The Image of the Indian in the Southern Colonial Mind

Bibliographic Data

ID3591771
AuthorsGary B Nash (0000-0003-4313-6082, corresponding author)
Year1972
Volume29
Issue2
Pages197
Publication date1972-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe William and Mary Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0043-5597 • E-ISSN: 1933-7698
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1921144
OpenAlexW2321569815
LanguageEN
Citations received8

T IE changing image of the native inhabitants of North America provides a penetrating glimpse into the fears, desires, and intentions of Englishmen in colonial America. From the guileless primitive of certain sixteenth-century writers, to the beast of colonial frontiersmen, to the noble savage of eighteenth-century social critics, the Indian has furnished the social, intellectual, and cultural historian with an important analytical tool. Just as Europeans saw in Africa arid Africans not what actually existed but what their prior experience and present needs dictated, so in America the image of the Indian was molded by the nature of colonization and the inner requirements of adventuring Englishmen.' Understanding the English image of the Indian not only reveals the conscious and unconscious workings of the Anglo-American mind, but also gives meaning to English relations with the Indian and to English policies directed at controlling, civilizing, and exterminating him. Images of the Indian were indicators of attitudes toward him. Attitudes, in turn, were closely linked to intentions and desires. These intentions and desires, acted out systematically over a period of time and often provoking responses from the natives which tended to confirm

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Computer vision · Geography · Image (mathematics · Artificial Intelligence · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Computer Science · History

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