The children of an influential Ojibwe-Anglo family, Jane Johnston and her brother George were already accomplished writers when the Indian agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft arrived in Sault Ste. Marie in 1822. Charged by Michigan's territorial governor with collecting information on Anishinaabe people, he soon married Jane, "discovered" the family's writings, and began soliciting them for traditional Anishinaabe stories. But what began as literary play became the setting for political struggle. Jane and her family wrote with attention to the beauty of Anishinaabe narratives and to their expression of an Anishinaabe world that continued to coexist with the American republic. But Schoolcraft appropriated the stories and published them as his own writing, seeking to control their meaning and to destroy their impact in service to the "civilizing" interests of the United States. In this dramatic story, Maureen Konkle helps recover the literary achievements of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft and her kin, revealing as never before how their lives and work shed light on nineteenth-century struggles over the future of Indigenous people in the United States.

Presented in conjunction with the September 2000 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, this volume presents the complex story of the proliferation of the arts in New York and the evolution of an increasingly discerning audience for those arts during the antebellum period. Thirteen essays by noted specialists bring new research and insights to bear on a broad range of subjects that offer both historical and cultural contexts and explore the city's development as a nexus for the marketing and display of art, as well as private collecting; landscape painting viewed against the background of tourism; new departures in sculpture, architecture, and printmaking; the birth of photography; New York as a fashion center; shopping for home decorations; changing styles in furniture; and the evolution of the ceramics, glass, and silver industries. The 300-plus works in the exhibition and comparative material are extensively illustrated in color and bandw. Oversize: 9.25x12.25". Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR