SOURCE: “Indians and Indian-Hating in Edgar Huntly and The Confidence Man,” in Melus, Vol. 15, No. 3, Fall, 1988, pp. 65-74.

In the following essay, Newman discusses the figure of the Indian Hater in novels by Charles Brockden Brown and Herman Melville, and suggests that in both works, savagery is attributed to both Indians and whites.

“Hate the evil, and love the good.” 

Amos 5.15

“We cannibals must help these Christians.” 

Queequeg in Moby-Dick

Grounded in a contrast between a white civilization based on religious morality and the primitive savagery of the Indians, the association of Indians with evil has been a recurrent theme in American literature. In his Map of Virginia, with a Description of the Countrey, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion, John Smith states of Indian religion, “their chiefe God they worship is the Divell” (Smith I, 65-84). King Philip's War in 1675-76 spurred numerous accounts of massacres and...