This essay demonstrates how American Indian autobiographical narratives work to construct a sense of American Indian subjectivity for competing communities--indigenous and white--by simultaneously promoting and protecting tribal knowledge. Both Black Hawk and Parker understood the power of print circulation in the dominant culture. One of the ironies of comparing these two individuals, however, is that Black Hawk was not literate in English, but wanted to see his story in print, whereas Parker could write very well in English, but did not publish many of his writings, choosing instead to address audiences through the medium of oratory. Like Black Hawk, however, Parker refuses autobiographical transparency and transmission by declining to relate intimate details of his life story. In the cases of both Black Hawk and Parker, where displayed object collides with self-soliciting autobiographical subject, the narrator chooses to hide that which is considered inappropriate for public consumption by suggesting that the notion of autobiography be reconsidered in an American Indian context. Yet by the very act of alluding to a personal narrative and refusing to elaborate on it, both Black Hawk and Parker are enacting a complicated performance. Furthermore, they employ technologies of writing to assert their voices, but also withhold information in order to escape from closure, autobiographical containment, and rhetorical captivity at the hands of the US government and perhaps even literary critics. In both narratives "Red stays Red," to quote Jim Chibbo, and "stands out more," not necessarily because of what is written but because of what is left unsaid. Parker argues alternately that Indians are at a more basic stage in human evolution than their white counterparts; have similar social, cultural, and religious institutions and therefore can be interpreted as equal to their white neighbors; and are so different that the two races cannot be justly compared. (Contains 53 notes.)