The Indian Problem in “Septimius Norton” : An Interpretation of the Racial Mixing Setting

In the 1860s, with the dissolution of the old Democratic Party to which he used to belong, Hawthorne no longer had to worry about Indian taboos in terms of seeking redemption for and reconciliation with the past guilt of those whites who had persecuted Indians. Thus, in Septimius manuscripts, such a changed condition allowed Hawthorne to express his belief that reconciliation between Indians and whites would ultimately be achieved by combining white and Indian blood to form a cultural fusion, with peaceful Indian culture mitigating the white characteristic of violence. As the background of this novel, Hawthorne implies that the elixir of life symbolizes the swift resolution of a problem at the expense of others, alluding to colonialism. He denounces colonialism as an organized attempt for immortality, described in the novel as involving easy gains through exploiting others. He then criticizes wars and the religious conversion of Indians to Christianity as the expression of the elixir of life for promoting colonialism. Hawthorne condemns the Puritans’ war against the Indians as the “meanest kind of contest,” denouncing the former for their cruelty and sympathizing with the latter. Although the American Revolution was not directly related to the Indian Problem, it caused Indians to be sacrificed and deprived of their lands, as well as further restricting their (land) rights. Hawthorne opposed the wars stemming from colonialism, remained a pacifist, and sought peaceful reconciliation with the Indians. The reason why Hawthorne chose an Indian for the first time as the protagonist in Septimius is that he wanted to overcome the historical trauma associated with his ancestors representing Captain William Hathorne (1645-1676), son of Hawthorne’s great-great-great grandfather Major William Hathorne (1607-1681), who attended King Philip’s war and create a mixed-race character to present the possibility of Indian-white reconciliation in a real American context.