The liberty-genocide paradox: American Indians in European and American travel literature, 1795 to 1991

The Liberty-Genocide Paradox examines a wide range of European travel accounts in order to understand how European travelers described or accounted for the interactions of American Indians and the general European-derived American population. I argue that most intellectual European travelers attempted to account for the liberty and freedom of one culture and the simultaneous destruction of another. European travelers noticed that United States juridical procedures protected private property while excluding Native Americans from the political and social life of the new American nation. While European intellectual travelers attempted some explanation, their Anglo-American counterparts ignored or glossed over the contradictions. Important to my argument is that after 1835 when the first part of Democracy in America was published, it was clear that Tocqueville provided travelers with a comprehensive theory that explained the genocide-liberty paradox more comprehensively. Tocqueville capsulized the liberty-genocide paradox when he stated: "It is impossible to destroy men with more respect to the laws of humanity." Tocqueville arrived at this conclusion through research of the Congressional documents relating to the Indian Removal Act of 1830, research which he then amalgamated with travel observations.;The model of comparative study Tocqueville gave us has largely been ignored especially by contemporary French traveler, Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard claimed that though the foundations of American liberty are negative, we should not attempt to account for those negative foundations. In this dissertation, I demonstrate that an American writer, of Osage and Irish heritage, William Least Heat Moon revives and revitalizes Tocqueville's model of travel literature when he examines political, juridical, and social evidence to form a holistic picture of American life.;The implications of this investigation into the interactions of American Indians and White people in tourist and travel relations go far beyond travel literature itself. American writers used their travel accounts to develop and define American identity: Timothy Dwight, James Fenimore Cooper, and Timothy Flint provided exemplary texts as did the little known New Yorker, Benjamin Appel. With this selection of travel accounts, I reveal unique readings particularly of Dwight, Cooper, Tocqueville, D.H. Lawrence, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Baudrillard, and William Least Heat Moon. During the Tocqueville and Cooper timeline, I combine government-sponsored travel texts of a ethnographic and colonial turn by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and Lewis Cass. For the Lawrence era, I weave in texts describing the social and political underpinnings of Taos tourism and art colony development.;A further dimension of this study lies in its attention to Congressional documents and legislation which defined and circumscribed the life of Native tribes and nations who were observed by the travelers. A primary intention of this study is to inquire into the impact intellectual travelers have upon Native nations' people in specific geographic locations which show the relationship of people to the land. For this reason, attention has been given to the specific contact zone of travel: The travelers selected observed American Indians at Saginaw, Michigan; Canandaigua, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Cherokee and Choctaw nations in Georgia and Alabama; Taos pueblo, New Mexico; and Kaw City, Oklahoma. Additionally, my project has a critical affiliation with Native American intellectuals committed to exploring questions raised by modern ethnic tourism. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).