The Indian Chief As Tragic Hero

The leaders of anticolonial wars of resistance spread fear across the frontiers of North America, yet once defeated, these men became iconic martyrs for postcolonial national identity in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. With chapters based on seven major resistance struggles, Sayre offers an analysis of not only the tragedies and epics written about these leaders, but also their own speeches and strategies, as recorded in archival sources and narratives by their adversaries. Sayre concludes that these tragedies and epics laid the foundation for revolutionary culture and historiography and that, unlike the stereotype of the complaisant "vanishing Indian," these leaders presented colonizers with a cathartic reproof of past injustices.

The Indian Chief As Tragic Hero