Indian Chief as Tragic Hero

The leaders of anticolonial wars of resistance — Metacom, Pontiac, Tecumseh, and Cuauhtemoc — spread fear across the frontiers of North America. Yet once defeated, these men became iconic martyrs for postcolonial national identity in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. By the early 1800s a craze arose for Indian tragedy on the U.S. stage, such as John Augustus Stone’s Metamora, and for Indian b...