The “Vanishing Indian” and the Vanishing Pole: From a Middle Ground to a Logic of Elimination in the European and Global Periphery, 1840–1880

Abstract

This article examines the use of the “Vanishing Indian” and “Doomed Race” extinction narratives in the writings of Henryk Sienkiewicz, Paul Edmund Strzelecki, and Sygurd Wiśniowski with respect to the Indigenous peoples of North America, Australia, and New Zealand. It locates these writers in the context of mid-late nineteenth century Poland, at the periphery of Europe and of empire, arguing that they demonstrated an ability to detect and critique the injustices of colonialism and sought out a rhetorical “middle ground” between Poles and non-European victims of empire in their work. However, their sympathy was in tension with Poland's historic role as a regional metropole, the need to assert their status as White Europeans, and the lure of settler colonialism. The “middle ground” they sought to create ultimately gave way to a “logic of elimination” that neutralized this tension, justifying colonialism to themselves and to other agents of empire.