The Forest “Appeared Alive with its Sons and Daughters”: Commodification of the Indian Body in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Abstract

Abstract The phrase “son/s of the forest,” in relation to distinctive trees, was widely used in British periodicals throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When the phrase began to appear in US periodicals in the early nineteenth century, however, a shift occurred as writers started applying “of the forest” specifically to Native Americans. This essay examines how the phrase is used with increasing frequency in American literature, mission reports, and government documents during the decades leading up to the 1830 Indian Removal Act. I argue that print culture was used to reimagine Indigenous Americans as commodities, such as trees, to justify their removal from the landscape. The article is framed by an examination of how William Apess used his works, namely A Son of the Forest, to resist the State-sponsored violence of Jacksonian policies and Indian Removals. (JU)