Instrumentalizing the “Fag End” of Gender

This article argues that Catharine Maria Sedgwick's 1827 historical novel Hope Leslie participates in the settler discourse of the “vanishing Indian” through instrumentalizing a trans settler character. Hope Leslie’s narrative rewrites Indigenous dispossession as an unavoidable tragedy in the service of settler Americanness. For this “vanishing” to take place, the novel's white trans character uses disguise to free a Pequot character from prison. That Pequot character, in turn, promptly vanishes from settler space and time along with the rest of the Pequot people. This essay examines the role of imagined settler transness in nineteenth-century narratives of US colonization, particularly through the genre of the historical romance. Specifically, the utility of the trans settler character depends on their ability to reference the existence of Indigenous gender diversity through the racial fungibility of their disguise while also presenting the text an opportunity to capture and incorporate the radical potential of gender nonconformity for colonial use.