Abrams, George H. J. The Seneca People. Phoenix: Indian Tribal Series, 1976.
This book is a basic introduction to the Seneca Tribe and includes the origin, history and background of the Seneca people as well as photographs, maps and illustrations. It was very helpful in understanding the tribe and giving me a basic education on tribal customs.
Bilharz, Joy. "First among Equals? The Changing Status of Seneca Women." Women and
Power in Native North America. 101-112. Norman, OK: U of Oklahoma P, 1995.
Bilharz’s chapter provides insight on the status of Iroquois women and how the “claims of relatively high status for Iroquois women are usually based on such economic and/or political roles as female ownership of land, control over horticultural production, and nomination of Confederacy chiefs” (102). Iroquois women were the ones who worked the land so that gave them the rights to it. Female communal work parties cultivated crops and livestock. Men simply cleared the land initially and the women became the horticulturists and rightful owners. Jemison becomes of owner of hundreds of acres of land as a member of the Seneca tribe. This scholarly essay offers awareness on the position of female Indians within the hierarchy of the Iroquois tribe and this is especially helpful in understanding the life Mary Jemison decided to have among the Seneca.
Burnham, Michelle. “However Extravagant the Pretension: Bivocalism and US Nation
Building in A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison.” Nineteenth Century
Contexts 23 (2001): 325-347.
This essay demonstrates how Seaver contends he is the author of the text, but insists that the narrative is in Jemison’s words: “without the aid of fiction, what was received as matter of fact, only has been recorded” (Seaver 51). According to Burnahm, Seaver “bestows authorship” to Jemison while at the same time “disavowing” her. This coincides with her Indianness. Seaver shows Jemison’s Indianness in his introduction while continuing to construct her as a white damsel in distress. Burnham emphasizes that this back and forth between disavowel and bestowal represents an ambivalence with roots in colonialism. This essay proves extremely beneficial to my thesis of showing how Seaver does this back and forth between Jemison as Indian and Jemison a white damsel.
Campbell, Donna M. "Early American Captivity Narratives." Literary Movements. 13,
March 2008.
This Web site provides general information on captivity narratives including definitions, conventions, and background. The timeline takes you through the captivity narrative from the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth century by listing the most popular captivity narratives of each period.
This site is helpful with generic information on captivity narratives and is a good place to start, but does not contain a vast amount of information.
Hughes, James. “Those Who Passed Through: Unusual Visits to Unlikely Places.” New
York History 87.1 (2006): 145-148.
James Hughes describes how Jemison, through an arrange marriage comes to accept Delaware chief Sheninjee as her husband. With him, she gave birth to two children: a girl who dies shortly after birth and a son she named Thomas after her father. Having fully accepted her marriage to an Indian who she grew to love and given birth to Indian children, Jemison is a fully-accepted member of the Seneca people. Hughes describes how the couple journeyed to New York State: “Escorted by a small party of Senecas, her child strapped on her back, the young woman sets out through the uncharted wilderness. Hundreds of miles they trek, facing hunger and fatigue along the way. Sheninjee, separately gone on the necessary winter hunt, plans to join them later in the rich Genesee country” (Hughes 146). By the following spring, word has reached the tribe that Sheninjee succumbed to illness and Jemison is now a widow. When Jemison is twenty five, she remarries a distinguished Seneca warrior. With Hiokatoo she has four daughters and two sons. Jemison gains agency through her marriage to this prominent leader and as Hughes contends, Jemison was now afforded entry “in tribal councils, exhibiting both the strengths of her own race and those acquired from her adopted people” (Hughes 147). Most of my information on Jemison’s two Indian husbands comes from Hughes’s research.
“Indian Adoption.” AccessGeneology: Indian Tribal Records.
Included on this Web site is information regarding the intra-tribal workings of many tribes along with their relationship with other tribes and tribal members, and tribal structures. This site also provides source materials and references along with links to other Web sites. The information on these pages gives me the foundational information on tribal adoption ceremonies which was key to Jemison’s initial acceptance into the Seneca Tribe.
Namias, June. White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity in the American Frontier. Chapel
Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1993.
To understand Mary Jemison and her Indianness, one must understand both her history and the history of the tribe she chose to remain with. In order to understand how her Indianness is the source of her strength and determination, the reader should know the people and landscapes that Jemison chose to call home. To gain understanding, I will examine four chapters from White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity in the American Frontier by June Namias. From her book I’ve gathered information on the history of the Indian practice of taking captives, how Anglo-American culture along with ideas of gender constructed the writings about the new American frontiers and how the white female captive in particular became the subject of a new literature. Namias states: “rather than being marginalized, subordinated, or totally missing, white woman captives are the subject of a vast array of materials. In this literature, white women participate fully in the so-called rise of civilization” (Namias 23). This participation, and Jemison’s in particular, demonstrates how white female captives were not always the victims as some authors would portray them. Seaver, for example, repeatedly sets up Jemison as a damsel in distress, yet I have found examples in the text where Jemison’s agency is apparent from her decision to remain with the Seneca to her eventual ownership of acres upon acres of land.
Namias’s book also presented some background material on the man who Jemison told her life story to. James Everett Seaver was a physician and “pioneer of sorts” (Namias 151). Knowing about the man who constructed Jemison’s narrative is helpful. The chapter on Jemison’s narrative gives insight into the reason why some white women chose to remain with their captors. Namias cites the work of James Axtell which might prove interesting upon further investigation.
Shoemaker, Nancy. "The Rise Or Fall Of Iroquois Women." Journal of Women's
History 2.3 (1991): 39-57.
This essay is where I found the most thorough research on the place of Iroquois women in the tribe and how they acquired their reputation for great political influence as clan mothers since the eldest women of specific lineages chose the successors to office among eligible men from their clans. In Iroquois society, the roles of wife and mother may have had a “political significance not accorded women’s roles in other cultures” (Shoemaker 40). It was from Shoemaker’s essay that I gained insight into what may have led Jemison to remain with the Seneca. I believe it was the strength and power afforded Iroquois women that made Jemison realize her position with the Seneca would be greater than that of tainted woman back in white society.
Tawil, Ezra F. "Domestic Frontier Romance, or, How the Sentimental Heroine Became
White." Novel: A Forum on Fiction 32.1 (Fall 1998): 99-124.
Tawil’s essay gave me the place to start my argument because he asserts that Jemison could not get away from her whiteness and that she retained a barrier between her white subjectivity in spite of her marriages to Indians and her adoption of Indian ways of life were. “Yet her racial difference from her own children ultimately obstructs the formation of an Anglo-American household (Tawil 107). He expresses that Jemison created a distinction between cultural identity, or her Englishness, from natural identity or race.
Tawil claims that Jemison’s narrative is one that focuses on “the experience of an English captive who assimilated to Indian culture, this later captivity narrative represented race as an unbridgeable natural difference” and I believe that Jemison was able to bridge the racial gap and become Indian.
Walsh, Susan. “With Them Was My Home.” American Literature: A Journal of Literary
History, Criticism, and Bibliography 64.1 (Mar. 1992): 49-70.
Susan Walsh examines the influences that may or may to have contributed to the A Narrative of the Life of Mary Jemison. Many scholars demonstrate how this narrative can be approached from various directions and how readers might first get involved in the text by focusing on Jemison’s whiteness. Walsh is looking for those places in Jemison’s narrative where Native American facets intersect or clash with the editors: “no interpretation can determine once and for all who…is speaking in Anglo-Indian bicultural productions, just as no approach to the Narrative can recuperate a sense of Indian culture as lived experience” (51). Walsh wants to examine where the subject and editor collide: where does the Jemison’s story stop and where does Seaver’s influence begin? Walsh uses many examples of how Seaver could have influenced Jemison’s text and how none of the interpretations she mentions are mutually exclusive, yet Walsh concludes that meaning is left to the reader. For my research, this essay laid the groundwork of breaking apart Jemison’s text and questioning what may have come from Jemison and where Seaver may have been an influence. The narrative can be viewed as the binary between the noble, faithful Indian and the sneaky, feckless white people and what Walsh is suggesting is that the narrative is more than colonial stereotypes.
Wickstrom, Stefanie. “The Politics of Forbidden Liaisons: Civilization, Miscegenation,
and Other Perversions.” Frontiers 26.3 (2005): 168-198.
Wickstrom’s article goes in depth on the subject of miscegenetic relationships between savages and white women. She researches and gives insight into how, in captivity narratives, men who escaped captivity could assimilate back into white society, but white women could not. Captive white women who return to white society were considered tainted and damaged goods. Many whites and especially children had successfully “acculturated to life in Native American communities to raise doubts about the inherent superiority of civilization and the power of god to deliver Christians from the clutches of savagery” (173). This essay iss invaluable in understanding what happens to Anglos captives when they return to white culture and may have been the reason Jemison decided to remain with the Seneca since her children were Indian.
Wyss, Hilary E. “Captivity and Conversion: William Apess, Mary Jemison, and
Narratives of Racial Identity.” American Indian Quarterly 23 (3-4) 1999: 63-82.
This essay examines how James E. Seaver reveals in his introduction that Jemison's "ideas of religion, correspond in every respect to those of the great mass of the Senecas" (xxiii). Her spiritual connection to the land exposes important elements of Seneca belief in her life. Wyss examines Jemison’s hybridity as a fully acculturated Seneca woman and shows how she was cautious when it came to understanding the ways of her new people and being understood by them. This essay is extremely valuable in understanding Jemison’s hybridity and commitment to her adopted culture. For me, Wyss’s essay is a foundational text in creating my thesis.
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