The Allotment Plot

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The Allotment Plot

Alice C. Fletcher, E. Jane Gay, and Nez Perce Survivance

Nicole Tonkovich

440 pages
63 illustrations, 10 maps, 1 table, index

Hardcover

November 2012

978-0-8032-7137-1

$70.00 Add to Cart
Paperback

April 2022

978-1-4962-3036-2

$35.00 Add to Cart
eBook (EPUB)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

April 2022

978-1-4962-3115-4

$35.00 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

November 2012

978-0-8032-7152-4

$35.00 Add to Cart

About the Book

The Allotment Plot reexamines the history of allotment on the Nez Perce Reservation from 1889 to 1892 to account for and emphasize the Nez Perce side of the story. By including Nez Perce responses to allotment, Nicole Tonkovich argues that the assimilationist aims of allotment ultimately failed due in large part to the agency of the Nez Perce people themselves throughout the allotment process. The Nez Perce were actively involved in negotiating the terms under which allotment would proceed and were simultaneously engaged in ongoing efforts to protect their stories and other cultural properties from institutional appropriation by the allotment agent, Alice C. Fletcher, a respected anthropologist, and her photographer and assistant, E. Jane Gay. The Nez Perce engagement in this process laid a foundation for the long-term survival of the tribe and its culture.

Making use of previously unexamined archival sources, Fletcher’s letters, Gay’s photographs and journalistic accounts, oral tribal histories, and analyses of performances such as parades and verbal negotiations, Tonkovich assembles a masterful portrait of Nez Perce efforts to control their own future and provides a vital counternarrative of the allotment period, which is often portrayed as disastrous to Native polities.

 

Author Bio

Nicole Tonkovich is professor emerita of literature and American Studies at the University of California–San Diego. She is the coauthor of Trading Gazes: Euro-American Women Photographers and Native North Americans, 1880–1940 and the author of Dividing the Reservation: Alice C. Fletcher’s Nez Perce Allotment Diaries and Letters, 1889–1892.

Praise

"The Allotment Plot is a refreshing, nuanced, and insightful reinterpretation of a moment in Nez Perce history that illuminates both the blind nature of federal policy and the tribal resilience reflected in post-reservation Indian resistance and selfdetermination."—David R. M. Beck, American Historical Review

"A meticulously researched and carefully developed analysis of events before, during, and after allotment on the Nez Perce reservation."—Elizabeth James, Oregon Historical Quarterly

"The Allotment Plot is a good addition to the field and offers readers much to consider."—C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, H-Net

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Allotment and Nimiipuu Survivance
Part 1. Beginnings
Introduction: After the End of Nez Perce History
1. A False Beginning
2. Another Beginning
Part 2. Land
Introduction: Map and Territory, Space and Place
3. "The Square Idea"
4. Ethnographic Knowledge and Native Cartography
Part 3. Citizens
Introduction: E Pluribus Unum
5. Technologies of Citizenship
6. Fictions of Coherence
Part 4. Endings
Introduction: "If the Work Is Ever to Be Finished"
7. Irresolutions and Incompletions
8. The Ends of Nez Perce Allotment
Part 5. Afterward
Introduction: "Double Pictures Have Met Us All along the Way"
9. After-Words
10. After-Images
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Awards

Named the 2013 Caroline Bancroft History Prize Honor Book by the Denver Public Library
 

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