The purpose of this research is to examine the image of the Indian in the 19th-century American historical novel. The plan of the research will be to set forth a survey of discussions of American historical novels that portray Indian characters and life, with a view toward identifying American writers' trends and attitudes in the 19th century toward native Americans, and then to discuss how those attitudes framed and shaped more general perceptions of Indians in the mainstream culture as a whole. As we shall see, the weight of evidence from Indian portrayals on the whole is that they serve narrative more than insight. In particular, the presumption of Indian displacement by white culture pervades much 19th-century historical fiction.
Differences in perception about whether the displacement is just or unjust largely surface more as a matter of degree than kind.
American historical novels of the 19th century had a cultural mission inasmuch as they were among the first literary expressions of a uniquely national sensibility. They sought to show how that sensibility had been shaped, and they shaped that sensibility, which as of 1801 was only 25 years past the Declaration of Independence. The importance of the fact that uniquely American (i.e., not colonial British) literary culture was in its infancy can be appreciated if one realizes, for example, that both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who jointly crafted the Declaration in 1776, died the same day: July 4, 1826. It can be inferred that novels, even or especially historical novels, with American settings created in the 19th century would have been tempered by current knowledge of America's unique status, attitudes, and character, for good and ill. Lacking ancient cultural myth, these novels might seek to create, establish, or perhaps, to the degree possible, uncover it.
Attitudes toward American Indians were an important aspect of the narrative myth of the period. ...