Nora Haenggi

26 April 2012

Romantic Dehumanization

American history is a subject often seen as a romanticized narrative for the American public. Over time that romance becomes elevated and mythologized. Images of historical figures and groups in America’s history frequently become spirited away to anecdotal fables, allegories, and legends. Americans love fables and imaginative narration. However, fact and fiction are easily and often blended and many Americans are often left to wonder which text is history and which text is fantasy. A final class assignment—reading romantic poetry—brought me to this topic. While reading The Indian Burying Ground by Philip Freneau and A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration by Mary Rowlandson, I am reminded of studying additional texts about the Native American at the beginning of the semester as well as Native American research for another class. I decided to look further in order to determine whether or not this was consistent since I suspected a pattern in American depiction of the American Native. I recalled hearing of ancient Greek philosophers romanticizing the primitive societies, as well as the Sumerian Enkidu, gentleman of nature, from the Epic of Gilgamesh. I was curious if the duplicitous trope of the mythologized savage was perpetuated further in early American literature. What literature I found on the American Native, from the colonization, enlightenment, and romanticism literary periods, is highly romanticized and dualistic to the point of dehumanization.

During my research I found that during the colonization period of America, the settlers viewed American land and its native inhabitants like a garden, waiting to be tamed and cultivated for the European sensibilities. Within our own class text we studied Captain John Smith, in the Generall Historie of Virginia (1624) in which he presents his own dualistic view of the Natives. He describes larger than life characters when he illustrates the Native’s violent approach to his settlement, “the savages would assault them” (para 6). He continues to speak of the Natives as if they were non-human. To Smith, the Natives were simply “barbarians” (paragraph 10). Further reading reveals Smith’s feelings about the Natives' President as later in his text he depicts a fearful sight when the Natives’ Chief approaches Smith’s settlement, “Powhatan, more like a devil than a man…as black as himself” (para. 15). However, the daughter of this described devil man, Smith considers the daughter, Pocahontas, as being the “dearest” while describing and elaborating his romanticized tale of the Chief’s young daughter saving him from death by the hands of her tribe, twice. Pocahontas was elevated through speech as a God-sent being, separate from the barbarous savages, and yet still not on the same plane as the colonists. It is almost as if Smith views her as a guardian angel. Smith was not the only colonist to elaborate on the fearsome Natives.

Another classroom text, Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682), reveals Mrs. Mary Rowlandson also dehumanizes the Native American in her captivity narrative through the use of realism, gothic, and romantic elements. Her settlement was under attack by the Natives, but not once does she refer to them as people. She refers to the Natives as “wretches”, “heathen”, “barbarous” (.1a, .2d, 1.1, 1.1e, 1.2). Reducing the Natives to demonic, in a later paragraph she depicts the attackers as “hell-hounds … roaring and ranting” (.3d). In pure gothic form she further illustrates the Native as demonic “savages”, “black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell”, and “as black as the devil” (1.1a, 1.1e, 19.3h). Mrs. Rowlandson witnessed her house burn down and her children taken in her captivity story. There was little personification of her captors in her story, she merely referred to them as “wild beasts of the forest” (4.2). Rowlandson recalls finding that the Natives told her falsehoods about her husband; she was more confirmed that they were evil, these barbarous creatures to him who was a liar from the beginning” (13.1b). The one time she manages to refer to the Indians as men she calls them “unstable madmen” (19.3a). There was no duality for the Native Americans with Mrs. Rowlandson. No, of the Native Americans humanity, Mrs. Rowlandson would never be convinced or enlightened otherwise.

Perhaps there is some humanity for the Native American during the Enlightenment period. Thomas Jefferson was using Enlightenment language to describe the Natives as having their own “civilization”, and in a letter he wrote to a Marquis he proclaimed the Natives to be equal in mind and body to those of the Europeans (Monticello.com). Jefferson appears to practice the idea of tri-identity for these Natives as he would speak in reminiscence and in admiration of the Natives he did know personally. The Native seemed, to Jefferson, to be the ally, the enemy, and the subject all at once. However it is published that he spoke highly of an elder in a letter he wrote to John Adams,

The moon was in full splendor...His sounding voice, distinct articulation, animated action, and the solemn silence of his people at their several fires, filled me with awe and veneration, altho' I did not understand a word he uttered

 As a child he was fond of the Natives and romanticized them in his memory as an adult. Another college website reveals that Jefferson also had an idea of dual identity for the Native American when he purchased the Louisiana territory he spoke and acted differently about his goals and relationships with the Native American tribes,

is to live in perpetual peace with the Indians, to cultivate their affectionate attachment from them, by everything just and liberal which we can do for them within the bounds of reason."

Jefferson then provides Harrison with precise instructions how to get rid of every last independent tribe between the Atlantic states and the Mississippi.

          Another author of the enlightenment, William Bartram appeared to take great pains to scientifically research the North American Native. His writings, William Bartram on the Southeastern Indians were an extensive effort in advisement of Native American policy. He felt the narrative of the “savage” Native that was being sent to Europe was offensive to himself and other colonists (208). He focused on Native agricultural practice and food preparation, gender roles, manufactures, town organization, government, art and architecture, origins and the institution of slavery amongst the Natives. The book is mostly a description of Bartram’s findings- very factual and informative, and apparently historically accurate – what I would imagine to be an important anthropological text. However, a hint of the romance language comes through when Bartram describes the North American Native chief as,

…a tall, well-made man, affable and cheerful, with eyes lively and full of fir, his countenance manly and placid, yet ferocious, or what we call savage; …his head trimmed and ornamented in true Creek fashion. (51)

Authors of the literary romantic era wanted a break from the stuffy reason of the Enlightenment. They saw Native Americans being forced from their land, and they saw filthy barges towing other filthy ships across lakes and rivers. The Romance authors wanted adventure and individualism; some wanted a return to nature and pastoral life; some wanted a return to religious zeal. I decided I would try recommendeds text of the romantic era to see if there was humanizing of the Native American.  Romantic period Daniel Defoe writes of the South American Indian as a savage in Robinson Crusoe (1719). Defoe’s Crusoe was able to borrow survival skills from the Natives in order to survive the South American landscape. However, that is as far as his complimentary tale for the indigenous population will take the reader. The rest of the narrative reveals the Natives to be considered by this adventurist as rather animalistic. They are “lusty” creatures he must contend with equated with the beasts on the island, he writes (89). He is convinced they are cannibalistic (170), and on each excursion he makes preparations to avoid the savages or contend with them like animals (138, 194). Defoe in his adventure novel about Robinson Crusoe’s uses the language of the storyline to dehumanize the Native population of South America. Savages gave him nightmares, dread and terror (246, 256). For Defoe’s adventure, Crusoe was resigned to perceiving the Native population as nothing more than wretched savages, devouring one another (262). Further reading revealed repeated dehumanizing of the Native when he describes that he made at least one savage his servant and plotted to capture others for his possession (313). Defoe seems not to be the sort of romantic author one might research when looking for a noble savage or a humanized Native. Finding a humanized Native proves to be a difficult task. So, next I researched a poet of the romantic era.

          From the course website, a poem The Indian Burying Ground, written by author Philip Freneau is one of the first poems to romanticize and idealize the American Native. Freneau wrote both Enlightenment text and Romantic era text. Further reading of the poem reveals elevated language for the Native American. The language is mythological, dreamy and romantic using words to describe the Natives such as, “timorous and painted”; their possessions are described as “fancies” with “shadows and delusions”. Supernatural phenomena in the poem also create a gothic feeling to the romantic poem. The poem, about death, encourages the reader to understand strength and beauty from death. This is considered to be highly romanticized of the Native American because the European saw death as something to be feared and avoided. This makes the Native American more different, but inviting and warm, yet still other-worldly and mythological, “…the ancients of these lands – The Indian when from life released…Here, still a lofty rock remains…The children of the forest played.”

          It seems the early American literary world is torn and the Native American has little identity but that of a brutish demonic savage or the noble savage. Identities now are mythologized and romanticized to a point of dehumanization. Dig deep enough and through the rubble of the Native identity there is some salvaged dignity from the science of the Enlightenment. Perhaps and hopefully the Native Americans can launch a Renaissance and Enlightenment of their own and enlighten the rest of the West.

Works Cited

Bartram, William. William Batram and the Southeastern Indians.Ed. Gregory A. Waselkov and Kathryn E. Holland Braund. University of Nebraska, 1995. Print.

Chew, Elizabeth V. "Thomas Jefferson's Monticello." Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. Dec. 2002. Web. 27 Apr. 2012. <http://www.monticello.org/>