The War in Words

The War in Words is the first book to study the captivity and confinement narratives generated by a single American war as it traces the development and variety of the captivity narrative genre. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola examines the complex 1862 Dakota Conflict (also called the Dakota War) by focusing on twenty-four of the dozens of narratives that European Americans and Native Americans wrote about it. This six-week war was the deadliest confrontation between whites and Dakotas in Minnesota's history. Conducted at the same time as the Civil War, it is sometimes called Minnesota's Civil War because it was-and continues to be-so divisive. The Dakota Conflict aroused impassioned prose from participants and commentators as they disputed causes, events, identity, ethnicity, memory, and the all-important matter of the war's legacy. Though the study targets one region, its ramifications reach far beyond Minnesota in its attention to war and memory. An ethnography of representative Dakota Conflict narratives and an analysis of the war's historiography, The War in Words includes new archival information, historical data, and textual criticism.

List of Illustrations
Preface
List of Narratives and Their Chronological Contexts
Methodology
Historical Perspectives on the Dakota War
 
Part 1. European Americans Narrating Captivity
Introduction
1. Martha Riggs Morris and Sarah Wakefield: Captivity and Protest
2. Harriet Bishop McConkey and Isaac Heard: Captivity and Early Dakota War Histories
3. Edward S. Ellis: Captivity and the Dime Novel Tradition
4. Mary Schwandt Schmidt and Jacob Nix: Captivity and German Americans
5. Jannette DeCamp Sweet, Helen Carrothers Tarble, Lillian Everett Keeney, and Urania White: Captivity and the Antiquarian Impulse
6. Benedict Juni: Captivity and the Boy's Adventure Story
 
Part 2. Native Americans Narrating Captivity
Introduction
7. Samuel J. Brown and Joseph Godfrey: Captivity and Credit
8. Paul Mazakutemani: Captivity and Spiritual Autobiography
9. Cecelia Campbell Stay and Nancy McClure Faribault Huggan: Captivity and Bicultural Women's Identity
10. Big Eagle, Lorenzo Lawrence, and Maggie Brass: Captivity and Cultural Stereotypes
11. Good Star Woman: Captivity and Ethnography
12. Esther Wakeman and Joseph Coursolle: Captivity and Oral History
13. Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve: Captivity and Counter Captivity
 
Conclusion: Captive to the Past? The Legacy of the Dakota War
Notes
Works Cited
Index