Native Americans: Moving from Primitive to Postmodern, Mourning Dove and D’Arcy McNickle

Abstract

While nineteenth century minstrel shows are most associated with negative portrayals of African Americans, Native Americans in the second half of the nineteenth century also faced harmful stereotypes constructed through minstrelsy performances and other popular portrayals. From the middle of the nineteenth century to the Civil War, minstrel shows took particular interest in Native Americans—not as objects of satire, as was the case for African Americans, but rather as nostalgic symbols of an earlier time (Toll). Minstrel performers often depicted Indians as noble savages, a notion that French Enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau articulated and James Fenimore Cooper’s novels about a disappearing people crystallized. After the Civil War, portrayals of Indians shifted from innocents destroyed by modern civilization to violent threats to the progress of modern civilization. Minstrel shows reflected two dominant and pernicious views of Native Americans: primitive but disappearing representatives of a bygone era and violent, vicious threats to a new era.