Language & Literature‪.‬

Sympathy for the Other: British Attempts at Understanding the American Indian. Rachel McCoppin, University of Minnesota, Native Studies, Lengby, MN 56651 Among all of the flashy, terrifying accounts of the savage Indian in the often accepted "master narrative" of American history/identity, there are certain works of concern, or even sympathy by the English towards the American Indian. This paper examines the travel narratives of nineteenth century English authors for their criticism of the self-righteous violence and instability of Americans portrayed through the near genocide of an entire people. After the separation between England and an independent America, in the final years of the extermination and removal of the Native Americans, when American accounts of barbaric Indians were portrayed in newspapers and popular magazines, English travel accounts reveal a deliberate commiseration for the American Indian. This paper analyses a variety of these sympathetic British works, specifically the travel narratives of Fanny Trollope's Domestic Manners of the Americans, Fanny Kemble's Journals, Charles Dickens in his American Notes for General Circulation, Robert Louis Stevenson in Across the Plains, and Rudyard Kipling in American Notes. It is important to look to these British accounts, not only to see another nation's disgust for American violence and greed to the point of near extermination, but because sympathy for the American Indian's plight was a rare voice of exception.