American Multiculturalism and Racial Violence Theme Analysis

Just a few years after the Civil War ends, an itinerant news-reader, Captain Kidd, agrees to return Johanna, a young girl recently recaptured from the Kiowa tribe, to her family. Part of Mexico only decades before, Texas is now populated by people from a wide variety of backgrounds, from freed slaves to European immigrants to Native American tribes. The vibrant mixture of cultures that informs Texas’s nascent society demonstrates the centrality of immigrants in America’s formation and argues for the value of multiculturalism. But by chronicling the phenomenon of “Indian captives,” who represent the struggle for land and power between indigenous people and white settlers, the novel grapples with the racial violence and oppression that accompany this meeting of cultures. Ultimately, the volatile frontier world Captain Kidd inhabits is a testament not just to America’s essential ethnic heterogeneity but also to the cultural clash at the heart of the nation’s history.

In the novel’s first pages Captain Kidd, a white American whose family has lived in Georgia for decades, reads the news to a Texas crowd composed almost entirely of white men. This scene reflects ahistorical assumptions that most 19th-century Americans were white and native-born. However, the novel goes on to firmly reject these stereotypes of America’s ethnic composition. One of the first characters introduced, Britt Johnson, is a free African American who makes his living as a freighter on the margins of white society. Doris Dillon, who helps Captain Kidd care for Johanna, is an Irish woman who compares Johanna’s behavior to the actions of children traumatized in the Irish Potato Famine. Johanna’s family are Germans who speak English with difficulty. The Captain’s own wife, the late Maria Luisa, comes from a wealthy Mexican family, and the Captain speaks Spanish fluently. As these people build towns and societies on the Texas frontier, their various cultures determine the character of new America. Simon, a wandering fiddler, popularizes Irish jigs in the Texas backcountry, while German villages introduce sausage and sauerkraut. Spanish settlers build villages that combine European and indigenous Mexican architectural styles. The novel’s vibrant cast of characters and their varied backgrounds argue that immigrants, and the diverse cultural practices they bring, are not incidental but integral to America’s character and culture.

However, through stark portrayals of the racial violence of frontier life, the novel strongly rejects the fantasy of America as a happy melting pot. Britt Johnson can’t take Johanna to her parents because he fears traveling to southern Texas, where racial hostility is high. Captain Kidd meets cowboys who brag about killing “a right smart of Mexicans” even though they’re living on land captured from Mexico mere decades earlier. Most importantly, the novel is undergirded by the so-called “Indian Wars,” in which the U.S. military pushes indigenous people out of their ancestral lands while European settlers seize the opportunity for expansion and fear bloody reprisals. This conflict emblematizes the violence and displacement which makes possible the American “melting pot.”

The novel envisions a positive course for American society through culturally fluid characters like Captain Kidd, but it also represents the legacy of violent cultural conflict through child captives like Johanna. While most characters value only the norms of their own societies and dismiss those of others, Captain Kidd is eager to learn about different cultures. He speaks Spanish as well as snatches of Kiowa, German, and Native American sign language. His experience of many cultures makes him broadminded and tolerant and equips him for the difficult task of caring for Johanna. He’s a testament to the good things that can arise from mixture between cultures. Meanwhile, child captives, stolen from their families in violent raids and later returned to Anglo-American society by force, show the violence of many cultural encounters in America’s history. Captain Kidd notes that most captives experience mental illness or commit suicide after their ordeals. Having experienced the violence and trauma of cultural clash first hand, they’re unable to thrive in either of the worlds they’ve experienced. Their unhappy fates argue that the violence of America’s founding is never really over, but will instead play out in human lives and interactions through generations. By luck and Captain Kidd’s intervention, Johanna avoids the fate of many (real-life) “Indian captives.” However, even as she grows up within a loving family, she’s never at ease within Anglo-American society. Through the lasting dislocation she experiences, the novel illustrates the difficulty of fully grappling with the violence, injustice, and hardship that went into creating America.