Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism


Nineteenth-Century Representations of Native Americans | Louise K. Barnett (essay date 1975)

Louise K. Barnett (essay date 1975)

SOURCE: “Nineteenth-Century Indian Hater Fiction: A Paradigm for Racism,” in South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. 74, No. 2, Spring, 1975, pp. 224-36.

[In the following essay, Barnett provides an overview of Indian Hater fiction and discusses the conventions associated with the genre.]

I

Pre-Civil War frontier fiction is predominantly concerned with the Indian-white confrontation along the frontier as background for the development of a conventional genteel love story. Within this category, the subgenre of Indian hater fiction has a different emphasis. Using as protagonist the familiar frontier figure of the Indian hater, this group of novels and tales focuses upon behavior generated by violent and overt race hatred. The ritualistic behavior of the Indian hater constitutes a paradigm for racism, one which contains a curious set of ambivalences and ironies.

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