Bah, I'm not that well-read! In fact, my early far west specialization may screw up my understanding of the male/female dynamics, because of the gender-skew of white people who were even there. There was a point in the 1840s where Charlotte, a slave at Bent's Fort, described herself as "The only lady in the damn Indian country" (where "lady" meant white, and white, for the region's linguistic purposes, included black). And she wasn't exactly there of her own free will!
So I've read several male-protagonist Indian captivity stories, but they're usually embedded in memoirs about the protagonist's adventures, and the captivity ends with an adoption/marriage into a powerful Indian family. Because they're actually narratives describing a process of gaining trade alliances (whether the protagonist understands this or not), rather than "captivity narratives." Most of these memoirs are travelogues (pre-1850), and later on are meant to shore up the author's authority as an Expert (as early-far west wildcatters got into late middle age, and worked to re-brand their skills for the Oregon/California crowd after 1850). They're episodic, easily chapbook-ized, and profoundly areligious.
But that's also true of Susan Shelby Magoffin's memoir of the Santa Fe Trail (1846, no captivity story). So.
The memoirs of all genres are gendered by what they observe -- work, knowledge, the company they keep -- but I can't say from the small samples I've read that the choice of genre or narrative tools are profoundly different. Both Lee and Horn describe torture of some captives; both Lee and Horn describe other captives who have successfully transitioned into Indian life. Lee's narrative is much longer, and has some obvious traces of self-aggrandizement: he has to explain why he wasn't executed on the spot, as most male captives were by that time, and spins some bullshit about the Comanches being afraid/amazed by the alarm clock they find on his person, whereas you can tell after a little while that they find the clock hilarious, and when they sell him onward, it is as a freebie to go with the clock, not the other way around. Lee positions himself as active, as trying to escape, as finally successfully escaping; Horn never attempts escape, but then, she's also got young children, and is bitterly surprised that her sale/rescue requires her to leave them behind.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2016-12-03 03:33 pm (UTC)So I've read several male-protagonist Indian captivity stories, but they're usually embedded in memoirs about the protagonist's adventures, and the captivity ends with an adoption/marriage into a powerful Indian family. Because they're actually narratives describing a process of gaining trade alliances (whether the protagonist understands this or not), rather than "captivity narratives." Most of these memoirs are travelogues (pre-1850), and later on are meant to shore up the author's authority as an Expert (as early-far west wildcatters got into late middle age, and worked to re-brand their skills for the Oregon/California crowd after 1850). They're episodic, easily chapbook-ized, and profoundly areligious.
But that's also true of Susan Shelby Magoffin's memoir of the Santa Fe Trail (1846, no captivity story). So.
The memoirs of all genres are gendered by what they observe -- work, knowledge, the company they keep -- but I can't say from the small samples I've read that the choice of genre or narrative tools are profoundly different. Both Lee and Horn describe torture of some captives; both Lee and Horn describe other captives who have successfully transitioned into Indian life. Lee's narrative is much longer, and has some obvious traces of self-aggrandizement: he has to explain why he wasn't executed on the spot, as most male captives were by that time, and spins some bullshit about the Comanches being afraid/amazed by the alarm clock they find on his person, whereas you can tell after a little while that they find the clock hilarious, and when they sell him onward, it is as a freebie to go with the clock, not the other way around. Lee positions himself as active, as trying to escape, as finally successfully escaping; Horn never attempts escape, but then, she's also got young children, and is bitterly surprised that her sale/rescue requires her to leave them behind.