Europe's Indians, Indians in Europe European Perceptions and Appropriations of Native American Cultures from Pocahontas to the Present

by Wernitznig, Dagmar

• ISBN13: 9780761836896
• ISBN10: 0761836896
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-06-21
• Publisher: UPA

Summary

Europe's Indians, Indians in Europe is an accessible and multidisciplinary synopsis of European iconographies and cultural narratives related to Native Americans. In this pioneering work, European fascination with and phantasmagorias of 'Indianness' are comprehensively discussed, involving perspectives of history, literature, and cultural criticism. Topics range from so-called Pocahontas, paraded as an exotic souvenir princess in front of seventeenth-century Londoners, to Native Americans touring Europe as show token Indians with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show in the late nineteenth-century. European strategies of playing Indian include German dime novel artisan Karl May (1842'¬ ;1912) and his literary fabrications of the 'vanishing race,' which were utilized by National Socialist propaganda, as well as the Englishman Archibald Stansfeld Belaney (1888-1938) reinventing himself as Grey Owl, or contemporary Europeans, 'cloning' surrogate Indian identities and 'patenting' synthetic tribes. Covering a vast transatlantic spectrum of aspects and anecdotes, Europe's Indians, Indians in Europe is a seminal study for anyone interested in learning more about European motives, mythopoetics, and microcosms of 'dressing in feathers.'

Author Biography

Dagmar Wernitznig is an Associate Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, and a Lecturer at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria.

Table of Contents

Exotic souvenirs from the New World : Pocahontas in Europe	p. 1
Europe writing the Indian land of enchantment : Charles Sealsfield a.k.a. Karl Postl and Karl May	p. 34
Indianness touring Europe : Buffalo Bill's Wild West	p. 70
Dressing in feathers transatlantically : Grey Owl and neo-primitivism	p. 95
Playing Indian, Inc. : para-esotericism, ethnic patents, culture clones, and cybertribes	p. 120
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