with Black Hawk’s “reason,” his conception of “cultivation” is not inferior to that of white people, it is merely different. Like white Americans, he highly values cultivation, so much so that he believes cultivation gives people a right to land, whereas paying for land does nothing.

 

A final important element I saw in the Life of Black Hawk passage is the mention of “voluntarily” giving up land. Rifkin explains

If legitimate settlement follows upon others “voluntarily” vacating the territory, the text calls into question the validity of U.S. jurisdiction by repudiating not simply native assent to a particular sale but the possibility of construing the sale of Indian territory as ever consensual in light of the fundamental alienness of such a transfer to indigenous philosophies and spirituality. (684)

Indian removal and land treaties are partially problematic because Native Americans simply don’t see land as something that can be bought and sold. However, even without that difference in ideology, “voluntarily” giving up land still remains an important sticking point. Even if white Americans refuse to believe that land cannot be sold, their treaties are predicated on Indians voluntarily giving up their land, which gets at one of Maureen Konkle’s arguments in her article. She explains, “Since the treaty, duplicitous or not, required the presumption of Indian autonomy in order to be construed as legitimate, it also allowed for Indians’ resistance to U.S. governmental authority: Indians could choose not to sell” (460). White Americans had to find ways around this freedom of choice in order to take the land they wanted. Black Hawk’s whole story focuses on the consequences when Indians fight for the land that they never voluntarily left in the first place.

Portraying Native Americans in Paintings and Photographs

I used to be pretty oblivious about just how bad Native Americans still have it today, but the movie Edge of America first opened my eyes a few years back. (The movie is about a teacher who goes to the Three Nations Reservation to teach high-school English and winds up coaching the girls’ basketball team. It’s definitely a good complement to the photographs we’ve been looking at if anyone is interested.) Despite being aware of the reality of poverty, alcoholism, and gangs on Indian reservations, I was still deeply affected by Aaron Huey’s photographs and the stories about Pine Ridge. In his TED Talk, Huey shocked me with the statistics about poverty and unemployment; I couldn’t believe that 90% of Native Americans live below the poverty line and that 85% are unemployed.

Huey definitely accomplished his goal to “hurt the viewer” with his photos. After looking through the photos, I felt sad, upset, guilty, and frustrated. Like Huey mentions in his TED Talk, white people continue to take the best meat, but at the same time, he says, “Pity is not the answer. The Lakota are an incredibly beautiful and proud people” (“Behind the Scenes: Still Wounded”). I don’t know if there even is an answer, but I appreciate how Huey is working towards “a more complete view of the Pine Ridge reservation” with new images and by letting the Oglala Lakota people tell their own stories through the Pine Ridge Community Storytelling Project. The story of hope and perseverance is just as important as the story of poverty and dejection. Alexandra Fuller successfully captures this ambivalent sense of hope when she quotes Olowan Thunder Hawk Martinez at the end of her article: "We’re in dire distress, but we don’t need anyone to come and save the Indian. When we honor our customs, and when we perform ceremonies, and when we listen to our ancestors, then we have everything we need to heal ourselves within ourselves" ("In the Shadow of Wounded Knee").

Martinez’s comment inspired me to look for some of the more hopeful messages in Huey’s photographs, especially by comparing them with Catlin’s paintings. I have four images I want to focus on for the rest of this blog.

 

These two images struck me as surprisingly similar. Both Huey’s photograph (top) and Catlin’s painting (bottom) show lone Indian figures standing in the foreground high above natural landscapes. In his article, Gareth John discusses George Catlin’s painting River Bluffs, 1320 miles above St. Louis, explaining that the lone figure “conveys a sense of solitude, perhaps a surrogate for Catlin himself, romantically pondering the dreadful fate that awaits the western Indian tribes who face the spectre of an ever-encroaching frontier” (193). John’s reading of River Bluffs accurately captures what he terms “ambivalent imperialism” in Catlin’s works. By comparing Catlin’s painting with Huey’s photograph, however, we see that Catlin’s ideas were part of the misguided cult of the Vanishing American. The lone figure in Huey’s photograph is a testament to the endurance of the Indians. He is much larger and much more of a central focus than the figure in Catlin’s painting. Furthermore, rather than looking out over the vast landscape like the Indian in Catlin’s painting, the figure in Huey’s photograph looks down as if he’s trying to make his way over the rough mountain ridge without stumbling. The viewer’s eye follows the figure’s line of sight, looking down at the perilous path he is taking rather than out at the immense landscape in the background. In addition, while the landscape in the photograph is beautiful, it is brown and rugged as opposed to the green rolling hills in Catlin’s painting. The harsh yet lovely terrain in the photograph seems to symbolically capture both the beauty and the pain that Native Americans experience on the reservations today. In contrast, the terrain in Catlin’s painting beckons pioneers to fertile, untouched land in which Indians seem to almost melt away because of how small the Indian figure is in the painting.

Here’s another pair of images that lend themselves to comparison. Catlin’s painting Comanche Feats of Horsemanship (bottom) is briefly described on the webpage at http://americanart.si.edu/catlin/highlights.html:

All of the “untouched” Plains cultures Catlin most admired had been affected by Europeans, in no way more dramatically than by the acquisition of horses from the Spanish. An enthusiastic horseman himself, Catlin considered the Comanche the best of all Plains equestrians. He pointed out their adaptations of such Spanish techniques as the use of the lasso as well as practices they had developed on their own, including the use of their horse's body as a shield when firing upon enemies with bows and guns. (Image 19)

I completely forgot that horses came from the Spanish until I read this, and it made me look at both Catlin’s painting and Huey’s photograph (top) in a new way. Catlin’s painting shows Native Americans in their home setting wearing traditional attire and using traditional weapons. However, it also shows how their culture has been shaped by contact with European cultures as they use horses originally brought to them by the Spanish. The painting contradicts the cult of the Vanishing American, showing the Native Americans as fierce warriors who have adapted to “civilization” before, reappropriating horses for their own needs. Horses have become so synonymous with Native American cultures that people who see Huey’s picture assume that the Indians at Pine Ridge are staying connected to their roots by continuing to use horses. Although horses did not originally belong to Indians, Huey’s photograph still does accomplish a similar effect to Catlin’s painting. The Indians in Huey’s photograph wear clothes that look just like those that white men wear, but they continue to ride horses like their ancestors, and they ride bareback as opposed to using saddles. Both Huey’s photograph and Catlin’s painting show that Native Americans will be flexible to modernization, but, as Martinez says, “When the lights go out for good, my people will still be here. We have our ancient ways. We will remain” (Fuller, "In the Shadow of Wounded Knee").

 

Patriarchal Puritanism, England, and the Native American in Hobomok

Like Katie mentioned in her blog, I too was hoping for a radical feminist/anti-racist text when I started reading Hobomok. What I found was a novel that seemed more interested in nationalist and religious issues. The various religious debates and sermons in the text were focused on establishing the Puritan Church in a new land and casting out the British Episcopal Church, thus effectively separating from England. In just one example of this, Mr. Conant puts separatist religious concerns above the concerns of race relations: “To my mind there is more danger of Satan’s killing us with the rat’s-bane of toleration, than the Lord’s taking us off with the Indian arrows” (37). Conant’s rejection of Charles Brown due to his religion is also the catalyst for the whole issue of miscegenation later in the novel. This seems to put the religious issues in a higher place of importance, at least at first glance.

Carolyn Karcher’s introduction helped me bring the two separate issues of religious nationalism and racism together as she showed the parallels between Charles Brown and Hobomok. She explains,

Both represent a fusion of nature and culture. Both foster the aesthetic impulses Puritan society contemns. Both fulfill the spiritual aspirations thwarted in Mary by a religion that has ruled out the feminist principle. Both embody the sexuality Puritanism seeks to repress. And both, above all, provide a means of defying patriarchal authority, as vested not only in Mary’s father but in the society for which he stands. (xxix)

Although I wanted to see a stronger feminist stance, the connection Karcher establishes between Brown and Hobomok shows that at its core the novel fights against patriarchal Puritan society. Even when Hobomok is replaced by Brown, the text still strongly rejects Puritan values, thus reinforcing ties with England.

 

Child refers to Mary’s past in England as a “fairy dream” (78), and she explains that “the remembrance of the little fairy” (46) that Mary was in England caused Charles to follow her to America. England is viewed as a positive, fantasy-like place straight out of romance. However, the romanticized past is no longer the present reality. Conant argues that “England has come to a dreadful pass in these days” (116). Even Charles Brown laments, “My hearte bleedeth for olde England, torne with religious commotions, as she hath beene, from the time of the second Tudor: but my feeble hand may not stop her wounds” (104). The solution is to bring a piece of England to America and to fuse it with certain native qualities found there just as Karcher fuses together certain aspects of Charles and Hobomok. Mary’s son is a clear embodiment of the intermingling of English and Native American, and his name specifically joins Mary’s two lovers together.

 

Ezra Tawil interestingly points out that the issue of race actually becomes more important than the issue of religion when Charles replaces Hobomok as Mary’s husband: “By giving his blessing to the same union which he had prohibited before Mary went native, Mr. Conant pronounces religious difference inconsequential in relation to race” (112). Reading the text in this light, Child clearly shifts the focus of her novel part way through. I was disappointed to see Child ultimately give in to the “popular convention” of the Vanishing American that “premised on a moralistic judgment, had become natural law” (Dippie 11). Not only does Hobomok disappear into the wilderness, but his son returns to England and relinquishes his Indian name.

 

Although Child doesn’t “move beyond racial egalitarianism to cultural pluralism” (215) in “An Appeal for the Indians,” I appreciated that this text showed a stronger anti-racist stance. Rather than reinforcing ties with England at the expense of the Native Americans, she clearly exposes the faults of white people in various nations at different periods of time while showing Indians in a positive light. She also directly attacks the convention of the Vanishing American, arguing, “How can people improve, who are never secure in the possession of their lands? Yet, while we are perpetually robbing them, and driving them ‘from post to pillar,’ we go on repeating, with the most impudent coolness, ‘They are destined to disappear before the white man’” (231). Child takes a much more radical stance against racism in this piece.

Abolitionist Literature Relocated: Humanity in Algiers

Reading Humanity in Algiers felt like déjà vu because so much of it reminded me of abolitionist texts I’ve read for history and English classes in the past, all of which were focused on slavery within the United States. One specific parallel I saw was between Valachus’s lust for Alzina and the lust so often depicted in literature that white slave owners had for their black female slaves. On his death bed, Valachus tells Omri:

I then commanded [Alzina] to be treated with the utmost kindness, and employed several agents to seduce her into compliance: But all my arts were in vain; she still remained unmoved, heedless of all my promises or threats. My passion being inflamed by this unexpected opposition, and despairing of ever obtaining her consent to my wishes, I was determined to make use of my authority over her person, and by force to compel her to submit. (22)

A similar scene takes place toward the end of Lydia Maria Child’s short story “The Quadroons” (1842):

For some months, [the master] sought to win her smiles by lavish presents, and delicate attentions. He bought glittering chains of gold, and costly bands of pearl. His victim scarcely glanced at them, and the slave laid them away, unheeded and forgotten…she gave her master no thanks, and her gloom deepened. At last his patience was exhausted. He grew weary of her obstinacy, as he was pleased to term it; and threats took the place of persuasion. (Child, The Liberty Bell, 140)

Both of these passages make use of similar rhetoric and portray masters who are ultimately willing to resort to violence against their female slaves to achieve what they desire. However, while Child’s portrayal of this relationship between master and slave was so typical to the texts I’ve always read, Humanity in Algiers brought a new spin to it for me with its African setting in which black slaves work for black masters. Without the dynamic of racial difference, I read the relationship between Valachus and Alzina as one purely based on gender dynamics, which helped me connect Humanity in Algiers back to Sansay’s Secret History. Just as Clara became a commodity desired by St. Louis, Rochambeau, and others, Alzina becomes a commodity who Valachus can quite literally purchase because of her status as a slave. The gendered power hierarchy is made more explicit in that he is her master, not her husband or suitor. Amid the many other issues that this text reveals about slavery, it also shows slavery putting males in an even greater place of power over females. In the relationship between Valachus and Alzina, I see a compelling argument against sex slavery and sexual violence that might be occurring anywhere in the world, regardless of racial differences. In this way, the text has global significance and resonates with the issue of sex trafficking that continues today.

Alzina also serves as an excellent example of the religious rhetoric used throughout Humanity in Algiers. Azem first encounters Alzina praying to God for deliverance from her fate. She exclaims, “Oh! Is it not enough that [Valachus] has embittered all my days with servitude, but that he would rob me of chastity, in which consists all my remains of happiness?” (15) Her ardent desire to remain chaste aligns with the valuing of female virtue which I’ve seen in countless American texts of this time period, largely due to the dominance of Christianity. At the end of her prayer, Alzina says, “O God! thou knowest my heart, and seest the anxiety of thy creature. O Thou, who alone givest aid and consolation to the captive! in thee I trust, in thy love and mercy” (15). Like many other characters throughout Humanity in Algiers, Alzina ultimately trusts in God to save her rather than actively trying to change her situation. Ultimately, everything works out because divine Providence intervenes on Alzina’s behalf—Valachus is stung by a scorpion on his way to rape her, and he sets her free. The different characters’ submission to God further reinforced my feelings of déjà vu, hearkening back to when I first read Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative. Yet, once again, this text brought in something new and different from other texts I’ve read—the Islamic faith.

I don’t know how accurately Humanity in Algiers portrays the religious tenets of Islam, but I was surprised to see it shown in such a positive light. The text doesn’t focus on many particularities of the Islamic faith, but it does show the ways in which it is similar to the Christian faith. Readers of this text during the 1800s could have found ways to sympathize with the characters through similarities, rather than focusing on their differences and vilifying the characters as “other.” The inclusion of Islam in its similarities to Christianity also combats American exceptionalism. The early Americans with their Christian faith cannot pretend they are so different or so much better than African Muslims after reading this text. Despite how similar Humanity in Algiers seemed to so many other abolitionist texts I’ve read, I appreciated how it gave me a new trans-hemispheric view on issues like sex slavery and religion.