The War in Words

by Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle

• ISBN13: 9780803213708
• ISBN10: 0803213700
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-01
• Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr

Summary

The War in Wordsis the first book to study the captivity and confinement narratives generated by a single American war as it traces the development and variety of the captivity narrative genre. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola examines the complex 1862 Dakota Conflict (also called the Dakota War) by focusing on twenty-four of the dozens of narratives that European Americans and Native Americans wrote about it. This six-week war was the deadliest confrontation between whites and Dakotas in Minnesota's history. Conducted at the same time as the Civil War, it is sometimes called Minnesota's Civil War because it so wasand continues to bedivisive. The Dakota Conflict aroused impassioned prose from participants and commentators as they disputed causes, events, identity, ethnicity, memory, and the all-important matter of the war's legacy. Though the study targets one region, its ramifications reach far beyond Minnesota in its attention to war and memory. An ethnography of representative Dakota Conflict narratives and an analysis of the war's historiography,The War in Wordsincludes new archival information, historical data, and textual criticism.

Author Biography

Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola is a professor of English and the director of the William G. Cooper, Jr. Honors Program in English at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She is the editor of Women’s Indian Captivity Narratives and the coauthor of The Indian Captivity Narrative, 1550–1900.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
List of Narratives & Their Chronological Contexts	p. xvii
Methodology	p. 1
Historical Perspectives on the Dakota War	p. 15
European Americans Narrating Captivity
Introduction	p. 47
Captivity & Protest	p. 55
Captivity & Early Dakota War Histories	p. 77
Captivity & the Dime Novel Tradition	p. 94
Captivity & German Americans	p. 104
Captivity & the Antiquarian Impulse	p. 124
Captivity & the Boy's Adventure Story	p. 149
Native Americans Narrating Captivity
Introduction	p. 159
Captivity & Credit	p. 169
Captivity & Spiritual Autobiography	p. 189
Captivity & Bicultural Women's Identity	p. 198
Captivity & Cultural Stereotypes	p. 214
Captivity & Ethnography	p. 240
Captivity & Oral History	p. 252
Captivity & Counter Captivity	p. 264
Conclusion: Captive to the Past? The Legacy of the Dakota War	p. 275
Notes	p. 285
Works Cited	p. 325
Index	p. 347
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