The "Tempest" in the Wilderness

In Ronald Takaki’s piece, “The ‘Tempest’ in the Wilderness,” his thesis is that the expansion of the English into the Americas was one of overpowering the Indians for the sake of God and “What emerged to justify dispossessing them was the racialization of Indian ‘savagery.’”

Takaki tells the story of the arrival and colonization of the Americas through the eyes of the settlers by relating to the play the “Tempest,” which was performed after the English invasion of Ireland but prior to the colonization of New England. A character, Caliban, was used to depict the Indians while Prospero was used to depict the English settlers. As in the Zinn reading, Caliban was portrayed as a “savage,” just as the Irish were by the English. While it was believed that Caliban could be acculturated through “consent,” the audience also got the impression that much of the depiction of Caliban was due to his racial features, such as his “long shaggy hair” and “freckled skin.” Indians were soon thought of being lazy and incapable of civilization, and therefore were dehumanized and extinction was sought. As Takaki states, “The social construction of race occurred within the economic context of competition over land,” and, since the Indians were viewed as incapable of great production of the land, the English thought they had a right to take it over for themselves. According to Takaki, the treatment of the Indians, like that of the Irish which was at first thought to be related to culture, soon turned completely to that of race, which could therefore never be changed. This was the same in the “Tempest,” as the point was that the Indians could be acculturated and one day civilized; however, many in the audience were beginning to see that it was more than culture—that it was largely due to race. With that, as Jefferson, like many other leaders of the New World, assured the Indians they had rights and that they should be treated fairly, did actually the opposite, as he too encouraged their extinction.

If the settlers were so religious and thought at one point that the Indians could become acculturated, how is it that they began to believe that the removal of the Indians was wanted by God and racialized every characteristic of the Indians? The thought that every Indian was barbaric, savage, lazy, and cruel was set forth only because of the fact that they were different from the English. It is hard to believe that the English were as holy and civilized as they were portrayed to be when they ruthlessly killed off as many Indians as they did in this time. They thought of the Indians as inhuman and as though they were sent from the devil, which gave them an excuse to drive the Indians to extinction. It was clear that the motives against the Indians began to turn into that of a racial issue, as they were not the same as the “civilized” settlers taking over their land.

I felt that the reading presented a good argument, as it is sometimes hard to decipher if the treatment of the Indians was strictly culture-based or more so based on their race that could obviously not be altered. It is sickening to think that so much bloodshed occurred over the desire of as much land as possible, and all to be “civilized” like the English, in both cases of the Irish and the Indians. The “Tempest” also served as a good tool to present the dispute of culture over race, and in time people began to see this in the play.