Race in early frontier fiction

Huck and Jim, 1884

For readers sampling early frontier fiction, one of the obvious differences between now and then is how unembarrassed writers were in their treatment of race. We know the arguments about the use of the n-word in Huckleberry Finn (1884), and that novel turns out to be a useful benchmark in the subject of race as it appears in the writings of others.

In Twain’s novel, the slave Jim is actually a full-fledged character, and Twain ascribes to him dignity as a member of the human race. You can’t really say that about most of the nonwhite characters in the novels of other mainstream writers. On the occasions when they appear in popular fiction, African-Americans, Native Americans, Asians, and Mexicans are typically peripheral characters portrayed in caricature. They may not even have names.

White supremacy is simply assumed in most novels, and there are degrees of whiteness. To call a man “white” carried the meaning of “decent,” “honest,” “generous,” and “honorable.” The word also meant “respectable” and “civilized.” Obviously, not all white men were. The connotation survives today in phrases like “that’s white of you.”

Occasionally one finds white supremacy actually voiced as a doctrine. Jack London’s A Daughter of the Snows (1902) applauds the survival of the fittest and sermonizes about the superiority of the white race. Rarely are notions of this caliber openly questioned or challenged by other writers, but the few examples that exist are worth noting.

Native Americans, 1900

Native Americans. In her novel Ramona (1884), Helen Hunt Jackson attempted to write an Uncle Tom’s Cabin to draw attention to the plight of Indian tribes in Southern California. Simple and trusting folk, her Indians are powerless against the unscrupulous land grabbers who are swarming into California. Confused like children in a suddenly alien and hostile world, they are ennobled by Jackson, who makes them patiently accepting of their fate.

The title character, Ramona, is the orphan daughter of a white father and Indian mother. Falling tragically in love with her is a young Indian, Alessandro, a gentle soul who has learned to speak Spanish and can also read and write.

Seeking sympathy and understanding for Indians, Frederic Remington takes a different tack in John Ermine of the Yellowstone (1902). The hero of this novel is a white man raised by Indians who attempts to reenter the white world as an Army scout. As he falls in love with an officer’s daughter, he is caught in a collision of cultures, and his story ends tragically, as well.

Effie Graham, The Passin’-On Party (1912)

This short comic novel about African Americans in Kansas is one of a kind. Steeped in familiar racial stereotypes, it is also a sly portrayal of social pretensions on all sides of presumed color lines. Finally, it bestows a quiet dignity on its subjects. In her foreword, Graham calls her book “a story of a people, one time slaves and bondsmen, now free-tongued freeholders in a western land.”

At the center of the story is a “colored” couple, Aunt June and Uncle Jerry Ferguson. As a way of showing both their poverty and their industriousness, their house is described as a “hand-made” hodge-podge of used and discarded materials. Even the house number, 004&, comes from the side of an old railroad car.

Plot. Aunt June, her health in decline, is suffering from an attack of rheumatism. Believing her life to be about to wrap up, she expresses the wish for a “passin’-on” party, that is, a reception, like white folks have. At such a function, guests are greeted by the host and “passed on” to the next person in the receiving line and then on to the refreshments.

Topeka, Kansas, c1891

Three young white folks of the town, Dorothy, Nina, and Grace, decide to arrange such an affair, to lift the old woman’s spirits. A fourth, Ralph, shows up from the newspaper to take an announcement for the society pages. Aunt June specifies that on the date of the event, black folks are welcome early and late in the day and white folks in between. Blacks, she reasons, will be on their way to or coming home from work. Given a more convenient time of day for themselves, the whites won’t have to mix with the blacks.

Aunt June and Uncle Jerry

Blacks and whites. And thus we meet a cross section of the town’s population—segregated by color. Though mostly an affable gathering of folks, bits of prejudice and systemic bias have their way of leaking through into the conversation.

The black women talk about doing laundry, ironing in white people’s basements, scrubbing spittoons, and performing other menial tasks. Their talk is salted with gossip. An employee of the grocery store is encouraged to sing a song—but not a hymn. He holds forth with “Silver Threads Among the Gold.” Another guest, a policeman, sets a plate nearby for a collection, salting it with a few silver coins.

The town mayor is the first white person to call. The mother of a crippled boy comes at the insistence of her son, who gets a hello from June whenever he passes by the house. June remembers her as being willing once to sit by her on the bus, while the other white women remained standing.

The evening gathering

At the end of the day come the “true sons and daughters of Africa.” Field workers, they are “the happiest toilers under the sun,” says the narrator, who directs this comment to any who would “blame or ridicule” them as lowly laborers. Among the evening’s guests are three generations of black folk. Oldest are the work-hardened former slaves and after them the embittered survivors of Reconstruction. The youngest are “the product of the white man’s kindly meant, but somewhat misfit, educational policy.”

A well-spoken student, Solomon, is scolded by a preacher, Brother Marcus, for putting more faith in book learning than old-time religion. When Solomon speaks harshly of white people, June reminds him that her passin’-on party was organized by whites. Well, Solomon reminds her, times have changed. She won’t debate that, but warns his generation not to get “sassy an’ wicked in yo’ hearts.”