SOURCE: “Mark Twain and the American Indian,” in Mark Twain Journal, Vol. 16, No. 1, Winter, 1971-72, pp. 1-3.

In the following essay, Denton traces Twain's attitude towards Native Americans from his vilification of them early in his career to his more sympathetic treatment of them as he grew older.

Twain's colorful attitudes toward the Chinese, Arabs, Turks, various Europeans, and Negroes (and one is tempted to include the self-righteous Puritans as an ethnic group) are well-known. Less familiar are his collective views of the American Indian, of both the savage primitive and the Noble Red Man.¹ A survey of references to the Indian in Twain's writings demonstrates that his attitudes can be grouped into two diametrically opposed categories. During his early years, especially while he lived in the West, Twain exhibited strong prejudice against the Indians; that prejudice eventually changed to toleration and then finally to idealism, as Twain...