Citizens of the Six Nations have long been known as keepers of tribal histories. The Tuscaroran Reverend David Cusick probably wrote the first native tribal history, his Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations, published in 1848. Cusick “turned back to the blanket” after becoming disillusioned with Christianity, as did the Huron convert Peter Dooyentate Clarke, a missionary who later disappeared after writing The Origins and Traditional History of the Wyandots in 1870. Other examples include Tuscaroran chief Elias Johnson’s 1881 Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Zroquois and Arthur Parker’s many works. The famous wampum belts, which served as mnemonic devices to help pass on cultural, historical, and ritual information by word of mouth, predated these written accounts.
Contemporary poet Maurice Kenny’s unique combination of historic and poetic faculties is an excellent addition to this body of tribal histories as well as to American poetry in general. The author’s work, a twelve-year effort, is an example of incarnation: Kenny gives historical data a voice, a personality, a spirit. He demonstrates that what one can imagine is as real, as vital, as important as written history. The poet, through his creative vision, speaks to the silence of American history, which has reduced powerful women like Molly Brant, wife of Sir William Johnson and leader of forces against the Americans in the Revolution, to mere footnotes.
