The demon of the continent: American literature, Indian conversion, and the dynamics of cultural exchange

This dissertation is concerned with the ways in which the presence of Indian peoples influences American literatures. Focusing on a series of material and ideological conflicts between Native and Euro-American peoples, I suggest that Indian land-holding patterns, economic relations, and social structures challenged Euro-American dominance, and that to historicize American literatures we must reposition Indians within the texts which--though they might repudiate the presence of native peoples--were obliged to negotiate it. Thus, for example, I read Roger Williams\u27 A Key into the Language of America (1643) in light of encounters between Narragansett exchange economies and colonial market economies; William Bartram\u27s Travels (1791) in terms of revolutionary-era conflicts between Creek communalism and United States individualism; Lydia Maria Child\u27s Hobomok (1824) in the context of antebellum debates over the nature and fate of Indian religions; and James Fenimore Cooper\u27s The Last of the Mohicans (1826) in view of the southern disputes over territorial sovereignty. In addition, I explore how the works of numerous native authors--including William Apess (Pequot), George Copway (Ojibwa), and David Cusick (Tuscarora)--interact with and intersect with the works of Euro-American authors. Considering texts as contested spaces--like the contested land of the nation itself--I conclude that American literatures reflect the intercultural society from which they arose