SOURCE: "Three Nineteeth-Century American Indian Autobiographers," in Redefining American Literary History, edited by A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff and Jerry W. Ward, Jr., The Modern Language Association of America, 1990, pp. 251-69.

In the essay that follows, Ruoff contends that Native American autobiographies became more intensely focused on Native American-white political relations, and more self-reflectively literary, over the course of the nineteenth century.

Since the early nineteenth century, American Indians have written personal narratives and autobiographies more consistently than any other form of prose.¹ The structure of these personal narratives reflects a diverse range of influences, from Western European forms of spiritual autobiography and slave narratives to the oral traditions of Native America. The full-length confessions or autobiographies of Western European literature are not part of Indian oral tradition. As Barre Toelken points out, in many tribes "one is not to speak of himself in any full way until after...