[By guest author, John Hess.]
I was stunned by the title of a post on Engaging Peace. “Recovery through forgiveness” contrasts so greatly with Regeneration through violence: The mythology of the American frontier, 1600-1860, the first volume of Richard Slotkin’s trilogy on American culture.
Slotkin’s argument is similar to that advanced by Christopher Hedges in War is a force that gives us meaning.
Specifically, nations often seek to work out pressing internal problems and bring about national unity through violence directed at an adversary who is portrayed as “the Other,” an embodiment of evil.
The U.S. used this approach in justifying the “War on Terror,” and later the Iraq War:
- Us against them
- Good against evil
- War against those who hate our way of life and want to destroy it.
The first major example Slotkin discusses in Regeneration is King Philip’s War. That 1675-6 conflict is said to have been, relatively speaking, the most destructive war ever fought on (what became) American soil.
Puritanism was then in the throes of a spiritual crisis, with many of the more intransigent ministers claiming there had been a “falling away” from the fervor and purity of the original colonists. At the same time, the New England colonies were rapidly expanding, which led to a demand for more land. This in turn brought them more and more into conflict with the Native tribes, who were on land the Puritans desired.
Puritan thinkers increasingly came to portray the Natives as their direct opposites:
- Where the English were Christian, the Natives were pagan
- Where the English were civilized, the Natives were savage
- Where the English were the new Chosen People, the Natives were not
- Where the English were doing God’s will, the Natives were certainly on the other side.
John Hess, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Boston
