Native American autobiography has been characterized as a contradiction in terms since the traditional ways of Indian artistic expression are incompatible with the requirements of the genre of autobiography. For this reason, the first Native Americans who appropriated the genre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries stepped out of their traditions and elicited negative criticism. They were accused of selling out to white ways and, accordingly, their works have been reviewed as assimilationist pieces of writing. Contrary to negative critical assessments, I argue that Native American authors did not mean to relinquish their values by assuming the autobiographical task. In fact, through the Western genre they found the opportunity to link the personal to the communal and promote racial causes. Borrowing Jace Weaver’s coinage, I hold that their works exhibit “communitism” (active concern for the community). Native American autobiographical texts that appear assimilationist on the surface yield quite different meanings if studied from this perspective. I will illustrate my point by discussing the ambivalent works of four early Indian autobiographers: William Apess (a Christian convert), Charles Eastman (an Indian doctor), Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (a chief’s daughter who served as an interpreter) and Zitkala-Ša (an Indian teacher and activist). My analysis will be methodologically organized by Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the “chronotope,” as particularly elaborated and implemented by Betty Bergland in the study of autobiographical material.