Changes

Deloria’s argument that the literary society’s adoption of Indian identity was a concerted attempt to create a new national literature is unassailable. It is difficult to disagree with his premise that playing Indian was perceived by Morgan and other literary types as useful way to define America’s soul. Still, Deloria fails to address whether the work of the Red Man or New Confederacy groups beliefs influenced mainstream America. Unlike the Tammany groups, these literary societies would have little appeal outside the intelligentsia. Additionally, Deloria believes that Morgan and his colleagues failed to make any lasting contributions to American literature. Therefore, it is difficult to suggest that these men’s views should be included in a discussion in the national identity of America because their direct impact seems somewhat limited. It may more difficult to evaluate the importance of Deloria’s next example - the Camp Fire Girls.

Ernest Thompson Seton and Dan Beard created the Boy Scouts at the start of the twentieth century to ensure the masculinity and American identity for boys who they believed were threatened by “an effeminate, postfrontier urbanism.” Each man had different ideas were drawn to very different ideas of what constituted the American identity. Seton believed boys should acquire this identity by studying trees, flowers, nature and playing Indian. Beard envisioned a society for boys that emphasized America’s frontier past, the history of white Americans and military order. Unsurprisingly, over time Seton’s and Beard’s conception of the appropriate education for American boys forced Seton to leave the Boy Scouts a few years after it was chartered. Beard did not believe that Seton’s nature programs created sufficiently masculine boys.