“The Last Indian” Syndrome Revisited: Metamora, Take Two

Abstract

The Last Indian” Syndrome Revisited: Metamom, Take Two CC Cristina Stanciu U N I V E R S I T Y O F I L L I N O I S A T U R B A N A - C H A M P A I G N So much critical attention has surrounded John Augustus Stone’s 1829 melodrama, Metamora; or, the lust of the Wampanoags, that its stepsister, John Brougham’s 1847 burlesque, Metamora; or, the Last of the Pollywo^s, almost has been forgotten dThe pairing of the two plays is uncanny and risky not only in the genres’ differences and audiences’ expectations, but also in signaling the plays’ ideological functions and implications vis-a-vis the “Indi¬ an problem” troubling mid-nineteenth-century audiences’ sense of white¬ ness and citizenship. Such an examination could prove productive in fore¬ grounding the burlesque’s rewriting of “the last Indian syndrome”—^which many so-called Indian plays shared in the nineteenth century—in challeng¬ ing the playwrights’, the actors’, and the audiences’ consensual reading of the “vanishing Indian” in the melodrama, on the one hand, and in fore¬ grounding the mocking performance of staged Indianness and of represen¬ tation itself in the burlesque, on the other. In NativeAmericans as Shown on the Stapfe, Eugene H. Jones (63-83) delineatesageneraltrendintheIndianplayswrittenandperformedinthe 1830sand1840sofrepresentingIndianheroes“ontheirwaytoextinction (63). The titles of the plays Jones brings to critical attention reinforce his conceptof“TheLastIndianSyndrome”permeatingwhiteAmerica’simagi¬ naryanditspopularstage.PlayssuchasTheLastoftheSerpentTribe,Lastof theNorid£[ewocks,LastoftheShikellemus,LastoftheMohicans,orLastofthe Wampanoags, notwithstanding their romantic titles, express acomplex yet consensual wish to remove American Indians both from white America’s imaginaryandfromAmericanlands.WhiteAmerica,however,delightedin contemplating the “last Indian,” on- and offstage, celebrating the immiofthevanishingOther .Jonesalsosignalstheparallelsbetweenthe Jacksonian era’s mission of eradicating Indian presence during the expansion of the republic and the era’s representational politics: “the Noble Savage more often thought of as adying savage and shown as such on the stage, both cases, Jones suggests, “the Indian came to be thought of as agreater problem than ever before” (80). Ironically, as Indian removal relegated Indian presence to alife on the fringes of the republic and opened the golden door to the first massive wave of European immigrants in the early nineteenth century, the Irish immigrant dramatist John Brougham made the first attempt to challenge the syndrome of the vanishing Indian on theAmerican stage. Brougham offered, instead. n e n c e w a s I n Intenexts, Vol. 10, No. 12006 ©Texas Tech University Press ' i 2 6 I N T E R T E X T S the human image of an Indian sachem with potential for survival who dared to laugh at himself, the audience, “the great American tragedian” Edwin Forrest, and the colonizers’ genocidal fantasies in what has become one of the great forgotten burlesques of the nineteenth century: Metamora; or, the Last of the FoUywo£s. In this essay Iargue that John Augustus Stone, using the idiom of colo¬ nial discourse in portraying the “last Indian” onstage, offers in Metamora what Robert F. Berkhoffer has termed “the idea of the Indian,'''’ which is “a White image or stereotype,” hence an invention, asimplification (3). With¬ out denying many of the merits of Stone’s melodrama, Iargue that John Brougham’s parodic gesture in his version of Metamora responds critically k 1 \ V ' i f * ● » » 4 i i E f e K V i f e w V t m m i \ I / / " ' A % ● . - . , V Mif. ¥Ai fc3 ©0% A.. Fig. 2. Edwin Forrest as Metamora. En^graving by T. Johnson after aphotograph by Mathew Brady, 1859. Courtesy of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. 3 1 STANCiu: “The Last Indian” Syndrome Revisited heroine, “fair Oceana,” whom Metamora saves by killing the monarchist Fitzarnold, asymbol of British threat during the War of Independence a century later. In the end, Metamora dies, “the last of his race,” cursing the white man (Stone 98). Stone portrays Metamora as the embodiment of melodramatic virtues: he rescues the heroine, he is agood husband and father, and abrave fighter for Indians’ freedom—“the white man’s dread, the Wampanoag’s hope” (62). The plot and subplots include melodramatic devices and disguises, such as the discovery of along...