Abstract
Dell Hymes's ethnopoetic project offers ways of thinking about shifts in poetic and rhetorical form in situations of colonialism and expropriation. In this essay I explore changes in poetic form among the Apache communities of the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona, arguing that they are in part the result of influential theologico-linguistic agendas of the Lutheran missionaries called to the community since the late nineteenth century. I discuss this in light of the missionary work of the Uplegger family, missionaries in San Carlos for three-quarters of a century. I argue that Hymesian ethnopoetics and the Upleggers' missionary work both partake of an ethical argument about the relationship between poetry and truth extending back to the Middle Ages. A commentary to this essay by Charles L. Briggs appears later in this special issue.
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