Acknowledgments

The Silence of the Miskito Prince has been a long time in the making, and many folks contributed to its coming into being. It was written in the lands of the Ponca, Pawnee, Otoe, Omaha, Ho-Chunk, Kaw, Lakota, and Dakota people. My earnings from the book will be returned to these tribes. If you are a U.S. taxpayer, thank you, too: the National Endowment for the Humanities granted me a fellowship in 2017 to support the writing. Of course the opinions I express here cannot be attributed to that helpful institution.

I’m grateful to Doug Armato for his patient support of this book, and for long walks and good talks in Austin and Seattle. He picked amazing readers, whose challenging suggestions improved the book. Zenyse Miller, Mike Stoffel, and Ana Bichanich were perfect guides during the production process. You will be as grateful as I am to Karen Hellekson for firm but elegant copyediting; and my thanks to Dan Fielding for creating an excellent index for a book that ranges widely.

My department at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln is delightful and supportive. Marco Abel, its chair, has been a reassuring supporter of all my work, and Jaime Long and Mirhuanda Meeks have been stellar (and refreshingly hilarious) administrators of its tangled bureaucracy. My faculty colleagues are a joy to work with; for their help with the ideas in this book particularly, I thank Tom Gannon, Brie Owen, Joy Castro, Roland Végső, Caterina Bernardini, Steve Ramsay, Chigozie Obioma, Ken Price, Melissa Homestead, Rachael Shah, and Julia Schleck. My graduate theory class in 2019 did not perhaps know that some of the key concepts here were being tried out on them; for great conversations, thanks go to Sarwa Abdulghafoor, Alexandra Bissell, Maura Bradshaw, Luke Folk, Gretchen Geer, Samantha Gilmore, Paul Grosskopf, Phill Howells, Molly McConnell, Reagan Myers, Susie Rand, Carson Schaefer, Ashlyn Stewart, and Will Turner.

Former colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin also made this book imaginable; indeed, Evan Carton posed the query about understanding that started the project during the question-and-answer period after my job talk there. Conversations with Michael Winship, Lars Hinrichs, Phil Barrish, Ann Cvetkovich, Hannah Wojciehowski, Jim Cox, Luis Cárcamo-Huechante, Lisa Moore, Doug Brewster, J. K. Barret, Trish Roberts-Miller, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, and Heather Houser have shaped the book, and Elizabeth Cullingford was a great chair. I miss my colleagues in UT’s Native American and Indigenous studies program (and Shannon Speed, who has also moved on), who exemplify how to do this work in the academy. The work of brilliant UT doctoral students Ty Alyea, Alejandro Omidsalar, and Aubrey Plourde informed this book in a range of ways.

The community of early Americanist scholars welcomed me long ago despite my ignorance and other rough edges, and has continued to nurture me generously as I catch up. Thanks for that early welcome are especially due to Ralph Bauer, Karen Kupperman, and Dennis Moore. Audiences at several conferences of the Society of Early Americanists, the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, and the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, as well as focused symposia like Sarah Rivett and Stephanie Kirk’s “Religious Transformations” meetings and Marcy Norton and Ralph Bauer’s “Entangled Trajectories: Integrating Native American and European Histories” gathering, were a great help. Particular thanks go to the organizers of those events and to Kris Bross, Matt Brown, Kathleen Donegan, Edward Gray, David Hall, Chris Looby, Laura Mielke, Kenneth Mills, Alyssa Mt. Pleasant, Gordon Sayre, David Shields, Cristobal Silva, Fredrika Teute, Bryce Traister, Abram Van Engen, Priscilla Wald, Caroline Wigginton, and Hilary Wyss. In Vermont, Jonathan Beecher Field has been both a gracious host and a helpful reader, and thanks also go to Meredith Neuman and Ivy Schweitzer for the provocative conversations about patience and understanding we had in that ancient, verdant place. Yael Ben-Zvi and Germaine Warkentin shared relevant work in progress with me; and a postmodernism seminar (of all things) I took with James Axtell at William & Mary long ago had a delayed but meaningful impact on the writing of this book.

Another pivotal set of conversations happened at Scott Lyons’s “Globalizing the Word: Transnationalism and the Making of Native American Literature” symposium at the University of Michigan. His wisdom and that of Gerald Vizenor, Sean Teuton, Jace Weaver, and the other participants were a great gift. For formative conversations and warm friendship, I am grateful to Hannah Alpert-Abrams, Pastor Tim Anderson, Micah Bateman, Stephanie Bettman, Katie Chiles, Lauren Coates, Steffi Dippold, Betty Donohue, Tom Ferraro, Erica Fretwell, Jeff Glover, Lauren Grewe, Robert Gross, Jay Grossman, Kirsten Gruesz, Robert Gunn, Sandra Gustafson, Molly Hardy, Christy Hyman, Todd Lapidus, Russ Leo, Linda Garcia Merchant, Rob Mitchell, Andrew Newman, Kinohi Nishikawa, Phil Round, Gordon Sayre, Orin Starn, Tim Sweet, Robert Warrior, Marta Werner, Kelly Wisecup, and Edlie Wong. Conversations with Lisa Brooks and Paul Chaat Smith gave me both healthy trepidation and courage. John Miles always seems to know just when to text me. Jace Everett and Caleb Smith are brothers and, in different ways, key fomenters of the ideas in this book and how I approached writing it.

Of course, much of what I’ve learned about both how to talk with people and how people talk about people can be attributed to my friends from way back. I love you all! But a few folks particularly influenced this book. Thank you to Jenny Hammat, Debby Rutledge Mennuti, Marty Scarbrough, Janet Whaley, Jenny Bates, Catie Bates Robertson, Brad Weier, Jen Wamsley, Jennifer Johnson Kehoe, Christine Lipat, Melissa Muscio, Lizzi Lahoz, Mignon Keaton, Billy Cullop, William Brown, and Jim Turley. Jason Woods and his family, Pam, Ronnie, and April, have shaped my ways deeply. On the other end of the spectrum, a bully or three taught me some things as well, but I reckon they can remain nameless.

Fred Gray passed away during the writing of this book, and I sorely wish he could be here to ask me hard questions about it. Julie, thank you for your support, and I hope the typeface is harmonious. My uncles David Earnest and Richard Steiger have provided joy and high textual standards. The spirits of both my grandmothers hover over this book; it could not have been conceived without them. Without my beloved mother and father, who read the whole thing, and my brother Dan, it could not have been written. Nikki Gray and the Brown Prancer mulled, wrote, and revised every page with me, and I can never thank them enough for their love.