Oral and Written Collaborative Autobiography: Nicholas Black Elk and Charles Alexander Eastman

Abstract

Abstract Black Elk and Charles Alexander Eastman lived during a traumatic transition period for Native Americans. In the final quarter of the nineteenth century, the last armed Indian resistance to U.S. expansion ism was destroyed and Indians were forced onto reservations. During this troubled period, life histories of tribal people were solicited by friends, historians, and ethnologists who then translated spoken native languages into written English. Such oral autobiographies as Black Elk’s, with their problems of authority and audience, reflect a dual perspective-the raconteur’s and the editor’s.