Berserk violence, racial vengeance, and settler colonialism in American writing from Franklin to Melville / Edward Watts.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Watts, Edward, 1964- author.

Series:

Oxford studies in American literary history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--1783-1850--History and criticism.

American literature.

Imperialism in literature.

Settler colonialism--United States--History.

Settler colonialism.

Indians, Treatment of--United States--History.

Indians, Treatment of.

United States.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

This text studies the literary and cultural tradition of the 'Indian Hater' in American writing from the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War.

"Berserk Violence, Racial Vengeance, and Settler Colonialism in American Writing from Franklin to Melville studies the literary and cultural tradition of the “Indian Hater” in American writing from the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. In dozens of short stories, novels, poems, plays, and historical publications, Indian Haters were white settlers on the western frontier who vowed to kill all “Indians” to avenge the deaths of family members at the hands of a few. As they engage their episodes in racial violence, they attain transcendent racial powers based in traditions of historical white barbarism and the powers of the legendary berserker, the crazed Nordic super-warrior. Indian Haters’ obsession with genocidal retribution reflected and participated in important conversations in the new nation about race, violence, nation, and masculinity, as well as about the role of the emergent mass print culture in the distribution of propaganda, disinformation, and misrepresentation. At the same time, many authors used Indian Haters to represent the moral failure of the new nation, profoundly critiquing its ambitions and assumptions. Using theories and methods drawn from studies of settler colonialism, nationalism, media, sociology, trauma, and literary history, Edward Watts excavates dozens of long-lost Indian Hater accounts, as well as better-known ones from Benjamin Franklin, Charles Brockden Brown, James Hall, Robert Montgomery Bird, and Herman Melville, to tell the story of a story, and how that story exposes the complex machinations of the role of print culture’s interactions with the violence of settler colonialism"-- Oxford Academic.

Contents:

Introduction : vengeance became my darling theme : the Indian hater in American writing, 1760–1860

A spirit vengeful, unrelenting, and ferocious : *Edgar Huntly* and the genealogy of Indian haters

“American” stories : the Indian haters of James Hall and John Neal

From legend to literature : heroic haters, real and invented

Hut literature : Robert Montgomery Bird’s Nathan Slaughter

Liberal colonialism and the disavowal of Indian hating

Herman Melville and the metafictions of Indian hating

Coda : Wetzel redivivus : Zane Grey and the juvenilia of empire.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from digital title page (Oxford Academic, viewed January 5, 2026).

Other Format:

Print version: Watts, Edward, 1964- Berserk violence, racial vengeance, and settler colonialism in American writing from Franklin to Melville

ISBN:

9780198958826

019895882X

9780198958819

0198958811

OCLC:

1523864915

Publisher Number:

CIPO000251518

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license