Subversive Storytelling: Indigenous Textuality in the Texas Archive

Subversive Storytelling: Indigenous Textuality in the Texas ArchiveOn January 19, 1788, a Comanche identified only as Andrés quietly slips into the Spanish archival record, as Governor of Spanish-controlled Texas, Raphael... [ view full abstract ]

Subversive Storytelling: Indigenous Textuality in the Texas Archive

On January 19, 1788, a Comanche identified only as Andrés quietly slips into the Spanish archival record, as Governor of Spanish-controlled Texas, Raphael Martínez Pacheco, uncharacteristically discusses a singular, common Indian by name and shockingly continues to mention him and his routine assistance for two years, referring to him over thirty times. While Pacheco depicts Andrés as hapless and pacified, what if we push back against his words; what if we read for moments when Andrés’ actions exceed Pacheco’s textual significations? In this sort of reading, I follow Robert Warrior’s invocation to read for the possible not just the documented and Anna Brickhouse’s recent methodologies. In doing so, a starkly different portrait emerges of Andrés as a shrewd storyteller who weaves comical tales that strategically manipulate and preclude Spanish desires. These stories reveal a type of indigenous literacy that exceeds unambiguous categories delimited by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Spanish and American epistemologies. While this sort of scholarship clearly offers promising possibilities, what are the problematics of using an eighteenth-century Spanish-language text to consider nineteenth-century indigenous literacies? Is such a reading ignoring the call to engagement with and relevance to current indigenous communities? Despite its limitations, I contend this way of reading engages with decolonizing methodologies and affirms the indigenous literacy and agency which current Native communities know have always existed. Moreover, including an earlier, non-Anglophone text in the consideration of nineteenth-century indigenous textuality speaks to the long and powerful tradition of indigenous literacy that persists despites attempts to subvert it.