Crossing cultures: Algonquian Indians and the invention of New England

While traditionally New England's literary canon has been constructed of Puritan voices, this dissertation balances their writings with the lives and words of Algonquian Indians. By placing Algonquian oral and written literature in dialogue with early British colonial literature and African American literature, I reveal the ways in which Algonquians helped shape early American culture and literary production. The project challenges traditional New England literary histories in that it proposes that cultural exchange--not cultural annihilation--was indicative of the New England colonial experience. With the aid of the fields of post-colonial theory and cultural studies, the project suggests a way of reading, writing, and teaching early American texts which is itself dialogical: that is, which seeks to listen as well as be heard.;The dissertation is divided into five chapters which examine the influence of Algonquian cultures upon the production of early British colonial literature and post-contact Algonquian literature. Chapter One, the Introduction, explains the importance of Algonquian cultural production for recent theoretical revisionings of the field of early American literature. In Chapter Two, I investigate the impact of Narragansett orality upon Roger Williams's poetic ethnography A Key Into the Language of America. I show how Narragansett cultural production not only helps shape Williams's Key, but also allows Williams's work to challenge colonial hierarchies. Chapter Three explores the impact of female Algonquian conduct upon the narratives of King Philip's War and the challenge Algonquian gender norms presented to British colonial modes of representation. Here I address the intricacies of the relationships between two squaw-sachems (female leaders) and two very different colonists--captive Mary Rowlandson and military leader Benjamin Church. The fourth chapter examines Mohegan Samson Occom's adaptation of Protestant narratives, sermons, and typological traditions. I argue that Occom fashions a new identity for Algonquian converts in order to combat the restrictive identity postulated for him by contemporary white missionaries and Anglo-American society. In the final chapter I discuss Pequot writer William Apess's reformulation of national culture. By weaving the narrative traditions of Anglo-American, African America and Algonquian America, Apess proposes a new multiracial model for national literature and identity. Similarly, in bringing together the voices of Puritan literature, Algonquian literature, and the literature of other American colonies, this project uncovers a cross-cultural web which more accurately predicts the diversity of later American culture.