SOURCE: "Native American Autobiography and the Synecdochic Self," American Autobiography: Retrospect and Prospect, edited by Paul John Eakin, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991, pp. 171-94.

In the following excerpt, Krupat investigates how the concept of the "self" operates in Native American autobiographies. The critic analyzes William Apes' writings in particular in order to support his contention that the "Native American self" can be described as an "I-am-We experience . . . where such a phrase indicates that I understand myself as a self only in relation to the coherent and bounded whole of which I am a part. "

Although studies of Native American autobiography have become more numerous of late, no one of them has yet taken as a central focus the matter that has perhaps more than any other occupied students of Western autobiography: the nature of the self presented in these texts. This is not to indicate an error...