In several ways the following timeline is similar to previously published timelines for American Indian literature: it lists significant books in English by Native American authors (thus the 1772 beginning date) and relevant government policies, legislation, and historical, social, and cultural events. Wars are listed, not only because Indian participation in the Revolutionary and 1812 Wars was significant, but also because of the high enlistment rate among Native Americans in the twentieth century and the impact war experiences had on Indian communities. Like Gretchen Bataille’s time line in the anthology Nothing But the Truth (2001), my list includes books by non-Indians, in part because these books helped to shape popular (mis)conceptions of Indians and because Native American authors often explicitly or implicitly responded to the stereotypes popularized by works such as The Last of the Mohicans (1826), Nick of the Woods (1837), or Hanta Yo (1979).

In one significant way this timeline differs from earlier chronologies: it includes books by non-Indians that do not explicitly address Indian ” issues. I hope these inclusions will inspire (or provoke) meaningful comparative questions. For example what are the implications of the similarities and differences in war and postwar experiences as represented in novels by Momaday, Silko, and Owens and in works such as Catch 22 (1955), No-No Boy (1957) and Bless Me, Ultima (1972)? When it is placed within the contexts of imagist and modernist poetry published between 1916 and 1922, to what degree does the collection of translations Path on the Rainbow (1918) represent a celebration or an exploitation of Indian oral traditions? In 1902 both Alexander Posey and Finley Peter Dunne captured spoken dialect (Muskogee-English / Irish-English) in print. In 1903 and 1911, W. E. B. DuBois and Charles Eastman (Santee Sioux) both used the word “soul(s)“ in their titles. What do these early twentieth-century coincidences suggest about capturing the voices and spirit of marginalized groups?