"Produced by the Sight of the Writing of an Indian": Stratification and Exclusion in Antebellum America's Economy of Literacy

Literacy is too often conceptualized as a neutral technology that heralds development, as historians mobilize reductive dichotomies such as “oral-literate,” “literate-pre-literate,” or “literate-illiterate” in... [ view full abstract ]

Literacy is too often conceptualized as a neutral technology that heralds development, as historians mobilize reductive dichotomies such as “oral-literate,” “literate-pre-literate,” or “literate-illiterate” in their interpretations of the past. Yet, other scholars have proffered a model of literacy in which reading and writing is treated as value-laden, socially-constructed praxis that cannot be isolated from prevailing historical, political, and socioeconomic contexts. Determined to further problematize literacy in the context of American Indian History, particularly the Cherokees’ efforts to use literacy acquisition to safeguard indigenous folkways and sovereignty, this paper intervenes in a narrative that often tends to betray a sense of triumphalism, as it acknowledges that the meaning of literacy is freighted in the social institutions by which it is transmitted, and is received in forms that already have political and ideological significance. Examining a series of missionary periodicals and reports of progress among the Cherokees, this paper argues that the literate, evangelized Native American remained a transgressive figure. Summoned as a foil whose conversion embodied the transformative effect of the Gospel on the individual, she was, nonetheless, denied full admission into the corporate body, as her literacy and faith were insufficient to be able to erase the indelible mark of race. Just as Euro-Americans seeking to maintain the socioeconomic status quo refused to authorize African-American educational efforts after emancipation, this paper highlights the ways in which a fundamentally white ideological formation barred the Cherokees access to the democratic protections and socioeconomic mobility promised by the myth of literacy.