Sophia Alice Callahan
Sophia Alice Callahan (1 January 1868 - 7 January 1894) was a Muscogee novelist and educator. Her novel, Wynema, A Child of the Forest is thought "to be the first novel written by a Native American woman" and may have been "the first novel written in Oklahoma", which was at the time Indian Territory.[1]
Biography
Callahan was born in Sulphur Springs, Texas in 1868,[2] to a part-Muscogee father and white mother.[3] Her father, Samuel Benton Callahan, who was one-eighth Muscogee-Creek was the editor of the Indian Journal,[4] served in the Confederate Congress and was an officer in the Confederate States Army.[5] Her mother was Sarah Elizabeth Thornberg.[4] The family had fled to Sulphur Springs during the American Civil War, but at the end of the Civil War returned to their home in Okmulgee, Indian Territory.[6]
Qualified in grammar, arithmetic, physics, geography and history, having studied for nearly a year at the Wesleyan Female Institute in Staunton, Virginia, Callahan subsequently taught at several different boarding schools in the Creek Nation of Indian Territory. [7][6] She worked at Wealaka Mission School in 1892-3, and at Harrell Institute in Muskogee in late 1893,[7] where she wrote for its associated journal, Our Brother in Red.[6] Her last position was as an official at the Indian Mission Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, where she was working at the time of her death from pleurisy at just 26 in January 1894.[7][6]
Novel
In the late 20th century, a novel by Callahan, (Creek) was discovered: Wynema, a Child of the Forest (1891) (which was reprinted in 1997). Though "extremely flawed",[7] written when she was 23,[2] it is now known as the first novel by a Native American woman in the United States.[8] It dramatized the issue of tribal allotments and breakup of communal lands, and was dedicated to the Native American population, calling for an end to Indian grievances. According to Gretchen M. Bataille and Laurie Lisa the novel is "thin, and sometimes highly improbable, plots are woven through with themes concerning the importance of Christianity and education in English, fraud in Indian administration, allotments, temperance, women's rights, the Ghost Dance movement, and atrocities committed upon the Sioux at Wounded Knee".[7]
References
- ↑ Van Dyke, Annette (1992). "AN INTRODUCTION TO WYNEMA, A CHILD OF THE FOREST, BY SOPHIA ALICE CALLAHAN". Studies in American Indian Literature Series 2 4 (2/3): 123–128. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
- 1 2 Bakken & Farrington 2003, p. 42.
- ↑ Chapman & Mills 2011, p. 108.
- 1 2 Wilson, Linda D. (2009). "Callahan, Sophia Alice (1868–1894)". Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Oklahoma Historical Society. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
- ↑ Sonneborn 2007, p. 35.
- 1 2 3 4 Cox, Cox & Justice 2014, p. 642.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Bataille & Lisa 2003, p. 63.
- ↑ Siobhan Senier, "Allotment Protest and Tribal Discourse: Reading Wynema's Successes and Shortcomings", The American Indian Quarterly, Volume 24, Number 3, Summer 2000, pp. 420-440
Bibliography
- Bakken, Gordon Moris; Farrington, Brenda (26 June 2003). Encyclopedia of Women in the American West. SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-1-4522-6526-1.
- Bataille, Gretchen M.; Lisa, Laurie (16 December 2003). Native American Women: A Biographical Dictionary. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-95587-8.
- Chapman, Mary; Mills, Angela (2011). Treacherous Texts: U.S. Suffrage Literature, 1846-1946. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-4959-0.
- Cox, James Howard; Cox, James H.; Justice, Daniel Heath (1 August 2014). The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-991403-6.
- Sonneborn, Liz (1 January 2007). A to Z of American Indian Women. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4381-0788-2.