45 pages • 1 hour read
A Lantern in Her Hand
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Background
Historical Context: 19th-Century Treaties Between the US and Indigenous Nations
In A Lantern in Her Hand, Aldrich alludes to the fighting between white settlers and Indigenous groups in various regions as the United States attempted to grow its land and population. While Abbie is considered a pioneer because she and her husband are the first to create a society in Nebraska, this isn’t technically true. The state that is now known as Nebraska was home to Indigenous tribes for thousands of years: the Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, Cheyenne, and the Great Sioux Nation. In the Treaty of 1854, the Omaha tribe ceded most of their land to the United States government. The Omaha were established in Nebraska after the treaty with a reservation that still exists today. Between 1857 and 1862, tribes all over Nebraska were forced to give up their land or die. In the 19th century, the US government passed several laws controlling Indigenous land known as the Homestead Acts. Ultimately, Abbie and Will’s goal to settle in Nebraska is connected to this history. Abbie is frightened of an Indigenous attack, highlighting that she is anxious about being on land that doesn’t belong to her. Will and Abbie build a white settler town regardless, which also highlights the spirit of American exceptionalism and the belief in Manifest Destiny at that time. Furthermore, Aldrich makes historical allusions to the fraught history between white settlers and Indigenous groups with her reference to the Fort Laramie Treaty, an 1868 agreement that gave even more land to the United States government and pushed Indigenous peoples into reservations or other territories.
Literary Context: Pioneer Literature
American pioneer literature is a subgenre of historical literature. Pioneer literature was written as early as the 19th century and sold the story of American exceptionalism, the American Dream, and a triumphant victory of man over the elements. Although pioneers were in reality immigrants from Europe, Black Americans escaping slavery, and many Asian Americans coming from the West, American literature tends to center the white settler as the main hero of the story. A Lantern in Her Hand features immigrants such as the Lutz family, but the central protagonist is a white American woman named Abbie. Pioneer literature used characters like Abbie to inspire other white pioneers, celebrate pioneer life, and promote conservative values of family, faith, and hard work.
Pioneer literature, such as The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper (1841), historically helped to create American mythology and folklore. In The Deerslayer, a white American hero named Natty Bumppo objects to the immorality he believes informs Indigenous society and helps to create what he sees as true civilization in New York. Another famous example of the cultural hold of pioneer literature is Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series, which was a massively successful book and television series. Another of America’s classic voices is Willa Cather, the author of several novels about pioneer life on the prairie of Nebraska. These stories have common themes of moral righteousness, American dreams of self-sufficiency and independence, and an emphasis on the value of hard work. The belief in white supremacy and Manifest Destiny undergirds the pioneers’ conviction that they are entitled to settle on land that was not originally theirs. These attitudes are present in A Lantern in Her Hand when the novel references the settlers’ views of Indigenous people.
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