The Sound the Stars Make Rushing through the Sky: Jane Johnston Schoolcraft’s Poetic Discourse on the Borderline

This study aims to study Jane Johnstone Schoolcraft's poetic discourse on the borderline. Schoolcraft was the first known American Indian female poet. Tn the midst of the war clouds of the Indian extinction myth in her time, Native Americans were on a borderline or a middle ground. Schoolcraft's identity, which was from the metis family, was also on a borderline. Schoolcraft tried to inspire the indigenous aesthetics, which could be represented by "survivance"(a newly-coined word from survival and resistance) and viewed reality as a time for survival, change, and a new opportunity, rather than as a scene of tragic fate and its victim. Schoolcraft's poetry, in its contemplative and emotional tone, contains the spirit of her native tribe and resistance for survival. The characters in her stories go through an active transformation process in a moment of crisis and build and start a new life as a new existence. To sum up, Schoolcraft's works carry "The Sound the Stars Make Rushing through the Sky" as her Native Indian name Bamewawagezhikaquay means. (Cheongju University)