Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the agency of colonial literatures in the actions of explorers, settlers, frontiersman, US Presidents, religious missionaries, religious zealots, the Vatican, kings, queens, judges, legislators, ministers, gold diggers, traders and hunters. It analysis the complex relation between colonial literature and the Trilogy of cases produced by US Supreme court Chief Justice John Marshall: Johnson v. M'Intosh, Cherokee Nation v. Georgia and Worcester v. Georgia. The book provides a largely theoretical account of how a particular subject was formed through what Foucault describes as a unity of discourses. It examines popular fictional works and other literary narratives of the day and popular landscape paintings in order to demonstrate the convergences between Marshall's account of the habits and capacity of the Native American and accounts of artists and writers.