San Antonio College Library

The confrontation between European and native peoples in the Americas is often portrayed as a conflict between literate civilization and illiterate savages. That perception ignores the many indigenous forms of writing that were not alphabet-based, like Mayan pictoglyphs, Iroquois wampum, Ojibwe birchbark scrolls, and Incan quipus. Queequeg's Coffin offers a new definition of writing that comprehends the dazzling diversity of literature in the Americas...