Removable type Histories of the book in Indian country, 1663-1880

Phillip H. Round, 1958-

Book - 2010

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Subjects
Published
Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press c2010.
Language
English
Main Author
Phillip H. Round, 1958- (-)
Physical Description
xii, 282 p. : ill., ports. ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN
9780807871201
9780807833902
  • Acknowledgments
  • Prologue
  • Introduction: Toward an Indian Bibliography
  • Chapter 1. The Coming of the Book to Indian Country
  • Chapter 2. Being and Becoming Literate in the Eighteenth-Century Native Northeast
  • Chapter 3. New and Uncommon Means
  • Chapter 4. Public Writing I: "To Feel Interest in Our Welfare"
  • Chapter 5. Public Writing II: The Cherokee, a "Reading and Intellectual People"
  • Chapter 6. Proprietary Authorship
  • Chapter 7. The Culture of Reprinting
  • Chapter 8. Indigenous Illustration
  • Epilogue: The View from Red Cloud's Grave
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
Review by Choice Review

Round (English and American Indian and Native studies, Univ. of Iowa) offers a historical study of the role of alphabetic literacy and print culture in Native American communities, beginning with the printing of John Eliot's Bible in 1663. He then explores the relationship that Native communities in the US had with the book to 1880, when most Indians were forced to attend boarding schools. Round's important study demonstrates and confirms that Native Americans had an intellectual interest in European alphabetic literacy from very early in the colonial relationship. As other historians of the book and Native peoples have concluded, Round discovers that American Indians used literacy and print for their own means to resist and confront colonial efforts to extinguish Native American cultures. Although generally well researched and effectively presented, the book unfortunately fails to look at North America much beyond contemporary US borders. Canadian studies on the relationship of Aboriginal peoples and print, which would have supported and reaffirmed many of Round's conclusions, are noticeably absent from the bibliography. Complementary titles include Brendan Edwards's Paper Talk (CH, Nov'05, 43-1784), Matt Cohen's The Networked Wilderness (CH, Jul'10, 47-6064), Maureen Konkle's Writing Indian Nations (CH, Jul'0, 41-67364), and Hilary Wyss's Writing Indians (2000). Summing Up: Recommended. All academic levels/libraries. B. F. R. Edwards Ontario Library Services - North

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review

Many historians have written about how the Bible was used by French, Spanish, and English missionaries in the Americas to "civilize" native peoples. This account by Round (English, American Indian & Native studies, Univ. of Iowa; The Impossible Land: Story and Place in California's Imperial Valley) likewise begins with the Bible, but he explores how native peoples came to adopt a European weapon, namely the printed word, as both a means to defend themselves from the actions of the United States and as a way to preserve their culture. This intellectual history's greatest contribution is that it describes how well-known native writers from across North America, such as William Apess (Pequot), Elias Boudinot (Cherokee), and Bull Lodge (Gros Ventre), were connected through a literary tradition that evolved in order to be relevant as the needs of native communities changed. VERDICT Highly recommended; interested readers should also consider The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan: Literature and Leadership in Eighteenth-Century Native America, edited by Joanna Brooks, and Early Native Literacies in New England: A Documentary and Critical Anthology, edited by Kristina Bross and Hilary E. Wyss, and Candace S. Greene's One Hundred Summers: A Kiowa Calendar Record.-John Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.