| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects. By Renée L. Bergland. (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000. xii, 199 pp. Cloth, $40.00, ISBN 0-87451-943-8. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-87451-944-6.)

In The National Uncanny, Renée L. Bergland makes the point that "When ghosts haunt national consciousness, they help to establish a common national consciousness. The construction of 'collective memory' . . . depends upon a haunted historical imagination." For Bergland, then, the national consciousness depends deeply on the Native American specter. She states, "In American letters, and in the American imagination, Native American ghosts function both as representations of national guilt and as triumphant agents of Americanization." It is this bifurcation of attitude toward Native Americans through the centuries and its appearance in literary works that is the focus of Bergland's book. In The National Uncanny, Bergland takes on the huge task of tracing and describing the use of Native American "ghosts" in American literature, focusing on representative authors from the 1500s through the 1800s and wrapping up her text with a short discussion of two contemporary authors. . . .

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