Removals: Nineteenth-century American Literature And The Politics Of Indian Affairs

REMOVALS This page intentionally left blank REMOVALS Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Politics of Indian Affairs LUCY MADDOX New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1991 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1991 by Oxford University Press/ Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Maddox, Lucy. Removals : nineteenth-century American literature and the politics of Indian affairs / Lucy Maddox. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-506931-5 1. American literature—19th century—History and criticism. Indians of North America—Politics and government—History—19th century. 3. Politics and literature—United States—History—19th century. 4. Indians in literature. 5. Canon (Literature) I. Title. PS173.I6M3 1991 810.9'358'09034—dc20 90-21547 246897531 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Acknowledgments THE WRITING of a book is always, to some extent, a collaborative effort. I want to acknowledge briefly some of those whom I consider to have been my most important collaborators, whether they meant to be or not. My colleague George O'Brien generously read a full draft of the manuscript and filled the margins with sharp-eyed comments and questions; his incisive marginalia became my primary guide to revision. Other colleagues—especially Susan Lanser, Michael Ragussis, Penn Szittya, John Glavin, John Hirsh, and Lynn Thiesmeyer—supplied encouragement, interest, informed conversation, and good questions. My students, both at Georgetown University and at the Bread Loaf School of English, kept me on my intellectual toes; they also kept me constantly aware of the importance as well as the excitement of learning to read old texts in new ways. The administration of Georgetown University granted me a year's sabbatical leave that allowed me to do most of the research for the book. Lynne Hirschfeld and Joan Reuss cheerfully and skillfully guided me through the frustrations of disk errors, document merges, formats, and paper jams. Jim Maddox patiently answered all my questions: how to spell a word, whether a phrase made sense, how long Martin vi Acknowledgments Van Buren was in office. Maggy Lindgren, Sam Swope, Nancy Martin, and Dixie Goswami kept asking me how it was going and then listening, with apparent interest, as I explained at length how it was going. Everyone should have such collaborators. Washington, D.C. April 1991 L. M. Contents Introduction, 3 1 I Civilization or Extinction?, 15 2 I Writing and Silence: Melville, 51 3 I Saving the Family: Hawthorne, Child, and Sedgwick, 89 4 I Points of Departure: Fuller, Thoreau, and Parkman, 131 Conclusion, 169 Notes, 179 Index, 199 This page intentionally left blank REMOVALS This page intentionally left blank Introduction THE FULL STORY of Indian-white relations in North America is beginning to be told. But the emerging story is already taking two different forms. One version is being produced through the collaboration of a variety of traditionally white academic disciplines: history, anthropology, ethnography, sociology, even literary criticism. The same matter is simultaneously being treated