In his essay "Fate" Emerson asks: "Does the reading of history make us fatalists?" This paper asks a similar question: "Does the writing of historical narrative make us fatalists?" The rhetoric of fate influences the literature describing the American Indians, particularly Margaret Fuller's travel narrative Summer on the Lakes.
This paper begins with the historical background for the removal of the American Indians, which in part is the context from which Fuller writes Summer on the Lakes. From the 1820's to the 1860's policies for the American Indians stirred national debates. Two general arguments developed: the western sanction of the Indians was a benevolent gesture; their preservation delayed the inevitable as they were fated to perish.
Fuller, during the summer of 1843, journeys West from where she writes Summer on the Lakes. Like many authors of her generation traveling West, she read extensively the travel accounts and history of the American Indians written by white settlers and authors. Although the Indians are displaced politically, Fuller intends to author them symbolic significance. Fuller takes on the task of making a presumably illiterate and uncivilized people 'readable' to a distanced, New England audience. She depicts the Indian and the West as corporeal, whereas New England and the author are figured as the interpreter of sensory experience. Thereby, Fuller struggles to define an Indian 'type' to fulfill symbolic functions. She cannot maintain these distinctions easily in the text because the Cherokees are culturally assimilating and intermarriages are occurring. Ideally, meaning and symbols are stable and consistent in contrast to the wild savagery of the landscape and the Indians. This paper focuses upon the passages in which the text itself becomes savage or lacks a contained meaning.
Fuller's symbolic racial distinctions are similar to the dichotomy of mind and body. Passages about the Seeress of Prevorst and Mariana illustrate that pure intellectualism can be gained after bodily death. Transcendence is possible for women; a concept supporting Fuller's feminist interests. Since in the text the Indians are presented as illiterate, and figured as only corporeal, they are not promised transcendence. In their bodily death they become artifacts to be both mocked and appraised by their New England audience. Indians are not able to transcend their social/political condition, since they symbolize the body, the sensory experience of going west, and finally the historical narrative. Fuller's historical narrative reflects the predominant attitude that the Indians were to perish, and unable to author their experience.
In general this paper focuses on how the term fate is applied to the Indian question, and consequently social reform. Fuller's Summer on the Lakes is particularly interesting because of the tension between her feminist politics and the Indian question. How does fatalism play into social reform? To whom is transcendence available? To what extent does the Indian resemble text?
The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and
employer.
© Regents of the University of Minnesota, 1997.