ABSTRACT
Literary responses to both the American Indian Wars and the Revolutionary War, the earliest writings that can be considered "American war literature", helped shape the identity of the nation and laid the groundwork for a literature that would become essentially "American", a tradition distinct from its British roots. In the case of the Revolutionary War, writers who argued for the colonists' independence from England sought to outline a new national American character as well as principles of both private and public life. The conflict, or rather series of conflicts, between Native Americans and Europeans is the longest-running war in American history, beginning with the arrival of Columbus in 1492 and the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century and then with the settling of the first English colonies in the seventeenth century. The American Indian Wars were also fundamental to the economic success of European Americans.
