Mark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous PeoplesMark Twain among the Indians and Other Indigenous Peoples is the first book-length study of the writer’s evolving views regarding the aboriginal inhabitants of North America and the Southern Hemisphere, and his deeply conflicted representations of them in fiction, newspaper sketches, and speeches. Using a wide range of archival materials—including previously unexamined marginalia in books from Clemens’s personal library—Driscoll charts the development of the writer’s ethnocentric attitudes about Indians and savagery in relation to the various geographic and social milieus of communities he inhabited at key periods in his life, from antebellum Hannibal, Missouri, and the Sierra Nevada mining camps of the 1860s to the progressive urban enclave of Hartford’s Nook Farm. The book also examines the impact of Clemens’s 1895–96 world lecture tour, when he traveled to Australia and New Zealand and learned firsthand about the dispossession and mistreatment of native peoples under British colonial rule. This groundbreaking work of cultural studies offers fresh readings of canonical texts such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Roughing It, and Following the Equator, as well as a number of Twain’s shorter works. |
Contents
THE ROMANCE AND TERROR OF INDIANS | 14 |
EARLY PERCEPTIONS OF INDIANS | 53 |
INDIANS IMAGINED 186272 | 93 |
THE ROOTS OF RACIAL ANIMUS IN THE NOBLE | 144 |
HOW MUCH HIGHER AND FINER | 185 |
THE CURIOUS TALE OF THE CONNECTICUT INDIAN | 228 |
THE UNSEEN ABORIGINALS | 268 |
A SUPERIOR BREED OF SAVAGES | 309 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Aboriginals According allusion American Indians Anglo-American Australia Carson chapter characterized chief civilization claims Clemens Clemens's colonial Connecticut Indian Association cultural Daily Courant Dan De Quille depicted early Edited ETS1 Express fact Following the Equator frontier Goshoots Governor Hannibal Hartford Daily Courant HFTS Hocken House Huck Finn human Ibid illustrated indigenous inhabitants Injun Joe Innocents Abroad Joe's June killed Kinsey Kintpuash Lake Lakota land later lecture letter living Livy Maori Mark Twain Project massacre Modoc Moreover murder Native Americans Nevada Territory never newspapers Noble Red nonetheless notebook Orion Orion Clemens Paiute Parkman's Plains political published Quille racial Red Cloud reports savagery savages Sawyer scalped settlers Sioux sketch squaws story suggests tion Tom Sawyer traditional Tramps Abroad tribes UCCL University of California views violence Virginia City Washington Washoe western Wild Indians Wild West William women words writer York Zealand