"His Kingdom for a Kiss"

From Tiya Miles' "His Kingdom for a Kiss": Indians and Intimacy in the Narrative of John Marrant.

"In volume one of Democracy in America Tocqueville laments the black and Indian condition, noting the pathos and irony of black exclusion from white society and Native American pride in isolation: 'The Negro, who earnestly desires to mingle his race with that of the European, cannot do so; while the Indian, who might succeed to a certain extent, disdains to make the attempt. The servility of one dooms him to slavery, the pride of the other to death.'"

"America's founding fathers saw in the idealized Indian not only an example of emancipated man but also of democratic principles in practice, and they viewed Indian peoples and Indian lands as the model and mechanism of the American experiment and as the intangible essence of American exceptionalism."

"That Americans were albe to endure the cognitive dissonance of devastating native populations and usurping native land bases, even while valorizing the image of the Indian through their own appropriation of Indian-like ideals, appearances, and behaviors, is as central to the nation's founding as the irony of slavery."