ABSTRACT
The present text aims to explore how the imagining of the Indian was tied to nationalism and modernization discourses in the specific context of the Czech Lands in the second half of the nineteenth century. The purpose is to analyze how the Native Americans figured in the Czech discourse of oppression by the Habsburgs, and how the quasi-colonial ambitions of the Czechs in the period under consideration tacked closely to Czech emigration to the United States. The article is based on a variety of primary sources, from literary and pictorial depictions of Indians to newspaper articles, but the focus is especially on the ethnographic shows that in the 1870s to 1890s helped to consolidate the stereotyping and othering of the Native Americans. This case study would enable us to understand better the complex entanglements of identity-making discourses of the time. At the same time, the specific image of the Indian formed in this period left traces in the Czech public memory that are identifiable even today.
