The Routledge Introduction to American War Literature

Jennifer Haytock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317422624
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

War and violence have arguably been some of the strongest influences on literature, but the relation is complex: more than just a subject for story-telling, war tends to reshape literature and culture. Modern war literature necessarily engages with national ideologies, and this volume looks at the specificity of how American literature deals with the emotional, intellectual, social, political, and economic contradictions that evolve into and out of war. Raising questions about how American ideals of independence and gender affect representations of war while also considering how specifically American experiences of race and class interweave with representations of combat, this book is a rich and coherent introduction to these texts and critical debates.

1

Literature of the American Indian Wars and the Revolutionary War

Literary responses to both the American Indian Wars¹ and the Revolutionary War, the earliest writings that can be considered “American war literature,” helped shape the identity of the nation and laid the groundwork for a literature that would become essentially “American,” a tradition distinct from its British roots. As we know, the stories of violent conflicts tend to be written by the victors, who define the terms and the stakes of the war. In the case of the on-going suppression, dislocation, and extermination of the continent’s indigenous peoples, European authors who described the barbarity of the Indians felt justified, often by the Christian God, by the belief that they were building a “civilized” nation. In the case of the Revolutionary War, writers who argued for the colonists’ independence from England sought to outline a new national American character as well as principles of both private and public life. In both wars, however, the losing side wrote back, and although these voices are less well known today, their rhetoric has its own power and value. American Indians produced a body of literature protesting the injustices of the settlers’ and later the U.S. government’s attitudes and policies, including broken treaties, physical invasion, and the slaughter of women and children, not just warriors. Loyalists to the English crown used a variety of printed forms to argue for the illegitimacy of a break with Britain and often mocked the pretensions of those who sought to form a new government. While these sets of literature address different wars and cover different, though overlapping, periods in American history, it’s worthwhile to examine them in the same chapter because at the center of both literatures are issues of human rights, the violence enacted to secure or deny them, and the long-lasting consequences of that violence and the rhetoric that justified it.

Literature of the Indian Wars

The conflict, or rather series of conflicts, between Native Americans and Europeans is the longest-running war in American history, beginning with the arrival of Columbus in 1492 and the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century and then with the settling of the first English colonies in the seventeenth century. These wars were also some of the bloodiest, with some conflicts becoming massacres of whole settlements, many tribes displaced onto some of the least hospitable lands on the continent, and many native languages and cultures wholly obliterated. In fact, the conflicts may be considered genocide rather than wars. While today most Americans usually know something about the Revolutionary War, they tend to be less familiar with the Indian Wars, but this was not always the case. As Cheryl Walker argues, “by the 1830s Indian wars had come to seem central to the building of the nation” (167). European Americans often identified themselves specifically in contrast to Native Americans, whose defeat seemed a justification of the God-ordained presence of white people and their culture in the New World.

These wars were also fundamental to the economic success of European Americans. The newcomers wanted the land and resources of the American continent, and they took them, imposing their idea of ownership on the indigenous peoples, to their detriment. Although it’s risky to generalize about “Native Americans,” as the continent was populated by many tribes with different cultures and languages, most of these tribes believed that humans were given the use of the land in trust; they could not own or sell it. The European invaders, with their alien ideas about property ownership, access to superior weaponry, and resistance to diseases that decimated Indians, imposed new practices that forced the original inhabitants further and further west. The most famous of these removals was the Trail of Tears, the forced march of several Indian tribes, including the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Seminole, among others, from their lands in the southeastern part of the United States to present-day Oklahoma, as ordered by the Indian Removal Act of 1830. The wars against the Indians continued in a variety of forms, including the removal of children from their parents to government-run boarding schools. This practice broke up families and caused the loss of native languages, religions, and cultures and was only ended in the 1970s.

Both Europeans and Native Americans have written about these wars. An early narrative written by a European is Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá’s Historia de la Nueva México (1610). Using the form of the epic, specifically The Aeneid as a model, Villagrá aestheticized the Spanish Oñate Expedition that conquered and settled native territories in what is now Mexico and the American Southwest. The poem, divided into thirty-four cantos, opens with an epic invocation: “I sing of arms and the heroic man” (1), specifically the Spaniards who ventured into the New World to uncover its treasures. Some of the Cantos describe preparations for the journey, bureaucratic delays, and the hardships of travel in the arid Southwest, all elements typically found in war literature. Canto 31 recounts the Spaniards’ massacre of the Pueblo Indians in a battle “so bloody upon both the sides” (49) that intervention by the Christian God alone accounts for the Spanish victory. While Villagrá frequently refers to the Indians as “savages” or “barbarians” to indicate their difference in customs, dress, skin color, and religion, he also admires their abilities as warriors and their commitment to their cause, including their decision to kill themselves and each other rather than submit to the Spaniards. In the final Canto, Villagrá describes the ultimate destruction of the pueblo. While the Historia might perhaps be better considered literature of genocide rather than war, it establishes a European tradition of simultaneous admiration and dehumanization of the native enemy.

Another early European form, the captivity narrative, was of great interest to English settlers, as they were curious about how Indians, whom they viewed as savages – that is, as less-than-human – lived and treated their prisoners. These popular narratives include texts by John Smith, James Smith, and John Marrant, a free African American. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God: Being a Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (1682) is perhaps the most famous of this genre. Born in England, Rowlandson immigrated with her family to the colonies in 1639, and she married Joseph Rowlandson a few years later. Rowlandson was captured during a series of Wampanoag raids on Massachusetts towns, known as “King Philip’s War” after the leader (named Metacomet but called Philip by the English), between 1675 and 1678. Rowlandson was held prisoner from February 20, 1676 until she was ransomed for twenty pounds on May 2. During this time, she and her three children, one of whom died during the captivity, were moved multiple times as their captors continued their raids.

Rowlandson’s narrative contains graphic details. On the day of her capture, “the dolefulest day that ever mine eyes saw,”

My brother-in-law (being before wounded, in defending the house, in or near the throat) fell down dead, whereat the Indians scornfully shouted, and hallowed, and were presently upon him, stripping off his clothes, the bullets flying thick, one went through my side, and the same (as would seem) through the bowels and hand of my dear child in my arms. One of my elder sisters’ children, named William, had then his leg broken, which the Indians perceiving, they knocked him on [his] head. Thus were we butchered by those merciless heathen, standing amazed, with the blood running down to our heels.

This passage, like others, conveys Rowlandson’s attention to detail even in the midst of extreme violence. In order to make sense of these events, Rowlandson turns to Scripture, including Psalms and Job, which she quotes in her Narrative; her faith in God sustains her throughout her ordeal. Even after the death of her daughter, she praises the “wonderful goodness of God to me in preserving me in the use of my reason and senses in that distressed time.” She portrays the Indians as “barbarous creatures” who often threaten to kill her, yet she also informs the reader that they allow her to travel to various towns in which her children are held. The narrative closes with the reunion of Rowlandson with her remaining family members, and she praises God for providing the meaning of her suffering. As Rowlandson’s title for her work indicates, captivity narratives helped confirm to white settlers that their actions were a just cause in the eyes of God. King Philip’s War retained a strong hold on the white imagination because of the terror Indians visited on the English population; for Indians, as we’ll see below, the war held another meaning.

The French and Indian War, lasting from 1754 until 1763, was another significant conflict. Despite its name, this war was actually a battle between the British and French, both their colonists and troops from their mother countries, for control of territory in the New World, and it was part of the larger Seven Years’ War between the French and the British in Europe. In America, both sides relied on support from native peoples, but far more Indians aligned themselves with the French. The network of alliances and series of battles inspired James Fenimore Cooper to write what many critics consider to be his best work, The Last of the Mohicans, published in 1826. In this novel, Cooper created the hero Natty Bumppo, known as Hawk-eye, who became a popular figure for his independence, cleverness, military skill, and ability to befriend Native Americans. He and two Indian comrades, Chingachgook and his son Uncas, help protect Alice and Cora, the daughters of a British military leader, as they travel across western New York. In a plot of betrayals, kidnappings, rescues, and violence, the novel celebrates the values of loyalty and grace under pressure; the latter, often considered a sign of masculinity, is exhibited by Cora as well as by the male characters, suggesting possibilities for feminine heroism, even though Cora dies at the end. Cooper also establishes the figure of the wise and stoic Indian with Chingachgook, who becomes the titular last of the Mohicans with the death of Uncas.

Unlike earlier writers who saw Indians as subhuman savages, Cooper ascribes dignity and nobility to his native characters, but they only have this dignity because of their certain defeat. The novel is infused with a sense of loss, and the setting of the French and Indian War raises larger questions about the success of the American project at the expense of native peoples. The Last of the Mohicans portrays not just conflict between the British and French but also among various Indian tribes. As Paul C. Gutjahr argues, Cooper used this context to show that

the United States and its nascent democratic form of government had not sprung from moments of mutual international love and admiration, but from savage conflicts that transformed the American continent into an ever-changing battleground where nations sought to obliterate one another in an attempt to gain ascendancy and control. (14)

Despite the friendship between Hawk-eye and the Indians, which Hawk-eye claims as a form of kinship, the novel concludes by affirming the supremacy of white people in the New World and mourning the inevitable decline of the Native Americans. The last words are Chingachgook’s: “The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet come again” (398). In this novel, war functions as a necessary backdrop to the defeat of a noble people.

American Indians have told their own stories about the centuries of conflict with white settlers. Most native populations in North America had no written language, instead developing rich oral traditions consisting of songs or chants that were memorized in order to pass on history and culture to the next generation. Some tribes insisted on strict adherence to the existing stories, while others allowed variation and even conferred status on storytellers who embellished or adapted the tales. Scholars recognize different forms of this literature, such as origin stories, trickster tales, jokes, dream songs, shamanic chants and blessings, and more. With the arrival of white settlers and written language, some Indian literature began to be preserved in written form, a development that raises questions of authenticity. Some scholars insist that oral aesthetic forms are never accessible through writing; others argue that written representation, through the use of poetic forms and creative arrangements of words on the page, can offer a sense of the oral experience. Still others suggest that the introduction of written English, often through Christian missionaries, created new authentic literary possibilities. Much Indian war literature is simply unavailable, as it existed only in oral form, much of which has been obliterated along with its language. In some cases, individuals, white or Indian, were present at speeches and wrote them down, a process that involved translation, sometimes performed by yet another individual, and sometimes also done from memory. Thus, we must approach these texts with some caution and an awareness that the written text comes to us through several moments of translation: from the oral to the written, from a Native American language to English, sometimes from an Indian perspective through a European point of view, possibly filtered through memory.

Some important literary texts by Native Americans are war speeches. For example, Pontiac, a member of the Ottawa tribe, delivered the “Speech at Detroit,” apparently given in 1763 to encourage Indian leaders to resist cultural change through violent means. This speech is structured in mythic terms, as it focuses on a questing Indian who seeks spiritual enlightenment. He journeys through the wilderness, encounters a spiritual guide, and then purifies himself before being deemed worthy to meet the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit then directs the Indian to abandon non-traditional practices:

You have bought guns, knives, kettles, and blankets, from the white men, until you can no longer do without them; and, what is worse, you have drunk the poison fire-water, which turns you into fools. Fling all these things away; live as your wise forefathers lived before you. And as for these English, – these dogs dressed in red, who have come to rob you of your hunting-grounds, and drive away the game, – you must lift the hatchet against them. (990)

Pontiac’s speech concludes with the questing Indian being sent back to his community with a stick onto which are inscribed symbols with the Great Spirit’s directions. This speech functions as a call to arms to the Delaware and other tribes to fight back against the English for cultural life.

Tecumseh, a Shawnee Indian whose tribal lands were in what are now Ohio and Indiana, also employed oratory to resist the white invaders. In his “Speech to the Osages,” as included in the captivity narrative of John Dunn Hunter and probably delivered in 1811, Tecumseh drew on the unity of his audience: “We all belong to one family; we are all children of the Great Spirit; we walk in the same path” (994). He then retells the history of white settlement on the American continent, pointing out that Indians helped the white people only to be repaid by their betrayal. Emphasizing the difference between the Indians and Europeans, Tecumseh accuses white people of greed: “at first, they only asked for land sufficient for a wigwam; now, nothing will satisfy them but the whole of our hunting grounds, from the rising to the setting sun” (995). He calls for the different tribes to protect each other from total destruction.

King Philip’s War, which cost both sides dearly, remained a focal point in American history and imagination for both Europeans and Native Americans throughout the nineteenth century. William Apess, a Methodist minister of mixed-race descent, returned to it in 1836, one hundred and sixty years after King Philip’s death, in his “Eulogy on King Philip.” Here, Apess writes from the position of the defeated fighting against the erasure of his people’s history from public memory:

as the immortal Washington lives endeared and engraven on the hearts of every white in America, never to be forgotten in time – even such is the immortal Philip honored, as held in memory by the degraded yet graceful descendants who appreciate his character.

Apess then outlines a history of conflicts between whites and Indians in which white brutality and treachery repeatedly cost the native tribes. He calls for all Americans, native and white, to hold King Philip as a hero, as they do Washington, for his bravery and achievements in the face of insurmountable odds. He suggests that the admirable traits of the individual should be recognized, particularly by people who profess to follow Christian principles.

Like many writers in the early years of the nation, Apess used life writing to convey social and political commentary. For Native Americans, such writings often include their experience with violent encounters with whites, both accounts of battles and descriptions of the consequences of defeat. In his autobiography A Son of the Forest, published in 1829, Apess makes the case for equality for Native Americans by offering his own life as an example. His act of writing itself, he argues, signifies his humanity, even as the obstacles he encountered in writing reveal the prejudice against him and other Indians and the consequences of their military defeat. In a short preface, he writes, “the bare acknowledgement of his entire want of a common education, will, he hopes, be a sufficient apology for any inaccuracies that may occur” in his prose. He opens his narrative by linking himself to King Philip, a figure with whom his readers would be aware, and framing the war as a tragedy for his people, not least because the tribe became “subject to a more intense and heart corroding affliction – that of having their daughters claimed by the conquerors” (8). Miscegenation, he argues, breaks the spirit of his people, even as it resulted in his own existence. He also acknowledges his forebears’ use of alcohol, which caused the men to abuse their own families. In this way, Apess makes himself and his history relatable and also connected to the crimes of white people, who disrupted a peaceful and prosperous culture by introducing their own cultural corruptions. Countering the stereotypes of Indians as savages, Apess converts to Christianity and becomes a Methodist minister. His narrative, then, is one of personal redemption and a model for others, much like Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, while also holding white readers responsible for their behavior as flawed victors.

As part of his narrative, Apess recounts being impressed into service as a soldie...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Literature of the American Indian Wars and the Revolutionary War
• 2 Literature of the American Civil War
• 3 Literature of World War I
• 4 Literature of World War II
• 5 Literature of the wars in Korea and Viet Nam
• 6 Literature of the wars in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan
• Bibliography
• Index