Hidden Literacies

Readerly and Writerly Indians

     Coosaponakeesa’s campaign relied on a web of literacies. Hilary Wyss’s 2012 book English Letters and Indian Literaciesprovides a schema to begin tracing them. In her introduction, Wyss distinguishes between Readerly Indians and Writerly Indians. In early America, Christian missionaries sought to produce “Readerly Indians”—i.e. ones who could read but not write—because this form of literacy was expected to keep Native students “docile [and] passive.” “By emphasizing the teaching of reading rather than writing,” Wyss explains, “missionaries could speak for Natives even as they assured benefactors of the success of their proselytizing” (6). Because reading does not require extensive technologies of literacy—paper, ink, pens, flat surfaces—missionaries often had a lot of control over the scope of their pupils’ literacy. But as these Readerly Indians acquired the ability to write alphabetically in English, missionaries “lost control”: “The figure of the ‘Writerly Indian’ emerges not only as a speaker and actor fluent in the cultures and conventions of colonial society but also one fully committed to Native community as an ongoing political and cultural concern” (6). In this formulation, reading literacy precedes and accompanies writing literacy. The transition at first appears also to be one from passive reader to active writer, but the reading that precedes writing on behalf of one’s community and its future is also active as it involves perception, understanding, and interpretation. Wyss’s formulation is useful for considering the hidden literacies signaled by the testament and the three supplementary memorials because it draws attention to how Coosaponakeesa actively perceives, understands, interprets, andwrites. And then repeats and revises the process until she achieves her ends. Comparing her memorials elucidates her process. The three included here were written over the span of a little less than a decade. They are similar in terms of content and structure, but they are also distinctly different, both because they address different audiences and have different objectives and because she adjusts the rhetoric. They indicate where there is continuity in her reading and writing and how her narrative and argument shift as her perceptions and interpretations evolve. 

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