Is the Indian an American?

Abstract

This chapter describes how the Indian functioned as a figure of American national identity within Britain. By the time of the 1851 Great Exhibition, America was presenting herself as a thoroughly modern country, yet the empty floor spaces within the U.S. section of the exhibition provided plenty of opportunity to assess this claim, as well as to consider the implications of unpopulated—or apparently unpopulated—space. The sculptural figure of the Wounded Indian, which formed part of the American exhibit, was readily seized upon for its ironic potential. In the light of national self-presentation, the chapter asks whether or not the Indian was, in Britain, identified with, or against, American identity in the midcentury, a question that is highly pertinent to the reception of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Hiawatha (1855). The figure of Hiawatha provides an example, moreover—albeit highly fictionalized and idealized—of the ideals of noble masculinity, something that continues the emphasis on the strongly gendered way in which Native Americans were understood.