[For Veterans Day, I’ll be AmericanStudying five examples of texts that can help us remember and engage with veterans’ experiences from five of our defining wars. Leading up to a weekend post on 21st century veterans’ stories!]
On two ways to AmericanStudy the significance of a Native American veteran’s experiences.
I’ve written about William Apess, one of my very favorite American writers and voices, many times in this space and beyond. Most of those posts have focused on individual texts of his, but in this post I wrote more broadly about the arc of his life (as well as how he traced it in his autobiographical writing). I’d ask you to check out that post if you could, and then come on back for thoughts on Apess’s military service during the War of 1812.
As I note in that post, just about every detail of Apess’s life seems hyperbolic; but perhaps the most extreme is captured in this clause: “enlisting in a New York militia at the age of 16 and fighting in the War of 1812.” The U.S. did not yet have a standing army at this time, so it relied on state militias to do the bulk of the fighting (alongside assembled armies like the amazingly diverse one Andrew Jackson commanded at the Battle of New Orleans), and I have to imagine that they weren’t great at checking the ages of their soldiers. But at the same time, I don’t think we can separate Apess’s extreme experience of military service from the fraught and complicated multi-century story of Native Americans service in U.S. wars and conflicts. From Crispus Attucks to Ira Hayes, the U.S. Army Indian Scouts to the Najavo code talkers, and so many other individuals and communities, Native Americans have played a role in every American conflict, one far exceeding their percentage of the overall population. And as we see most potently in Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony (1977), that service has always affected them profoundly and too often painfully, something I have to imagine was part of Apess’s story as well, especially given just how young he was when that service began.
Alongside such negative effects, of course, veterans can also take away meaningful positives from their wartime service, and one positive aftermath in which I’m especially interested is the critical patriotic perspective that many veterans express and then act upon. William Apess undoubtedly drew his own critical patriotism from a variety of sources, including his faith and his profound understanding of Scripture, his connection to and love for his fellow Native Americans, and more. But I don’t think we can discount the role that this teenage military service played in shaping both Apess’s awareness of the worst of America and his desire to continue fighting to push the nation closer to its best—and when he expressed all those perspectives in his best work, “Eulogy on King Philip” (1836), he did so in the heart of Revolutionary-celebrating 1830s Boston, an act of aggressive activism that seems likewise to continue with that youthful fighting spirit.
Next veteran’s story tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Veterans’ stories and/or texts you’d share?
PPS. I have to add my new Saturday Evening Post Considering History column, on the WWII soldier & veteran Ira Hayes.
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