The Indian Captivity Narrative: An American Genre

Author

Richard Van Der Beets, University of the Pacific

Date of Award

1973

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

English

First Advisor

Dylan Hansen

First Committee Member

Charles Clerc

Second Committee Member

Diane M. Borden

Third Committee Member

Ronald Sim[?]

Fourth Committee Member

John Seaman

Abstract

The vast body of Indian captivity narratives is known mostly to historians, anthropologists, and collectors of Americana. In the rare instances where informed scholarship has turned its attention to the narratives, emphasis has been upon the historical and cultural rather than the literary value of the tales. The Indian captivity narrative has been most commonly viewed as but a thread in the loose fabric of American cultural history, consisting of several "popular," sub-literary genres shaped and differentiated largely by the society for which the narratives were intended. The intention in this study is not so much to overturn that view as to effect an accommodation of its apprehension of several popular genres by considering the entire range of Captivity narratives as a single, developing genre—a genre reflecting variations of cultural application and effect but nonetheless a single genre in terms of the shared literary and archetypal, as well as historical and narrow cultural, significances of the narratives. The earliest Indian captivity narratives, those of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, are straightforward and generally unadorned religious documents. The religious expressions deriving from the experience treat the captivity as a salutary opportunity for redemptive suffering; as a test or punishment by God; and, finally and most demonstrably, as evidence of Divine Providence. Captivity narratives of the middle eighteenth century become vehicles less for religious expression than for hatred of the Indian and his French master in the struggle with England for control of the continent. !he French and Indian War and, later, the War of the Revolution, produced narratives in which military propaganda became increasingly a factor. The infusion of melodrama and sensibility into the narratives of Indian captivity capitalized on what became a growing commercial market during the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Accounts were stylized, sensationalized, exaggerated, and ultimately fictionalized. Through the several historical and cultural significances of the Indian captivity narrative there runs a unifying core of archetypal features that serves to synthesize these otherwise diverse applications and impulses. These are manifested in both act (homeopathic/sympathetic ritualism) and configuration (archetypal pattern). The fundamental configuration is that of the archetypal journey of initiation, represented by the captivity pattern of separation, transformation, and return. These acts and patterns subordinate and synthesize the historical and superficial cultural significances of the captivity narratives and provide them their essential integrity. In an appendix, an edited and annotated text of the Manheim anthology (1793), the first substantial collection of Indian captivity and massacre accounts, is presented.

Pages

198

Recommended Citation

Van Der Beets, Richard. (1973). The Indian Captivity Narrative: An American Genre. University of the Pacific, Dissertation. https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/3491