ENGL 226: Adding to the Great Lakes Canon: Laura Lathrop Letters and Chief White Cloud

Audreyanna Pendrick

Dr. Coronado

English 226

25 November 2014

Laura Lathrop Letters, Trivialities, and Chief White Cloud

Working Thesis: Serious topics such as war and race relations were just as trivialized in communication from the 1860s as they were today. Despite this, such trivialization acts as the only record of some important historical events and perspectives.

Context: Civil War, Reconstruction, land wars, other chiefs’ speeches and perceptions of them, Northwestern Fair to raise funds for Union troops

-insert letters about the Northwestern Fair as a social event, not mentioned as a way to raise money for the Union troops.

-insert letters from Laura’s brothers in the Civil War and her friend’s trivial mentioning of the war.

Of these trivialities, one in particular may act as the only evidence of a Native American chief’s speech:

“White Cloud (an Indian chief) made an excellent speech. He was the first Indian I have ever seen and the only one” (Hennig). This mentioning of White Cloud speaking in Chattanooga was transcribed with no date, and similarly outside record of it is seemingly non-existent. The letter was certainly to Laura Lathrop, somewhere between 1857 and 1865, but no other information represents the nature of the speech or its context.

Chief White Cloud was a chief of the Chippewas, and one record of his thoughts on the state of his nation and the United States is included in Report of the Condition of the Chippewas of Minnesota. Its inclusion though was not introduced or explained, but instead was titled “Exhibit A.” The only way to know it is actually from White Cloud is his own identification at the end of his passage where he says, “as for myself, as I look through that window, I see those white clouds; I am named White Cloud, and I pray God to keep my heart as white as those clouds to help those under me” (29). This record is hard to validate, and even harder to understand as a speech, writing, or translation of either from White Cloud.

Earlier speech: Chief Seattle 1854 (elegiac speech for the Suquamish Nation)

Jason Edward Black talks about the subversion of original Native American oratories, and their legitimacy.

“The way fragmented discourse circulates says much about a public that interprets it and the idelologies that underscore that particular public’s civic imaginary. This imaginary in the United States is partly constituted by neocolonial renderings of American Indian histories, presents, and futures” (636).

“one thing is certain—context plays a role in the ways that the public renders judgments of discourse… Texts must be read in the temporally closest and most culturally plausible contexts that the scraps of fragments allow” (637).

Having only a scrap of White Cloud’s speech and a questionable passage from him, he is absently rendered. But, at least his words were not manipulated like Chief Seattle.

Later speech: Chief Joseph 1877 (Nez Perce War surrender, land calims, Nimiipuu)

Thomas H. Guthire writes about how questionable and unreliable many accounts of Native American speeches are, focusing on their native languages and perceptions of them.

“I argue that the production and interpretation of Indian speech facilitated political subjugation by figuring Indians as particular kinds of subjects and positioning them in a broader narrative about the West” (509).

The larger Western narrative did not exclude White Cloud in Report of the Condition of the Chippewas of Minnesota, but it did not properly explain nor justify him either.

“He more comprehensively addresses the range of Euro-American attitudes toward Indians, especially the belief that Indians were savages who had to be subdued and assimilated, while I analyze how a seemingly contradictory discourse of Indian eloquence had much the same effect” (511).

p. 515: unreliable records, translations, interpreters, etc

p.523: Indian eloquence explained

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Our chiefs would talk and tell you the right of their life. They were not afraid to talk because they went outward. They earned what they said by going out into the world. They were not afraid to talk because they learned through experience what they were saying. When they'd go out into the world they'd understand the world, understand the people, understand the hardship others went through, and that would give them the ability to talk. Then too, they lived the life they talked about. (Roufs)

Works Cited

Black, Jason Edward. “Native Authenticity, Rhetorical Circulation, and Neocolonial Decay: The Case of Chief Seattle's Controversial Speech.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 15.4 (2012): 635-645. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.

Guthrie, Thomas H. “Good Words: Chief Joseph and the Production of Indian Speech(es), Texts, and Subjects.” Ethnohistory 54.3 (2007): 509-546. America: History & Life. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.

Hennig, Doug. Dear Sister Laura. 1987. TS. University of Wisconsin-Parkside Area Research Center, Kenosha.

“Main Building of the Great North Western Sanitary Fair, Chicago.” The Civil War in Art. The Chicago History Museum. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.

Roufs, Timothy G. “When Everybody Called Me Gah-bay-bi-nayss, “Forever-Flying-Bird”: An Ethnographic Biography of Paul Peter Buffalo.” University of Minnesota Duluth. 2014. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.

Ruffee, Charles A. Report of the Condition of the Chippewas of Minnesota. Saint Paul: Pioneer Print, 1875. 1-29. Print.

Laura Lathrop Letters