"'That We May Stand Up and Walk Ourselves': Indian Sovereignty and Diplomacy after the Revolutionary War"

Author: 
Tammy Wahpeconiah
Type: 
Other Publications
Publisher: 
Routledge

Tammy Wahpeconiah's article "'That We May Stand Up and Walk Ourselves': Indian Sovereignty and Diplomacy after the Revolutionary War" has been published in The Routledge Companion to Native American Literature, edited by Deborah L. Madsen. The volume engages the multiple scenes of tension — historical, political, cultural, and aesthetic — that constitute a problematic legacy in terms of community identity, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, language, and sovereignty in the study of Native American literature.

Tammy's chapter focuses on the period of the American Revolution when tribal sovereignty was an urgent issue for indigenous communities engaged in determining their position relative to the new U.S. government. Amid this uncertainty, the Mohican sachem Hendrick Aupaumut undertook a diplomatic mission recorded in his Narrative of An Embassy to the Western Indians (1827). Through discussion of Aupaumut’s struggle to maintain a diplomatic balance between the Americans and the Mohicans and their allies, the chapter highlights the complex relations between sovereignty as recognition by other nations and sovereignty as commitment to the continuation of the nation and community.