The Thanksgiving Play

While Indigenous American voices have been excluded from theater in the United States, there has been no shortage of white-created representations of Indigenous Americans throughout the history of American entertainment. The representation and misrepresentation of American Indigenous people is embedded in national mythmaking and the cultural imagination. At the same time that 19th-century white colonizers were embracing westward expansion and Manifest Destiny, displacing and/or killing any Indigenous people in their path, different stereotypes of Indigenous Americans were entering popular culture. In the decades following the American Revolution, a significant aspect of American national identity was the notion of the rugged settler and homesteader whose frontier fortitude was a justification for feelings of American exceptionalism. These representations are tied to romanticized constructions of the “Wild West,” which continue to appear in 21st-century film and theater. Whether these Indigenous characters were played by Indigenous actors or white people in redface, the resulting representations were ultimately based in stereotypes.

One of the most significant portrayals of Indigeneity in early American theater history was the performance of Edwin Forrest as the title character in Metamora; or, the Last of the Wampanoags (1829), a melodrama by John Augustus Snow. Forrest, a white actor, offered a cash prize for the best play with a starring role for him that was about American themes. The character of Metamora plays into the now-familiar trope of the “noble savage,” maintaining peace with white settlers until tensions rise and they attack the Wampanoags. In the final scene of the play, Metamora kills his own wife and son to save them from the colonizers. Over the course of the 1800s, there were about 75 plays written about Indigenous characters, but Metamora was the most successful and was instrumental in launching Forrest’s career to the level of stardom. The play opened only a year before President Andrew Jackson passed the Indian Removal Act, and some historians suggest that the play was making a political statement. However, it was very common for 19th-century US theater to use controversial issues, such as the enslavement of Black Americans or violence against Indigenous people, as fodder for melodrama.

On what was arguably the opposite end of the representation spectrum were Wild West shows, which began around 1870 and were popular until the 1920s. These were outdoor performances that capitalized on the popularity of Wild West stories and sensationalized tales of cowboys versus Indians that had been circulating since the American Civil War. Wild West shows were massive spectacles that toured along vaudeville circuits, some featuring casts of up to 1,200, including white and Indigenous performers. These shows would last for three or four hours, during which performers would show off their trick shooting skills, interact with and rope animals that are associated with the frontier, and present sensationalized historical reenactments. Indigenous performers, who mostly came from the Plains Nations, were hired to participate in stunts as well as to play the Indigenous half of battle reenactments. They were directed to act “wild” and “barbaric” and depicted as violent and uncivilized. These shows toured the United States and Europe, spreading these stereotypes all over the world.

It is these Stereotypes and Constructions of Indigeneity, represented by the lesson plans in the odd-numbered scenes, that the characters of The Thanksgiving Play ostensibly seek to challenge. However, they themselves have absorbed many of these biases, as evidenced by their treatment of Alicia; when they believe she is Indigenous, they treat her as possessing innate, mystical wisdom. Due to both their own preconceptions and the structure of systemic oppression within which they are maneuvering, their efforts merely replicate the racism of past representations.