The Crimsoned Hills of Onondaga: Romantic Antiquarians and the Eu ...

Romantic Antiquarian writing has a unique place in the occlusive evolution that Mackenthun identifies. The hallucinatory creation of cities and peoples that never existed as well as directives from supernatural beings to go forth and conquer (in the case of Joseph Smith and Mormonism) suggest, in a nation ostensibly built upon the principles of reason, an attempt to make extreme psychic trauma, anxiety, and irreconcilable contradictions bearable.

The Core Narrative

Romantic Antiquarian writing is connected by a core narrative of prehistory with variant strands. Based on the assumption of Native American inferiority, the authors concluded (some in isolation and some influenced by the theories of others) that another earlier civilization was responsible for building the mounds and earthworks and making the unusual artifacts discovered. Influenced by previous speculations, various authors claimed civilization was brought to prehistoric America by explorers and colonists from a staggering array of sources, collectively encompassing nearly every culture, race, and ethnicity on earth. Their various theories identify, among others, the Lost Tribes of Israel, Romans, Egyptians, Polynesians, Phoenicians, Celts, Vikings, and disciples of the Hindu faith from India as being colonists in North America. Some of the writers invoked the lost civilization of Atlantis; others specialized in biblical interpretations, which reenforced the belief it was God’s will that the chosen spread forth and claim the New World as their own.

According to some variants, non-Indian cultures had flourished since the time of Noah’s ark or even prior to the flood. Incredibly, and most telling, the core antiquarian narrative portrays Natives Americans as bloodthirsty and callous instigators who extinguished the flame of civilization until European (re-)discovery brought new light. Josiah Priest wrote: “We are very far from believing the Indians to be the aborigines of America; but quite contrary, are usurpers; have by force of bloody warfare, exterminated the original inhabitants, taking possession of their country, property, and in some very few instances, retaining arts learned of those nations” (American Antiquities 93).