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Native Bondage, Narrative Mobility: African American Accounts of Indian Captivity

2021; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 56; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0021875821000852

1469-5154

Astrid Haas,

Asian American and Pacific Histories

The article studies African American narratives of indigenous captivity from its emergence in the mid-eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth. Taking accounts by Briton Hammon, John Marrant, Henry Bibb, and James Beckwourth as examples, the essay charts the development of this body of writings, its distinction from white-authored narratives, and its contribution to North American autobiography. In so doing, the article argues that the black-authored texts strategically employed only certain elements of the Indian captivity narrative and that they blended these with aspects of other types of Western autobiography to claim black people's agency and discursive authority in white-dominated print culture.