Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building

607 Pages·1997·12.723 MB·English

by  Richard Drinnon

F W
acing est
The Metaphysics
of Indian-Hating and
Empire-Building

F W
acing est
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The Metaphysics
of Indian-Hating and
Empire-Building
by
Richard Drinnon
University of Oklahoma Press
Norman and London
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Drinnon, Richard.
Facing west : the metaphysics of Indian-hating and empire-building
/ by Richard Drinnon.
p. cm.
Originally published: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press,
c 1980.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8061-2928-X
1. Indians of North America—Public opinion. 2. Indians of North
America—Civil rights. 3. Public opinion—United States. 4. Race
discrimination—United States. 5. United States—Territorial
expansion. 6. United States—Race relations. I. Title.
E98.P66D74 1997 Di-mo
305.8'00973—dC20 96-38834
CIP
Permissions acknowledgments can be found on p. 572.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability
of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources, Inc. @
Copyright © 1980, 1990 by Richard Drinnon. Preface to the 1997 Edition
copyright © 1997 by Richard Drinnon. All rights reserved. Published by
the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the
University. Manufactured in the U.S.A. First edition, 1980. First printing of
the University of Oklahoma Press edition, 1997.
123456789 10
For our grandson Saul,
who has lovely dark-brown skin
and some understanding already
of what this book is all about

Acknowledgments
AS always, I am hopelessly indebted to Anna Maria Drinnon,
b grandmother of the young man to whom this book is dedi­
cated, critic, coeditor, and companion in all that matters, includ­
ing the vision quest these pages represent. In this our fifth
undertaking together, John F. Thornton provided encouragement
from the outset, nudged me toward the final title, curbed my
excesses and wanted to delete more, and again acted as an incisive
and exemplary editor. Except for the uncurbed vagaries that re­
main, despite his best efforts, this work is the result of a truly
cooperative effort. Judy Gilbert, another veteran of joint projects,
patiently typed and retyped the manuscript and again proved her­
self a friend who cared enough to take pains.
In 1963-64 I held a Faculty Research Fellowship to study pat­
terns of American violence. War, assassinations, and other stud­
ies, including a book of my own, intervened, compelled revision
of my plans, and delayed fulfilling my obligations for the grant.
However belatedly, I wish to express now my gratitude to the
Social Science Research Council for financing the beginnings of
this book. I am also grateful to the Trustees of Bucknell University
for summer grants that helped in the research and writing.
Fellow historians, colleagues and students alike, have read or
heard sections of the manuscript. I have already thanked most of
them for their criticisms; in specific instances I also acknowledge
their help elsewhere. It has been invaluable, especially for a work
that presumes to carry its theme across the span of Anglo-Ameri­
can history. No doubt I have been guilty not of minor poaching
but of major trespass. Specialists in the various fields and eras will
not and should not excuse my inevitable blunders—the most I can
hope is that they will point them out with the legendary forbear­
ance of the community of scholars. Whether they forbear or not, I
ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
am much obliged to them, for they frequently guided me to the
primary sources on which this study is based. I am indebted to
ethnohistorians for what is by now an impressive body of writing
on red-white relations, to those who have studied the complexi­
ties of racism, to biographers of figures discussed below and to
editors of their memoirs and letters—and in fact to all those cited
in the notes and bibliographical essay. Even those authors with
whom I am in profound disagreement have helped me identify
problems and formulate what I thought about them and about
specific individuals, events, and themes.
Welcome harbingers of an overdue reinterpretation of our past
have been four books that came out while this book was at various
stages of preparation. Richard Slotkin's Regeneration through Vio­
lence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (1973) and
Francis Jennings's Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the
Cant of Conquest (1975) came to my desk after I had substantially
completed my chapters on the seventeenth century, but elsewhere
I have taken advantage of their insights and findings. (For an
appraisal of Jennings's contributions, see my "Ravished Land" in
The Indian Historian, IX [Fall 1976], 24-26.) In Fathers and Children:
Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian (1975),
Michael Paul Rogin imaginatively harnessed together depth psy­
chology and political theory to relate the man to his times and vice
versa. I drew directly on Rogin for my understanding of Jackson
and the First Seminole War and have been instructed by his ex­
ample elsewhere. (For more extended analysis of Rogin's work,
see my evaluation in the New York Times Book Review, June 15,
1975.) Finally, Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man's Indian:
Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (1978)
relates very directly to my themes and, in its own way, fills in the
gap created below when I leave the mainland in the 1890s to go
island-hopping out in the Pacific. (Again, for more extended anal­
ysis, see my "Red Man's Burden," Inquiry, I [June 26, 1978], 20-
22.) I have been reassured by the reflection that all our hands have
been, in their very different ways, feeling the same elephant.
FACING WEST FROM CALIFORNIA'S SHORES
Facing west from California's shores,
Inquiring, tireless, seeking what is yet unfound,
I, a child, very old, over waves, towards the house of
maternity, the land of migrations, look afar,
Look off the shores of my Western sea, the circle almost
circled;
For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of
Kashmere,
From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the
hero;
From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice
islands,
Long having wander'd since, round the earth having wander'd,
Now I face home again, very pleas'd and joyous,
(But where is what I started for so long ago?
And why is it yet unfound?)
—Walt Whitman,
Leaves of Grass, 1860-61