Shades of Hiawatha Staging Indians, Making Americans, 1880-1930

"A book of elegance, depth, breadth, nuance and subtlety." --W. Richard West Jr. (Founding Director of the National Museum of the American Indian), The Washington Post A century ago, U.S. policy aimed to sever the tribal allegiances of Native Americans, limit their ancient liberties, and coercively prepare them for citizenship. At the same time, millions of new immigrants sought their freedom by means of that same citizenship. Alan Trachtenberg argues that the two developments were, inevitably, juxtaposed: Indians and immigrants together preoccupied the public imagination, and together changed the idea of what it meant to be American. InShades of Hiawatha,Trachtenberg eloquently suggests that we must re-create America's tribal creation story in new ways if we are to reaffirm its beckoning promise of universal liberty. Alan Trachtenbergis the Neil Gray, Jr., Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University, where he taught for thirty-five years. His books includeReading American Photographs,The Incorporation of America, andBrooklyn Bridge: Fact or Symbol. He lives in Hamden, Connecticut. Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize A century ago, it was U.S. government policy to sever the tribal allegiances of Native Americans, limit their ancient liberties, and coercively prepare them for citizenship. At the same time, millions of new immigrants from Asia and Europe sought freedom in America by means of that same citizenship. In this subtle, eye-opening work, Alan Trachtenberg argues that the two developments were, inevitably, juxtaposed in myriad ways: Indians and immigrants together preoccupied the public imagination, and together changed the idea of what it meant to be American. To begin with, mainstream teachers and politicians organized programs of "Americanization" for both groups, even as they celebrated Indians as noble "First Americans" and role models for prospective citizens young and old. Trachtenberg traces the peculiar effect of this implicit contradiction in the poetry and visual imagery of the timenotably in Longfellow's famous poem and its endless derivatives. Amazingly, Indians themselves staged "The Song of Hiawatha" (which was also translated into Yiddish); Edward Curtis's poignant photographs memorialized their heroism even as (or perhaps because) they were vanishing; and the Wanamaker department store made a fortune from commercialized versions of once reviled native cultures. By 1925 the national narrative had been rewritten. Citizenship was granted to Indians as a birthright, while the National Origins Act began to close the door on immigrants. This shift, too, had multiple and dangerous consequences, Trachtenberg shows. InShades of Hiawatha, he makes an eloquent case for revising America's tribal creation story in wholly new ways if we are to reaffirm its beckoning promise of universal liberty. Winner of the Francis Parkman Prize "The only constant thing about the image of the American Indian is that it's always changing. InShades of Hiawatha, a book of elegance, depth, breadth, nuance, and subtlety, Alan Trachtenberg has focused in fresh and revealing ways on this protean social and cultural history."W. Richard West Jr.,TheWashingtonPost Book World "In his fascinating new book, Alan Trachtenberg recounts Henry James's observations from the visitors' balcony at Ellis Island, recorded inThe American Scene(1907). James raised the question of how to connect the 'inconceivable alien' to 'old Americans' without, in Trachtenberg's wonderful phrase, causing the 'sensitive citizen into imagining something like an Indian raid on the homestead of the American ego' . . . Trachtenberg accomplish

Alan Trachtenberg is the Neil Gray, Jr. Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University. His books include Reading American Photographs (H&W, 1989) and The Incorporation of America (H&W, 1982). He lives in Hamden, Connecticut.