Book Review

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Book Review | The Journal of American History, 86.4 | The History Cooperative

The Insistence of the Indian: Race and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century American Culture. By Susan Scheckel. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. x, 197 pp. Cloth, $49.50, isbn 0-691-05963-2. Paper, $16.95, isbn 0-691-05964-0.)

A literary-historical argument examining the manner in which the Indian became a causative factor in defining nineteenth-century American identity summarizes the content and goal of the book. It is well researched and argued, incorporating excerpts of Supreme Court reasoning into the literary fabric of pre-Civil War America. While the scholarship supports the thesis, it is the thesis that fails the material. Tracing images of the Indian to James Fenimore Cooper is a familiar road trod by previous scholars, but Susan Scheckel, like many before her, concentrates so heavily on making the connection between Cooper's Indians and the emerging American identity that counterarguments that should have been raised regarding how Americans saw themselves and that could have created a tension between definitions fail to appear. . . .

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