Princeton University Press Lobby
41 William St.

Diana Little, GS (English).

How did geology dictate America’s expansion westward throughout the 19th century? How did rocks prophesy Manifest Destiny, and how did indigenous peoples resist such prophecies? This talk will explore these questions through two writers who had tremendous agency over the colonial, industrial and literary development of the Great Lakes region in the early 19th century: the geologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and the Ojibwe poet Jane Johnston Schoolcraft. Through their literary partnership, both writers excavate from the geology of Lake Superior complex stories of indigenous-settler relations, early American copper mining and Ojibwe sovereignty. Rocks, they reveal, foretell the future of the nation, and indigenous peoples’ precarious positions within it.

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