‘Imagined bodies and imagined selves’: Cultural transgression, ‘unredeemed’ captives and the development of American identity in colonial North America, 1520–1763

This dissertation argues that the experiences of colonial North America's ‘unredeemed’ captives (Euro-American captives who remained with their Native-American captors) helped English, French, and Spanish settlers to imagine their own New World identities. The knowledge that some captives chose to stay with their Native-American captor's disturbed Euro-American colonists and forced theirs to re-conceptualize how they conceived of their own New World identities.

Utilizing colonial captivity narratives and a broad variety of other sources, this thesis begins by examining how Native-Americans viewed adoption and how Euro-American settlers so often misunderstood this process. The thesis then explores how three European groups viewed themselves, Native-Americans, and those who chose to stay with the Amerindians. The Spanish emphasized reason as the hallmark of civilization, and the loss of the ability to reason as the essence of ‘savagery.’ The French argued control over one's self and one's desires was the defining characteristic of civility, while the descent into libertarianism led to ‘savagery.’ Of the three groups the English feared most that all signs of civilization could be effaced by contact with Native-American societies. These worldviews helped shape how the settlers “read” the bodies, clothes, and behavior of the captives. The captivity narratives that the Euro-Americans constructed were never simple reporting. They were shaped by these world views, by the tension between Protestant and Catholic categories of redemption, by fears about New World sexualities, as well as by Old World archetypes. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the success of English Americans after 1763 in establishing new identities that stood apart from interaction with Native-Americans.