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Analyze allusions to the "devilish Indian" in "Young Goodman Brown."
Quick answer:
In "Young Goodman Brown," the term "devilish Indian" reflects early American Puritan beliefs associating Native Americans and the forest with evil and Satan. Goodman Brown fears encountering Native people in the woods, equating them with devilish forces. The story illustrates how Puritans viewed the wilderness as a realm of darkness and sin, and by extension, those who lived there. The narrative critiques these views by showing how Brown himself embodies the true horror and evil he fears.
Many European colonists believed that it was their mission to convert people to Christianity. They often regarded believers in other faiths as “heathens” whose souls were endangered because they had not been baptized. More extreme interpretations assumed that non-Christian meant anti-Christian and associated all people of other faiths with the devil. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story, Goodman Brown frequently refers to “Indians” in such terms. The descriptions by the third-person narrator, however, often indicate that the “devil” may take the form of people like Brown himself. In their conversation, the old man he meets tells Brown of the Puritans’ attacks on Native American villages and mentions King Philip’s War.
As Brown begins his walk through the woods, he fears that he might encounter Native people there and calls them “devilish Indians.” However, the first person he encounters is an old man who strongly resembles him and is dressed like his...
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Puritan neighbors.
“There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,” said Goodman Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him . . .
Meeting the “simply dressed” old man who resembles him, Brown tell him that he is from “a race of honest men and good Christians,” which the other traveler challenges. He says that he himself gave Brown’s father a torch with which to burn an Indian village.
“And it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip's war.”
King Philip, or Metacom, was a Wampanoag chief who led the last prolonged resistance against British control of the New England colonies in contemporary Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. The war lasted for more than three years; Metacom was killed in 1676, but the concluding treaty was not signed until two years later. Metacom ruled from his base near Bristol, Rhode Island.
Later, Brown sees a group who resemble his neighbors gathered in the woods. While he cannot see them clearly in the dark, he hears a voice similar to the deacon’s say that “several of the Indian powows . . . know almost as much deviltry as the best of us.” By “powwows” he refers not to ceremonies but to spiritual leaders, often called “sachems.” Later, Brown himself uses this term.
When Brown believes that his wife, Faith, is lost to the satanic forces, he grows manic with despair and calls to the devil to take him. The woods become terrifying, but the narrator clearly states that Brown is scaring himself, as he was “the chief horror of the scene.”
The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds; the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians . . .
“Ha! ha! ha!” roared Goodman Brown, when the wind laughed at him. “Let us hear which will laugh loudest! Think not to frighten me with your deviltry! Come witch, come wizard, come Indian powwow, come devil himself! and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear him as he fear you!”
As he moves forward into the satanic assembly, he thinks he sees familiar faces, but among the pious are people “of dissolute lives and . . . spotted fame.” Again, Indians are invoked.
Scattered, also, among their pale-faced enemies, were the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their native forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English witchcraft.
References
The most apparent answer is that the "devilish Indian" links the early Americans' fear of both the Natives and the supposed evils of the forest. The early Puritans linked the darkness and primitiveness to Satan. It was said that men and women lured to the forest were also lured into Satan's power. Therefore the Natives who lived in the forest, were seen as evil and impure.