Mary Jemison: Unconditionally Tragic or Agent of Native Feminine Strength

As I do more research, I realize how problematic Jemison's narrative can be. Where is it Jemison's story and where is Seaver influencing the text? I had to keep reminding myself that it's a woman's story told through the pen of a man. There are places where you hear Seaver's voice screaming through the text, but I also hear Jemison's voice loud and clear.

Here's my idea for my paper proposal:
Native American definitions of race tend to lean more on the cultural rather than biological aspects. Individuals who participate fully in a particular Native society’s cultural practices could become accepted members of a tribe. Mary Jemison, a young white girl taken captive by the Shawnees and later adopted by the Seneca, demonstrates in James E. Seaver’s A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, how one Euro-American can challenge patriarchy by choosing not only to remain with the Indians, but become one. As a female Indian, Jemison has more agency than she would as a white woman who returns to white society. Ezra F. Tawil claims Jemison has diminished agency, especially with her marriage to second husband Hiokatoo: “the marriage is described in terms entirely devoid of not only conjugal affect, but also of Jemison’s agency” (Tawil 105). As Seaver’s text shows, Jemison is actually afforded additional agency through this marriage. After Hiokatoo, a respected veteran warrior dies, Jemison receives all the “kindness and attention” (Seaver 129) as his wife. Seaver attempts to position Jemison as a white woman in need of rescue as opposed to a woman who has chosen to adopt and become part of a culture she has come to honor and respect. Seaver ventures to construct Jemison through her white womanhood and as a “tragic victim” (Wyss 4). In this essay, I will demonstrate how Mary Jemison is an Iroquois woman and how her agency is heightened by her choice to remain with the Seneca and how this challenges the dominant hegemonic thinking by going outside the traditional captivity narrative by having “any resolution other than the safe return of the mother to Anglo-American society” (Wyss 3). In Jemison choosing to remain with the Seneca and live as a Native American, she is granted additional agency as an Indian woman.

In this essay I will challenge Tawil’s claims against Jemison’s agency while showing how Seaver’s influence on the text paints a portrait of a white damsel in distress. I will do this by showing how Jemison, as an active participant in tribal ceremonies, through her land ownership and her familial decision-making, is afforded more rights as an Indian woman amongst the Native peoples than as a white woman in Euro-American culture. Susan Walsh illustrates how Seaver attempts to dismantle Jemison’s agency by leaving out of his Introduction “this Seneca woman’s self sufficiency” (Walsh 52). Hilary E. Wyss points out how Seaver uses Jemison’s story to show the “cruelty and savagery of those who abducted an innocent girl-child rather than the adaptability and strength of the woman” (Wyss 3). I will also use as evidence Michelle Burnham’s essay, “However Extravagant the Pretension: Bivocalism and U.S. Nation-Building in A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison” to show how Jemison’s story “indicates the extent of her transculturation” (Burnham 325).

A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison is an interesting text from the standpoint of it being the story of a woman as written by a man and no matter how many times Seaver attempts to construct Jemison as a tragic victim, there are examples of Jemison’s strength and determination on how she chose to live her life. Rather than focusing on Jemison’s whiteness, as many readers and scholars do, this essay will focus on her Indianness as the source of her strength and determination.

I had a couple of moments where I was able to wrangle the pigeons, but I fear the chaos of confused pigeons is about to reappear. :)