Racism

The novel explores the negative effects of racism that result from colonialism and manifest as cultural stereotypes. When men from the West arrive in Native American territory, their relationship is not immediately hostile. Because there are so many different tribes, and so many different types of Europeans arriving on the continent, there is a shuffling of loyalties as the new people adjust to a world in which they all must exist together. The Choctaw make friends with the French and attempt to team up with them against the British and their Chickasaw enemies. In the end, however, the Native Americans end up the ultimate losers as their land is stolen and their people are pushed off their ancestral lands and moved to reservations.

The colonization does not end here, however, as the new American federal government attempts to assimilate the Native Americans into the dominant cultural...