cover image Bringing Indians to the Book

Bringing Indians to the Book

Albert Furtwangler. University of Washington Press, $22.5 (226pp) ISBN 978-0-295-98523-7

The collision of Anglo-American westward expansion with northwestern Native American cultures is viewed through the lens of books, secular and sacred, in this dry, narrowly focused volume. Furtwangler (Acts of Discovery: Visions of America in the Lewis and Clark Journals) explores how ""the extension of literate institutions"" affected both the writers and readers of early accounts of European/Native encounters, as well as those upon whom they imposed the written word. He reviews diverse reports of the four Nez Perce who traveled to St. Louis to meet with William Clark (of Lewis and Clark) and traces ""the odd geographical parallel between the explorer and missionary settlements."" Later chapters attend to the internal ""war of documents"" among the missionaries as ""disputes rose to a level of rage"" and to an in-depth consideration of several descriptions of the First Salmon ceremony. While Furtwangler offers fresh observations, the book remains of most interest to those who care deeply about the thoughtful analyses of texts; for them, his book offers a cautionary exploration of how the West was written and some even deeper questions about privileging the written word.