| This study discusses the literature of African-Native American (Black Indian) authors, in particular focusing on the work of Paul Cuffe, Paul Cuffe, Jr. (both African/Pequot), Okah Tubbee and Laah Ceil (African/Choctaw and Mohawk/Delaware), James Beckwourth (African/European/Crow Indian), Elleanor Eldridge (African-Narragansett) and William Apess (Pequot/African). The introductory chapter discusses the boundaries of the critical field, responding to the previously published essays on African-Native American literary history, mythology, folklore, eighteenth/nineteenth century autobiographies, New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian oral traditions, early twentieth century writers and contemporary authors such as Alice Walker and Clarence Major. The second chapter examines the lengthy history of African American and Native American interactions and the creation of a variety of African-Native American cultures, including the interactions which occurred during the early colonization and enslavement of both Native Americans and Africans, the maroon nations of escaped African and Native slaves with free Native nations, the enslavement of African Americans by Native Americans, and the capture of escaped, enslaved African Americans by Native Americans. It also includes numerous examinations of manifestations of African-Native American culture, including African-Native American music, New Orleans Black Indian performance rituals, African-Native American spirituality and religious practice and the retrieval of African-Native American identity. The third chapter examines the African-Native American literary tradition over several centuries, discussing numerous African-Native American authors and their literary contributions to the field. The fourth chapter provides a biographical exploration of five eighteenth/nineteenth century African-Native American autobiographers. The final chapter examines these eighteenth and nineteenth-century African-Native American autobiographies and the role of narrated visions and dreams, theorizing the significance of dreams in African, Native and African-Native American autobiography, comparing them to the Christian European American confessional and spiritual narratives, detailing the traditional Native American and African cultural, literary, community and spiritual significance of the representation and performance of dreams, examining the role of dreams in structuring the autobiography and finally theorizing their role as a crucial site of literary freedom for the otherwise restricted speaker. |
